How does Dark Elf society not collapse?

XxXScorpionXxX · January 6

I mean based on the lore it seems like they're constantly killing and backstabbing each other and everyone is paranoid 24/7.

How do Dark Elf children get raised? I can't imagine a Dark Elf woman rearing a baby. What systems do they have in place for education? What about laws? Are there any?

hanen · January 6

Maybe because its not real.

CaesarSahlertz · January 6

How does ANY fantasy society not collapse? Because the will of the authors sustains it..

JungleElf · January 6

Yeah, the absurd edginess gets tiresome sometimes. I guess they're just not always murdering, and also quite prolific.

innerp · January 6

what was aragorns tax policy?

Daruwind · January 6

The same issue that governs speed of spaceship. Plot. There is always so many elf that no matter how many die, they are still in constant decline and despair.....

veresh1989 · January 6

They kill when it is profitable, it is a nation of warriors that has become a nation of murderers and sadists overwhelmingly. Despite the fact that they fell under the influence of chaos, they have a lot of discipline and resilience. They live in harsh lands that have subordinated to their will and survive at the expense of slavery and plunder. In fact, they exist thanks to the Witch King Malekith, which keeps them from self-destruction. Although it is possible, if Malekith died, we would see a grand split in the nation of Dark Elves. Where cities would fight against each other and be quickly destroyed by a single army of high elves.

Red_Dox · January 6

Thex exist, because the writers of partly bad lore wills it and the whole background is more focused on battles then how their society works. I mean the logistics to all those huge battles is madness itself. And when huge armies walk from one point of the map like thousand of miles to their destination, the questions how they the keep up if not Undead are always ignored.

It gets particulary bad during "The (horrible) Endtimes" were it really is laughable bad. Example elves: They are that "dying race" for like 2000 years and sinc ethen wrested more or les in basic civil war with each other, while also fighting with the rest of the world for various reasons.
OK, Endtiems start: Naggaroth is crushed under bootheel of invading Warriors of Chaos who basically burn every city down and slaughter at least half of teh DE population.
At the same time, Ulthuan is burned down by massive Daemons of Chaos invasions, who burn half the island to the ground and slaughter probably at least half the population before the HE can banish them back.
Now, the Dark Elves, unable to hold their territory gather everything they can and make a mass evacuation towards Ulthuan. Malekiths goal: This time he will retake the island, or his whole race will die trying since they can't go back anywhere. So DE and HE now go at each others throat again and we have like a few years of war around the island, with plenty of backstabbing and hundred of thousands die. The Woodelves also chime in on both sides, so more elves to die. They literally fight until the island is destroyed, and the surviving elves, lets say at least half survived that on both sides, makes "peace" and retreats to Athel Loren.
One would think that two races who probably now both lost around 75% of their poupulation as well as both their whole civilisations, would be already on the end of the rope. But nope, we are just at half time baby. Three more Endtimes campaign books coming and the "united" elves have still to fight everywhere in the Old World. HOW? That is a question we do not ask at GW HQ.

------Red Dox

Selakah · January 6

The best part about Dark Elf society is that the Dark Elves themselves don't engage in any type of labor. All labor, including construction, is done by slaves. Their entire society is predicated on "Dark Elves are superior and don't engage in menial labor, let's go abduct people and force them to build things for us".

The idea that a society like that could last for more than 6 months without collapsing is ridiculous.

JungleElf · January 6

Red_Dox said:
Thex exist, because the writers of partly bad lore wills it and the whole background is more focused on battles then how their society works. I mean the logistics to all those huge battles is madness itself. And when huge armies walk from one point of the map like thousand of miles to their destination, the questions how they the keep up if not Undead are always ignored.

