The Aeldari occupied a deeply awkward position. Compared to the Orks and Tyranids, they lacked the capacity for endless mass-reproduction; compared to their ancient rivals, the Necrons, they no longer possessed peak technological dominance.
To say nothing of their standing relative to the modern Imperium. Within the Segmentum's local Webway, major Space Marine Chapters had long since purged every node—forcing survivors to either submit as servants or be funneled into lethal assembly lines to be thoroughly exploited. For the Aeldari, only one true path to survival remained: total servitude.
It was the sole condition under which their species was permitted to exist.
In other galaxies, the Craftworld Aeldari remained as arrogant as ever, stubbornly dismissing the sheer power of the Imperium even when confronted with it directly.
Their misplaced confidence stemmed entirely from their reliance on the Webway—a security that evaporated instantly the moment Imperial battlefleets forcibly breached the local entry portals.
The arrival of Astartes Chapters and naval battlefleets left the Aeldari scattered and howling in defeat, while even the Dark Aeldari were forced to shrink their raiding perimeters under constant Imperial encirclement.
The Imperial navy was simply too vast. Even the local Ork warbands instinctively realized that attempting to overwhelm the "Humies" through sheer numbers was a fool's errand.
Even the Tyranid Hive Fleets learned to avoid provoking Imperial task forces without cause, well aware that a single distress signal could summon an endless stream of Chapters and fleets.
The sheer volume of manpower and void-craft was staggering. The Imperium could lose an entire Astartes Legion without suffering a critical blow; if anything, reducing military upkeep slightly eased the astronomical administrative workload on Terra.
This was the Imperium: an overwhelming entity whose scale inspired absolute despair, a living nightmare no faction wished to face.
Thus, the Aeldari were plunged into absolute despair, deprived of any lingering hope for the future.
Their homeworlds were destroyed, their technical legacy was fragmented, and even with Slaanesh's influence held at bay, the gradual awakening of Ynnead had failed to raise their birth rates. Like the Necrons, they were a species whose long-term future had been permanently severed.
The sole distinction between them and the Necrons was that the Aeldari still possessed souls, forced to watch their race rot away step by step, whereas the Necrons quietly faded into galactic dormancy.
In practical terms, little difference remained; both species watched their own slow march toward extinction, though the Necrons' technical resilience granted them a slightly longer twilight.
The Necrons, after all, retained their core scientific foundation, whereas the Aeldari possessed virtually nothing left to rebuild with.
Yet for a species that had enjoyed unchallenged dominance over the galaxy for sixty million years, submitting to a race that had existed for merely a brief moment in cosmic history was unthinkable.
Even if the peak Aeldari Empire and Golden Age humanity had once existed on relatively comparable terms, it did not mean this self-styled "most elegant and noble race" would ever willingly bow to what they viewed as primitive "monkeys."
To their minds, they were intrinsically superior, far grander than any human. Lowering themselves to bargain with monkeys was out of the question.
Consequently, Aeldari Craftworlds fled through the Webway's interior, executing extreme maneuvers during the brief windows when Imperial fleets could not deploy massive pursue forces, playing a continuous game of hide-and-seek with Astartes Chapters and naval task forces.
Even the Space Wolves and the Deathwatch, renowned for their tracking capabilities, struggled to pinpoint these hyper-agile Craftworlds. However, the White Scars successor Chapters proved far more ruthless.
Famous for their extreme speed, the White Scars equipped their lighter vessels with the Imperium's highest-grade psyker-detection arrays. They stripped their fleets down to core mobility configurations, retaining only basic Chapter wargear alongside select Automata and Class-Ironclad battle units while shedding all unnecessary mass.
Enhanced by reverse-engineered Wraithbone and Necron propulsion systems, the White Scars Chapters achieved void-speeds unmatched across any Legion, outpacing even the Aeldari themselves.
Thus, the Aeldari encountered their most relentless adversaries.
In a single decade, the twenty White Scars Chapters deployed into the Webway eradicated at least twenty Craftworlds alongside numerous Commorrite Kabals. Now, as Webway containment operations expanded across the four external galaxies, every participating Chapter routinely requested two White Scars veterans to serve as strategic advisors.
The once-haughty Aeldari grew pale whenever they spotted the iconic white armor bearing the unified lightning sigil, knowing its appearance signaled their immediate demise.
