Malazan Empire: Garak - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

It's true that in most fantasy when the dark elves show up they have black skin because I guess the drow inspired a lot of people. I totally get it as I'm a big of the drow but that's beside the point. The Dark Eldar tend to be pale as a corpse .... their hearts however are so black as to make vantablack look like light grey. While all factions in 40k tend to participate in the "Who's the most evil" race, the Dark Eldar have the lead by a mile. While stories involving them can be funny (dark humor of course) they are irredeemably evil. I need to get into Eldar history for a bit to make my point.

The Eldar ruled a galaxy spanning Empire and had absolute power to do whatever the heck they wanted. So naturally their society became decadent over time. The problem was how far they took it. Let's just say they found the bottom of the barrel of depravity and decided that's way to tame for them, they need more. Parts of the Eldar society was looking at this stuff and went "Nope" so hard they fled to uncolonized maiden worlds, settled down and rejected most technology, become the dinosaur riding Exodites we know these days. Another group jumped on board the Craftworlds and fled the heart of their Empire and became extreme prudes about everything (I'm serius, the Craftworld eldar are really prudish lest they invite the gaze of She-Who-Thrists, aka Slaanesh, the Dark Prince). While these groups were doing that, the rest kept doing nightmare stuff for fun.

All of that depravity and pain and whatnot (because of course they ended up torturing people for fun and when that got boring, the sport became how long and painful the torture could be)? All of it echoed in the Warp. And coalesced into the 4th Chaos God, Slaanesh. Now, the birth of Slaanesh was a long and painful thing for the galaxy, as warp storms broke out everywhere and basically screwed over the human Empire at the time, plunging them into the crap state the Emperor had to save them from. And when Slaanesh was finally born, he-she-it (Slaanesh is all genders and none at the same time) basically created the Eye of Terror, the biggest warp storm in the galaxy (well, it used to be anyway) and collapsed the Eldar Empire when she devoured the souls of 90% of them upon birth.

Right before that happened, a few of the depraved fuckers realized what was coming and fled into the webway (space highway that bypasses the warp but can still be breached by it) and sealed themselves into a pocket dimension in it. There they built a city called Commoragh and became the Dark Eldar.

The Exodites now depend on their worldspirits to keep their souls safe from Slaanesh, the Craftworld wear soul stones that collect their souls upon death and which are then placed into the Infinity Circuit of the Craftworld they hail from. The Dark Eldar? They just keep on doing the shit they did before the fall (actually even worse at this point) and they are constantly loosing bits of their souls to Slaanesh, especially if they leave their pocket dimension. Their soul is an open wound that can only be salved with suffering, a void that can only be filled with tortured bodies, a thrist that can only be quenched by spilled blood. They are beyond terrified of dying, because they know who will eat their souls when that happens and they will do anything, go to any lengths to avoid that. They have resurrection technology that can work even with a pile of ashes.

Here's a quote of that in action: As a cacophony of shrieks rises and falls around the chamber, those installed in the cocoons above slowly feast upon the resonant energies, ever so gradually growing back their bodies - skeleton first, then muscle and sinew, then alabaster skin until they are whole once more. During times of war, it is common for every one of an oubliette's regeneration pods to be filled with leering, red-raw fiends that shiver and rattle with every fresh scream.

There is a reason being captured by them is considered among the worst fates possible in the setting. Especially because of the haemonculi. Mad scientist doesn't even begin to describe these things. Turning someone into a chair, while still being alive and capable of feeling the pain and horror is standard procedure for them. And the Dark Eldar are all about raiding and bringing back prisoners/slaves/sex toys/etc. Gods help any Eldar captured by them, the things they'll do then.

Otoh among their ranks is Lelith Hesperax, widely considered by the fans to be hottest woman in the setting. So there's that.