It gets particulary bad during "The (horrible) Endtimes" were it really is laughable bad. Example elves: They are that "dying race" for like 2000 years and sinc ethen wrested more or les in basic civil war with each other, while also fighting with the rest of the world for various reasons.
OK, Endtiems start: Naggaroth is crushed under bootheel of invading Warriors of Chaos who basically burn every city down and slaughter at least half of teh DE population.
At the same time, Ulthuan is burned down by massive Daemons of Chaos invasions, who burn half the island to the ground and slaughter probably at least half the population before the HE can banish them back.
Now, the Dark Elves, unable to hold their territory gather everything they can and make a mass evacuation towards Ulthuan. Malekiths goal: This time he will retake the island, or his whole race will die trying since they can't go back anywhere. So DE and HE now go at each others throat again and we have like a few years of war around the island, with plenty of backstabbing and hundred of thousands die. The Woodelves also chime in on both sides, so more elves to die. They literally fight until the island is destroyed, and the surviving elves, lets say at least half survived that on both sides, makes "peace" and retreats to Athel Loren.
One would think that two races who probably now both lost around 75% of their poupulation as well as both their whole civilisations, would be already on the end of the rope. But nope, we are just at half time baby. Three more Endtimes campaign books coming and the "united" elves have still to fight everywhere in the Old World. HOW? That is a question we do not ask at GW HQ.

------Red Dox

Oof, yeah the End Times went crazy with it. Older editions could be handwave'd a bit, but that atrocity? Ugh, no.

ShiroAmakusa75 · January 6

And even better is that they go through their slaves like candy despite there only ever being a trickle since they lack "conveniences" like the triangle trade but have to go out and violently acquire them from very warlike people who resist those efforts.

The whole DE-HE split and perpetual civil war is just utter nonsense if put under any amount of scrutiny.

mightygloin · January 6

Also not all of their citizens are backstabbing plotting maniacs. Some actually value honor and unite in their loyalty to the witch king. In any case there is method to their madness.

JungleElf · January 6

Northern tribes are not that different in terms of impossible populations.

TeNoSkill · January 6

XxXScorpionXxX said:
I mean based on the lore it seems like they're constantly killing and backstabbing each other and everyone is paranoid 24/7.

How do Dark Elf children get raised? I can't imagine a Dark Elf woman rearing a baby. What systems do they have in place for education? What about laws? Are there any?

I think that if you tried you could explain it decently.

1. The common enemy that is the High Elves. Nothing unites as much as a common enemy, exspecially one that lives
more comfortable then you.

2. The lands of chill are not....particularly chill to be around. In fact they are quiet a hazardous enviroment if you don t
know how to deal with it. So ironically you need to work together to sustain yourself in this enviroment and this also
limits the degeneracy.
Since the Delfs live mainly in the large cities it also differes heavily how bad in can get like in Har Ganeth.

3. The Will of the Witch King is also quiet the factor. Malekith is one of the most powerful beeings alive atm and anything
that troubles his plans to claim Ulthuan will get dealt with.

There is no doubt that the Delfs would have warred among themselves a lot more if it hadn t been for their external threats.

Sparta is probably the most fitting real live comparison.

yolordmcswag · January 6

It doesn't make any sort of sense, but neither does most other warhammer societies.

It makes no sense whatsoever that the empire can survive as a nation, since they are constantly beset within and without by unlimited armies of constantly replenishing hordes of monsters. Anything outside a garrisoned city wall should be dead overnight, but somehow they have enough power to even wage civil wars.

Skaven are worse. They are like dark elves, but unlike them they are in a state of constant starvation. Their population grows very quickly despite the starvation, but they some how get by largely on cannibalism(skaven eating other skaven is apparently the only process where energy is gained and not lost, physics be damned). Also unlike dark elves the slaves that sustain them come from their own starving population.

Beastmen are pretty ridiculous too. Despite hating the very concept of society, they are able to provide all the things a society can like food for their whole population (which is somehow big and growing despite zero agriculture or even permanent settlements) and proper weapons and armour to equip all their troops(which is literally all their guys).