In truth, the Aeldari were far from the primary nuisance within the Webway. The real operational headache lay in the ruined transit hubs and the unaligned Chaos Daemons continually breaching the sub-realm; purging these warp-entities represented the Imperium's most exhausting logistical burden.
Given current resource constraints, Perturabo frequently led the Emperor and his brothers beyond the galactic rim to harvest raw material nodes—a necessity driven in part by the immense cost of Webway reconstruction.
As for the ancient Old One Webway-tunneling apparatus, Perturabo had successfully reassembled it long ago. Yet it remained little more than a specialized subterranean excavator: useful for boring entirely new Webway arterial routes, but redundant when repairing existing networks.
Thus, the apparatus remained largely niche for current Imperial needs, seeing use only when establishing brand-new primary links—such as connecting the Primarch homeworlds directly to Terra.
After all, any newly constructed Webway segment operated on a distinct structural framework separate from the Old Ones' original grid. Forcing connections between the two caused chaotic, unpredictable bypass channels that disrupted regional transit routing.
With Imperial personnel now residing permanently within sectors of the Webway, unchecked structural experimentation was strictly prohibited.
This necessity explained the Imperium's unyielding stance on purging all xenos and Chaos elements from the sub-dimensional network. Having designated the Webway as a strategic secondary territory—much as the ancient Aeldari once had—the Imperium enforced absolute control.
Hostile xenos faced a binary choice: submit to total enslavement—working endless factory shifts or serving as frontline cannon fodder—or face immediate, systematic extermination via Cyclonic torpedoes.
No middle ground existed. The dead alien was the only acceptable alien.
This irreconcilable divide guaranteed that the Aeldari and the Imperium could never co-exist.
Upon contact, dialogue was bypassed entirely: one side fled for its life while the other opened fire with Lance batteries. Even if an Aeldari craft attempted surrender, a preliminary orbital salvo usually ended the conversation before terms could be uttered.
Ultimately, not every xenos qualified to become an "Imperial Psyker-Specialized Sub-Human." Without the foresight to surrender early, extinction was the only outcome.
Those designated as Psyker-Specialized Sub-Humans enjoyed full Imperial citizenship within the domestic heartlands, while those funneled into labor facilities were reduced to disposable assets.
Though Harlequins across five galaxies had previously urged their kin to negotiate, their warnings went unheeded. The Aeldari had staked everything on Ynnead's awakening, and now, with their options exhausted, even crystallization-level regret could not undo their choice. The Imperium was done offering terms.
Isha had secretly attempted to aid her suffering kin alongside alternate manifestations of herself across different galaxies who had escaped one nightmare only to fall into another. None could bear to watch their people endure endless agony.
Cegorach discovered these actions, yet chose not to intervene, moved by similar compassion.
Two figures who had gradually faded into obscurity during the height of the Aeldari Empire ultimately became the sole shield preserving the last remnants of their kind.
Naturally, their covert actions did not escape the Primarchs' notice. A single infraction brought a stern warning; the second brought immediate military intervention.
As a result, Perturabo's Demon Forge now housed eight additional Aeldari deities as bound laborers.
It had to be noted that the Goddess of Life possessed remarkable compassion—explaining why Nurgle had once fought a newly awakened sister-god simply to secure her for himself.
Even within Perturabo's Demon Forge—a facility so brutal that ancient terran slave-masters would have wept and declared themselves saints by comparison—Isha could not bear to see her people's souls suffer, repeatedly offering to assume their operational workloads.
Yet this display of mercy earned her no leniency. To the Iron Warrior Overseer supervising her sector, it merely indicated that her assigned quota was far too light if she still possessed the leisure to assist others.
Thus—
CRACK!
"Still have time to worry about other slaves? That means you're slacking. Back to work—increase the line speed tenfold!"
The massive Iron Warrior displayed zero hesitation, swinging a thick, barbed steel whip directly across her physical form—a body that even Slaanesh would have lingered over.
Isha writhed in agony beneath the whip, which was saturated with the Iron Lord's cold essence. Whenever slave overseers caught a laborer pausing, they delivered a lightning-laced sequence of five consecutive lashes without delay.
The whip, crackling with dark electricity, struck repeatedly across her flesh until her form was torn and bleeding. Yet her movements never slowed, held in place by Vashtorr's mechanical chains that bound her internally and externally.
