Warhammer 40K: What Is An Aeldari Craftworld Anyways?
The Aeldari Craftworlds are kind a big deal. But what exactly are they and why do the Aeldari use them in the first place?
If you’re not 100% caught up on Aeldari lore this one is for you. Today we’re going to tackle what the Aeldari Craftworlds actually are and why they even use them in the first place. It has a lot to do with the slowly spiraling downfall of the Aeldari. So let’s get into it!
Craftworlds are vast craft populated by Eldar. They travel through the void of space at sub-light speeds, carrying the greater remnant of the Eldar race after the Fall of their civilization. Each Craftworld is a self-sufficient, independent realm with its own culture and is capable of housing tens of millions. Craftworlds are in many ways living entities, powered by psychic energy from its Infinity Circuit and responding in an organic way to the stimuli of psychic forces. The power within a Craftworld can be expended as light or heat, and most Craftworld technology could not function without this psychic power grid.
Craftworlds Before The Fall
Prior to the Fall, Craftworlds were vast trading ships, effectively, whole self-contained communities housing hundreds of Eldar families. Trading missions could take the Craftworlds thousands of light years beyond Eldar civilization, separating the community from its homeworld for centuries. This meant the Craftworld communities had already developed a strong sense of independence and self-reliance, so they remained mostly separate from the increasing decadence of their species.
Because a Craftworld might return to the rest of Eldar civilization only three or four times in a thousand years, it was easy for them to see the degeneration of Eldar society, while to the Eldar as a whole the slow degeneration was too gradual to recognize.
As the final weeks leading to the cataclysm approached, the returning Craftworlds’ crews founding their worlds in ruin. Taking with them any Eldar who still remained sane, the Craftworlds fled the Eldar civilization. Some Craftworlds were caught and consumed by Chaos along with the Eldar worlds as the Eye of Terror tore open reality, others survived for thousands of years before their people finally faded and died, while others endure to this day.
Craftworlds of the ‘Modern’ Era
For thousands of years after the Fall to the current day, the Craftworlds have carried the greater part of the surviving Eldar. Craftworlds contain Webway gates, linking each other as well as to millions of planets, allowing the dispersed Eldar civilization some measure of cohesion. Because the Webway is labyrinthine and impossible to map, many Craftworlds are effectively lost, unknown and cut off from the greater part of Eldar civilization. They have grown greatly in size since the Fall, when they became the sanctuary worlds of the Eldar race. They are now approximately 10 to 100 times bigger in volume than they were before the Fall.
Thus, Craftworlds are effectively worlds in space, each a self-contained biosystem, with forested and natural areas as well as urbanized ones. These natural areas provide a breathable atmosphere to the Craftworld and renewable resources. There are often sections that are uninhabited and awaiting reconstruction. Vast space docks located outside the Craftworld house fleets of spacecraft. These fleets are capable of travelling through Warp tunnels, allowing Eldar of the relatively slow-moving Craftworld to bring their forces to areas of the galaxy thousands of light years distant.
Imperial Stance On Craftworlds
It is known that the last Imperial assault against a Craftworld ended as a disaster at the Battle of the Blood Nebula, which saw the loss of an entire sector fleet thus leading to the Imperium adopting the stance of dealing with individual threats of the Eldar rather than provoke an entire nest of them.
Want to learn more about the Aeldari and their Craftworlds? Check out the Lexicanum for even more Lore!