In general, there is a recurring theme that most of the races should not be able to sustain their populations. Either because of a lack of food, or a supposedly slow reproduction which should see them all die out to the cconstant warfare everyone has constantly.

So yes, dark elves make no sense, but they are not even the worst of the bunch. Arguably only high elves, dwarfs and maybe wood elves can have functioning societies because they are the only ones who can keep a decent area of land safe from most attackers. And undead of course because they don't need to be alive to live.

TeNoSkill · January 6

Also dying race just means that their birth rates are below replacement level IF you factor in the external conflicts.

AxiosXiphos · January 6

Dark Elves are pretty much an exact copy of the Spartans - even down to the 'Death Nights' and the population being insanely inbalanced to the point of the Spartans being outnumbered by their slaves.

If Sparta existed for hundreds of years in the real world; I'm sure we can suspend disbelief that the Dark Elves can exist in a world of dragons and magic.

Also Dark Elves are shown to have familial ties; even if they are loose with the rules. Morathi definitely loves her son, Lokhir's family have strong ties - even Malus though he spends his time fighting his brothers and sisters has a connection with them.

Largely though it is a cult of personality - they all fear Malekith more then each other - and this keeps them from doing anything too damaging to the order of things... Hell doing anything so severe so their society can't effectively fight the high elves would probably be considered treason by all.

AxiosXiphos · January 6

Selakah said:
The best part about Dark Elf society is that the Dark Elves themselves don't engage in any type of labor. All labor, including construction, is done by slaves. Their entire society is predicated on "Dark Elves are superior and don't engage in menial labor, let's go abduct people and force them to build things for us".

The idea that a society like that could last for more than 6 months without collapsing is ridiculous.

You've got some reading to do...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta

sykall · January 6

Warhammer is often over the top and nonsensical. But the DE society takes the crown of nonesense as they are too over the top with being evil for the lulz.
I often accuse the Warriors of Chaos of being incapable of making a coffee without human sacrifice. But the DE appear to be unable to enter the kitchen without smearing blood on the walls.

In my opinion they are one of the worst designed societies GWs came up with, especially as they focus all their attention on the khainite aspects of the DE with murder and more murder.
If GWs would tone their murderspree down a notch and maybe model them closer to real slave-driven countries and econmies, e.g. Sparta. They treated their slaves so badly and had so many, that each full citizien of Sparta had to be a good soldier, just to beat back the inevatable slave uprising.

DE do not need to be that over the top to be an evil counterpart to the other elven factions. Especially as the DE have no identity outside of murder-kill. Other aspects are mentioned here and there, e.g. that they are excellent sailors, pirates and slave holders, but these aspects severly underdeveloped in comparision to khaines supermurdering.

Heck their are a lot of other elven gods who are suppousedly worshipped by the DE but they do not even play the second or third fiddle, as Khaine is oh so prominent. And he isn't even the best patron for the DE. Other gods would fit the DE even better than Khaine, e.g. Ereth Khial the elven underworld goddes, who holds so much of a grudge against Asuryan for an supposed betrayl, that she turns the regular elven afterlife into a hell. In this felt betrayl and torturious vengance she mirrors the history and self-perspective of the DE.
Not to mention that the DE lack waystones or athel lorens weave and thus are naked when entering the afterlife. So appeasing the elven underworld goddess would bethe sensible thing to do in their position.

Fazit: The DE should be obviously cruel and evil, but they should have at least something of an identity besides that.

veresh1989 · January 6

Red_Dox said:
Thex exist, because the writers of partly bad lore wills it and the whole background is more focused on battles then how their society works. I mean the logistics to all those huge battles is madness itself. And when huge armies walk from one point of the map like thousand of miles to their destination, the questions how they the keep up if not Undead are always ignored.