Like a marionette, she endured severe physical torment while managing an exponentially accelerated workload on the demonic assembly line.
She was not alone in her fate; the other seven Aeldari deities received identical treatment, their operational quotas forcibly raised to maximum capacity.
The sheer concentration of soul-tears and malice within the facility caused the broader Warp to instinctively recoil. The dark architecture of Perturabo's Demon Forge created a localized feedback loop, further reinforced by the absolute Warp-lockdown imposed by the Emperor and Perturabo.
It was a cold, calculated cycle: the Emperor and Perturabo intended to force the Warp back into its pre-War in Heaven state, regardless of how many millennia the process required.
The Warp itself rejected these two anomalous entities just as the physical universe rejected daemonkind. Neither side favored the Emperor or Perturabo, yet neither side possessed the strength to displace them.
Ironically, the most brutal overseers within the facility were not baseline humans or space marines, but the first generation of Imperial Psyker-Specialized Sub-Humans who had surrendered early to the Imperium.
The cruelty exhibited by these sub-humans occasionally shocked even the Iron Legions, prompting the Space Marines to advise them against excessive lethality lest they deplete the labor pool entirely.
How extreme was their oversight?
The Dark Aeldari and Slaaneshi daemons knew best.
No slave population understood better than these two groups what it meant when the enemy's fist was heavy, but a former kin's cruelty was agonizing beyond belief.
The Dark Aeldari now felt profound regret, cursing their failure to maintain better relations with the Craftworlds in ages past. Had their reputation been slightly less vile, they might not have fallen into the hands of kin far more ruthless than daemons, enduring an existence far worse than absolute annihilation.
CRACK!
"Aaargh!"
An Aeldari overseer—his body radiating a dark aura so dense he appeared more sinister than any Dark Aeldari—swung a spiked, electrified whip with absolute fury, striking a Dark Aeldari soul simply because he felt the slave's output had lagged by a single nanosecond.
Even though such an infinitesimal delay was impossible to measure visually, the overseer insisted the slave was slow.
If he decided the slave was slow, the slave was slow!
Thus, the whip fell—not as a single strike, but as a minimum sequence of three five-lash lightning combos, delivered purely to satisfy the overseer's whim.
"What are you doing?! Don't think working hard excuses you—my shock baton doesn't play pretend!"
"Pick up the pace! If I catch your movements lagging by even a single nanosecond again, I don't care who you are—this whip doesn't show mercy!"
With a low snarl, eight auxiliary mechanical arms sprouted from his back, wielding ten electrified whips simultaneously. Moving with a blinding speed that would make even a White Scar take note, he demonstrated the absolute efficiency expected of a senior overseer.
Single-handedly wielding ten whips, he kept every Dark Aeldari soul on Assembly Line 52 in absolute submission, maintaining top-tier productivity rankings across the Demon Forge.
His ten whips covered every slave on the line with mathematical precision, ensuring each laborer received a five-lash lightning barrage every few minutes.
At the slightest hint of non-compliance, he unleashed full nine-section whip routines—strikes so severe they had permanently dissolved Dark Aeldari souls into nothingness. It was only after the Iron Legions intervened to place hard limits on his whipping techniques that the factory's Dark Aeldari mortality rate stabilized.
If life was unbearable for the Dark Aeldari, it was equally harrowing for the captured Slaaneshi daemons. Who understood Slaanesh's specific vulnerabilities better than the Aeldari themselves?
Upon discovering that these daemons had lost their capacity to derive pleasure from sensation, the Aeldari overseers displayed an astonishing degree of sadism.
They formally requested that the daemons' pain thresholds be calibrated to maximum levels, then set to work with fine blades in continuous rotations, wielding their scalpers so rapidly that time itself seemed to invert.
Lethal strikes rained down without pause, alternating between flanged maces, chain-blades, and precise scalpels. Deprived of their ability to convert sensation into emotional fuel, the Slaaneshi daemons suffered exquisite, unending agony under Aeldari hands, teetering continuously on the edge of utter collapse.
Within the notorious Demon Forge, slaves assigned to Aeldari overseers routinely begged to be permanently encased inside Daemon Engines or Hellbrutes instead.
Even the Emperor, observing the facility's output, quietly remarked that the ancient Aeldari had wasted an extraordinary talent—noting that Terra's past history held countless administrative roles where such uncompromising ruthlessness would have flourished.