Eldar history in Warhammer 40k

Eldar History

I am Kelmon Farseer of the craft world Biel-Tan. I am the keeper of the history of the Eldar for my craft world. I have stood countless times waiting for a battle to comence. I have fought on fields of ice under turquoise skies, danced through whirling red dust on desert plains, I have crept through dense jungles to purge worlds of the great enemy. We are not a violent race we do not enjoy war, though our history is full of destruction. May the younger races learn from our history that follows.

BEFORE THE FALL: Our Home Worlds are lost to us. Our race was once the greatest civilization in the galaxy. Our domain stretched far across the galaxy from planet to planet we travelled through the great Web Way, one of the technologies we inherited from the Slann. Our ancient civilization now lies in ruin in the area you humans know as the Eye of Terror. The Eye is located to the galactic north and east of your home world, Earth, and forms a circular 'eye' shape approximately ten thousand light years across at its widest point. Today the Eye of Terror is the largest known region of warp/real space overlap, where Chaos and the Material Universe mix into each other.
The Eye of Terror is not devoid of habitable planets, and is to our greatest woe that many secrets to our past still remain waiting for our return. How ever these world no longer form part of the real universe.They are dominated by Chaos and its twisted laws, for this reason they are known to us as Crone worlds-referring to Moraiheg the Crone Godess. Despite this we still brave these twisted worlds for they our best source for our spirit stones.
You humans are similar to us in physical form, although not entirely identical by any means. We have longer and cleaner limbs, and fine ascetic features with penetrating and slightly slanted eyes. Our ears taper into a point, but otherwise we could pass for one of you at first glance. The most obvious difference is in the way we move, our movements radiate a subtle grace which is impossible for you humans to emulate.
Dance, mime and other gestural art forms are very important to us, our formal art investing a whole range of gestures and stance with precise meanings. Much of our early history is recorded in the form of tradional dances, recounting the stories of the honored and ancient houses of Eldanesh and Ulthanash, the children of Kurnous and Isha, Gea and her twin consorts Khaine th Bloody Handed God and Asuryan the Phoenix king. The legends surrounding our Gods and the birth of our race form a complex cycle of ritual dance and song know as the Dream of Asuryan. In the highest form these dances are performed only by our brother Warrior Dancers called Harlequins, for only they really understand all of the myriad secrets hidden within our history.
TEARS OF ISHA: For as long as our history stretches there have always been Spirit Stones. They are an important part of our nature which you humans call technology. We use them to channel psychic energy to create our homes and our art. They are also used to create weapons to defend our Craft Worlds and to protect our souls from Slaanesh. The creation of the spirit stones is but one part in the Dance of Asuryan. What follows is the best that it can be translated into the written format.
One night the Goddess Lileath had a dream in which she saw Khaine the war god torn to pieces by a mortal descendant of Kurnous the God of the hunt and Isha the Goddess of the harvest. Kurnous and Isha had many children who included immortal gods as well as the very first mortals-The Eldar. When Lileath told Khaine about her dream he resolved to destroy the mortal children of Kurnous and Isha, and pursued them through the Heavenly Realm, trapping and slaying many before Asuryan the Phoenix King heard the weeping of their mother Isha and came to see what was happening. When he discovered what Khaine had done, Asuryan banished the remaining Eldar to the Mortal Lands and forbade all further contact between mortals and gods.
Kurnous and Isha were dismayed at being parted from their offspring and asked their uncle Vaul the Smith God to help reunite them. Vaul took the tears shed by Isha and turned them into spirit stones. By means of the stones an Eldar could talk to the Gods, and in this way the Eldar and Gods could communicate even though they could never meet. Although Vaul knew Asuryan had forbidden contact between mortals and gods he gave one of the stones to Isha and the remainder to her mortal children the Eldar.
By means of the stones the Eldar talked to Isha. They learned how to use the stones to draw runes, and were shown how the energy of the stones could be combined with the runes to make skeletak frameworks for all kinds of structures and craft. Unfortunately, Khaine overheard Isha one day as she talked through her stone to the Eldar, and the War God immediately told Asuryan.
Asuryan was so enraged that his order had been disobeyed that he gave Kurnous and Isha to Khaine to do with as he pleased. Vaul could not bear to see his brother and sister harmed by Khaine so he struck a bargain in return for their safety. Khaine agreed that if Vaul were to make him a thousand enchanted weapons by the same time the following year he would let Kurnous and Isha go free.
Vaul worked hard all year, but at the end of the time the final weapon, a long sword, still lay unfinished on the anvil. To conceal the shortfall Vaul picked up an ordinary sword and mixed it into the others, and gave the weapons to Khaine who was too pleased to spot the deception. Vaul, Kurnous and Isha hurried away. As they made good their escape Khaine discovered the ordinary sword among the weapons and roared with anger, calling Vaul a cheat and crying out for revenge.
Following this episode the Dream of Asuryan tells how Khaine and Vaul fought each other, and how Vaul reforges the unfinished sword to use against his enemy. After a series of battles Vaul is finally caught by Khaine who cripples him and chains the Smith God to his own anvil. Vaul's sword then passes into the hands of the mortal hero Eldanesh, who finally confronts Khaine and is torn apart and killed.
Asuryan was so appalled by the murder of Eldanesh that he cursed Khaine and made his hands drip eternally with the blood of Eldanesh so everyone would remember what he had done. The sword then passed through the hands of Eldanesh's descendants untill it was finally lost in the Sea of Broken Tears by Inriam the Young.
THE FALL OF THE ELDAR: Time passed over the centuries, we learned how to harness the power of the spirit stones. Psychic Eldar called Bonesiners harness the power to draw forth wraith bone and our technology developed around this. Warlocks and their brother Farseers used the spirit stones to create runes to protect our worlds and see into the future. For the most part time passed peacefully for our people our worlds thrived and our civilization spanned a signifcant portion of the galaxy. Our homes became places of great peace and great beauty, paradise of personal contentment and cultural achievement. This all ended a little over ten thousand years ago in a cataclysm of destruction which would wipe out our inter-planetary civilization in a single stroke. This is simply known as the Fall.
All Eldar tend toward extremes of emotion and intellect so that the temptation to persue a life of pleasure, art, and intellectual gratification is very great. Even before the Fall some of my people recognised these temptations and fought against them, refusing to be drawn into the inescapable pleasures which our sensibilites and culture afforded.
However, the very act of fighting against our own nature had an unbalancing effect upon their minds. Hysteria, insanity and a multitude of psychoses began to affect almost the entire population. Some of our brothers, much to our woe, gave into their hedonistic impulses, joining exotic cults in their pursuit for novel experiences, esoteric knowledge and sensual excess. As these cults proliferated, we became increasingly divided. Foreseeing the collapse of the civilization, some of our brothers began a mass migration to newly seeded planets where they planned to set up utopian societies free from the taint of hedonism. These Eldar called their migrations the Exodux, and refered to themselves as the Exodites. Many of the early Exodites were wiped out by marauding Orks or became embroiled in the eternal wars of the humans, but some were successful. These Exodites eventually founded a second generation of frontier civilizations based around a core of noble houses. Their descendants still rule these worlds after ten thousand years.