It gets particulary bad during "The (horrible) Endtimes" were it really is laughable bad. Example elves: They are that "dying race" for like 2000 years and sinc ethen wrested more or les in basic civil war with each other, while also fighting with the rest of the world for various reasons.
OK, Endtiems start: Naggaroth is crushed under bootheel of invading Warriors of Chaos who basically burn every city down and slaughter at least half of teh DE population.
At the same time, Ulthuan is burned down by massive Daemons of Chaos invasions, who burn half the island to the ground and slaughter probably at least half the population before the HE can banish them back.
Now, the Dark Elves, unable to hold their territory gather everything they can and make a mass evacuation towards Ulthuan. Malekiths goal: This time he will retake the island, or his whole race will die trying since they can't go back anywhere. So DE and HE now go at each others throat again and we have like a few years of war around the island, with plenty of backstabbing and hundred of thousands die. The Woodelves also chime in on both sides, so more elves to die. They literally fight until the island is destroyed, and the surviving elves, lets say at least half survived that on both sides, makes "peace" and retreats to Athel Loren.
One would think that two races who probably now both lost around 75% of their poupulation as well as both their whole civilisations, would be already on the end of the rope. But nope, we are just at half time baby. Three more Endtimes campaign books coming and the "united" elves have still to fight everywhere in the Old World. HOW? That is a question we do not ask at GW HQ.

------Red Dox

I agree. I was also surprised that Malekith ordered to poison all water sources and burn all cities. In fact, the dark elves felt fine and could continue to fight against chaos. But the plot nonsense, made everyone do crazy things that contradict the logic of the whole story. And I'm sure that most of the dark elf lords would not have destroyed their cities without the possibility of returning to them. Malekith didn’t have that much power, especially at such a difficult time. Again, half of his nation went to Tyrion. I hope the end times are erased from the canon.

AxiosXiphos · January 6

sykall said:
Warhammer is often over the top and nonsensical. But the DE society takes the crown of nonesense as they are too over the top with being evil for the lulz.
I often accuse the Warriors of Chaos of being incapable of making a coffee without human sacrifice. But the DE appear to be unable to enter the kitchen without smearing blood on the walls.

In my opinion they are one of the worst designed societies GWs came up with, especially as they focus all their attention on the khainite aspects of the DE with murder and more murder.
If GWs would tone their murderspree down a notch and maybe model them closer to real slave-driven countries and econmies, e.g. Sparta. They treated their slaves so badly and had so many, that each full citizien of Sparta had to be a good soldier, just to beat back the inevatable slave uprising.

DE do not need to be that over the top to be an evil counterpart to the other elven factions. Especially as the DE have no identity outside of murder-kill. Other aspects are mentioned here and there, e.g. that they are excellent sailors, pirates and slave holders, but these aspects severly underdeveloped in comparision to khaines supermurdering.

Heck their are a lot of other elven gods who are suppousedly worshipped by the DE but they do not even play the second or third fiddle, as Khaine is oh so prominent. And he isn't even the best patron for the DE. Other gods would fit the DE even better than Khaine, e.g. Ereth Khial the elven underworld goddes, who holds so much of a grudge against Asuryan for an supposed betrayl, that she turns the regular elven afterlife into a hell. In this felt betrayl and torturious vengance she mirrors the history and self-perspective of the DE.
Not to mention that the DE lack waystones or athel lorens weave and thus are naked when entering the afterlife. So appeasing the elven underworld goddess would bethe sensible thing to do in their position.

Fazit: The DE should be obviously cruel and evil, but they should have at least something of an identity besides that.

Again you say this but DE were very clearly inspired by the very real Spartans - a Martial society whose entire personality is; We are strong - the slaves are weak. Spartans fight, slaves work.

I actually think the DE are genius - because they are such an anathema to what we consider is possible today. As you say - they are unbelievably evil. Yet this culture actually did exist - almost spot on to how they are portrayed. Spartans did torture, rape and murder thousands. Spartan did sacrifice humans to their gods. Spartans did have a 'Death Night' were they declared war on the slaves to slaughter them. They were truly horrible people; even beyond all imagining.

Just like the Spartans - all DE's are warriors of some kind. There is no such thing as a civilian dark elf; all enjoy raiding, war and killing as much as the rest.

Pr4vda · January 6

I also think that all what happens in the WH world is exagerated.

For instance, yes, the empire have foes everywhere inside their borders and above. But such massive attacks are quite rare, and even ambushes or small clashes between the count / with the GS / BM etc. might happen less than what is described in their army book.

I think this is more to give an atmosphere.

The same happens for every race, to give their own atmosphere.

Furthermore, even if elves and dwarfs are a dying race, you must remember that they were, a long tilme ago, very very numerous. And even if their birth rate might be low today, they should probably still have some big numbers of people. Just far less than what they had.

Take the Japanese or South Koreans. Their birth rate is one (if not) the lowest of the world, but still, they have quite a huge population.

sykall · January 6

AxiosXiphos said:

Selakah said:
The best part about Dark Elf society is that the Dark Elves themselves don't engage in any type of labor. All labor, including construction, is done by slaves. Their entire society is predicated on "Dark Elves are superior and don't engage in menial labor, let's go abduct people and force them to build things for us".

The idea that a society like that could last for more than 6 months without collapsing is ridiculous.
You've got some reading to do...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta

To be fair sparta was mostly a paper tiger amongst the greek polis. It mostly survived and had some successes due to a combination of dumb luck and everyone else believing spartas propaganda of being super awesome soldiers.

In the end it ended up as a tourist attraction for romans, not even important enough to be conquered.

AxiosXiphos · January 6

sykall said:

AxiosXiphos said:

Selakah said:
The best part about Dark Elf society is that the Dark Elves themselves don't engage in any type of labor. All labor, including construction, is done by slaves. Their entire society is predicated on "Dark Elves are superior and don't engage in menial labor, let's go abduct people and force them to build things for us".

The idea that a society like that could last for more than 6 months without collapsing is ridiculous.
You've got some reading to do...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta
To be fair sparta was mostly a paper tiger amongst the greek polis. It mostly survived and had some successes due to a combination of dumb luck and everyone else believing spartas propaganda of being super awesome soldiers.

In the end it ended up as a tourist attraction for romans, not even important enough to be conquered.

I mean it did win the peloponnesian war; basically the world war of its era.

Though I've always had a soft spot for Ancient Athens - they were just farmers, merchants, blacksmiths. Yet they took up arms and fought against warriors who literally trained all their lives to be impossible super soldiers; and even won some major engagements.

JungleElf · January 6

We could always handwave some bits of the armybooks as a bit too overboard and un-nuanced.

sykall · January 6

AxiosXiphos said:

sykall said:

AxiosXiphos said:

Selakah said:
The best part about Dark Elf society is that the Dark Elves themselves don't engage in any type of labor. All labor, including construction, is done by slaves. Their entire society is predicated on "Dark Elves are superior and don't engage in menial labor, let's go abduct people and force them to build things for us".

The idea that a society like that could last for more than 6 months without collapsing is ridiculous.
You've got some reading to do...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta
To be fair sparta was mostly a paper tiger amongst the greek polis. It mostly survived and had some successes due to a combination of dumb luck and everyone else believing spartas propaganda of being super awesome soldiers.

In the end it ended up as a tourist attraction for romans, not even important enough to be conquered.
I mean it did win the peloponnesian war; basically the world war of its era.

Though I've always had a soft spot for Ancient Athens - they were just farmers, merchants, blacksmiths. Yet they took up arms and fought against warriors who literally trained all their lives to be impossible super soldiers; and even won some major engagements.

Yes they won, but mostly due to athens political infighting, a plague that killed a quarter of athens population and a failed attempt of athens to conquer syracuse IIRC. And athens quickly recovered and became powerful once more, but sparta became obscure very quickly in later years.

And around that time sparta was still allied with corinth and thebes.
It alone never had the man power to fight any wars by itselves.

Sparta had less them 8.000 citiziens in the best of times. Sure thats 8.000 soldiers on paper but most of them were occupied in sparta. Because the helots (state slaves who made up ca. 70-80% of the pop) were always waiting to rebell against their overlords. So any foreign campaign had to be a short affair.

Each loss of Spartan life was a small catastrophy, as the number if citiziens dwindled in a downward spiral in later years. Loosing as much as a hundred men in battle was a very heavy blow for Sparta of which it would take lomg to recover. Thats why they mostly evaded head on battles, despite their reputation.

And whilst their propaganda had a great effect, it was also greatly exegerrated. Sparta had on average better soldiers due to them being better trained and equipt. But only on an average scale.
Elite soldiers of other polis could go toe to toe with spartans and regularily beat them. E.g. one theben commander sent all his best soldiers to face the elite of sparta. They beat them and the rest of spartas army fleed.

So the only think sparta was really competent in, was making other people believe they were really competent.

Edit: now that I wrote it down... do not model the DE after the Spartans. Better take rome or the southern united states or other more competent slaving nations.

TeNoSkill · January 6

Yeah, Dark Elfs would probably also crumble if they were properly invaded.

Mr_Finley7 · January 6

The thing that gets me is the description of constant back stabbing and internal murder. If all you have to do to take someone’s job is kill them, your society is going to collapse on itself until you’re reduced to scattered tribal bands.

You can have a survival of the fittest style of militarized society without portraying them as also killing each other day in and day out.

TeNoSkill · January 6

Mr_Finley7 said:
The thing that gets me is the description of constant back stabbing and internal murder. If all you have to do to take someone’s job is kill them, your society is going to collapse on itself until you’re reduced to scattered tribal bands.

You can have a survival of the fittest style of militarized society without portraying them as also killing each other day in and day out.

Were is this stated that Dark Elves kill each other all the time?

Mr_Finley7 · January 6

TeNoSkill said:

Mr_Finley7 said:
The thing that gets me is the description of constant back stabbing and internal murder. If all you have to do to take someone’s job is kill them, your society is going to collapse on itself until you’re reduced to scattered tribal bands.

You can have a survival of the fittest style of militarized society without portraying them as also killing each other day in and day out.
Were is this stated that Dark Elves kill each other all the time?

I can’t remember any specific passages, but the army books were pretty clear about DE of any significant status having to constantly beware of and engage in backstabbing in order to survive. Didn’t Malus kill his father to take over Hag Graef?

Plus I believe there were mentions of small scale clashes between the noble houses, although I’m less sure about that one.

sykall · January 6

Pr4vda said:
I also think that all what happens in the WH world is exagerated.

For instance, yes, the empire have foes everywhere inside their borders and above. But such massive attacks are quite rare, and even ambushes or small clashes between the count / with the GS / BM etc. might happen less than what is described in their army book.

I think this is more to give an atmosphere.

The same happens for every race, to give their own atmosphere.

Furthermore, even if elves and dwarfs are a dying race, you must remember that they were, a long tilme ago, very very numerous. And even if their birth rate might be low today, they should probably still have some big numbers of people. Just far less than what they had.

Take the Japanese or South Koreans. Their birth rate is one (if not) the lowest of the world, but still, they have quite a huge population.

To the last part, yes japan and korea still have a huge population but they do not live in an medival/rennaissance period nor are they loosing huge numbers of citiziens due to raids, wars and internal backstabbing.

Not to mention that the DE started as exiled refugees, so their numbers could not have been that large in the beginning.

This dying race trope really makes no semse for dwarfs and elves, which is why the fertility rates of those species bother me oh so much. Especially as GWs openly admits that their are always so many elves as are needed for the plot.

Then why even bother with making them dying races in the first place?

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