Exarchs are... Liches!

[Poseidal]

Could this angle partially consolidate the 'absorbed by the suit' and the helmetless exarchs in a way?

If you think about it, the Exarch is the name of the original suit, and the gathering of all of the souls of the Eldar who took the mantle in the soulgem of the suit.

The body inside is just a meat puppet, motorised by the Eldar in the stone. Older Exarchs (like the Phoenix Lords) can motorise an absorbed or long gone body in effect, or the suit on it's own as it has enough energy just within the matrix of the suit.

When one becomes an Exarch, as the mantle and suit is taken the soul joins all the others in the suit/stone; the body is no longer of consequence as the Eldar doesn't reside there anymore, but has joined the others in the gem. A 'Younger' Exarch can show the face of the old body (which is just used for the motor functions) while the Exarch himself is the gem.

[Scalebug]

Hasn't the whole "Exarchs are absorbed by their suits" been exaggerated by fans?

Yes, the Phoenix Lords "are" their suits (as established by the short fluff piece on how the dying Karandras appears at a Striking Scorpion Shrine, and the Exarch on call at the time finds that there is nothing but twinkling lights inside the armour, and the takes it on and essentially becomes the new host for the Phoenix Lord), but where is it said Exarchs in general follow the same pattern?

They wear fancier armour, with the spirit stones of previous wearers worked into them, and the souls of their precursors influences and aids them, so much that their individual personality gets lost and essentialy becomes the sum of all previous bearers, but they are still flesh and blood Eldar inside the armour.

[Hellebore]

Hasn't the whole "Exarchs are absorbed by their suits" been exaggerated by fans?

Yes, the Phoenix Lords "are" their suits (as established by the short fluff piece on how the dying Karandras appears at a Striking Scorpion Shrine, and the Exarch on call at the time finds that there is nothing but twinkling lights inside the armour, and the takes it on and essentially becomes the new host for the Phoenix Lord), but where is it said Exarchs in general follow the same pattern?

They wear fancier armour, with the spirit stones of previous wearers worked into them, and the souls of their precursors influences and aids them, so much that their individual personality gets lost and essentialy becomes the sum of all previous bearers, but they are still flesh and blood Eldar inside the armour.

From the 2nd ed eldar codex:

Once put on the suit is never removed and becomes a permanent part of the Eldar, its psycho-plastic form meshing with his tissues. If slain the warrior's costume will be found to be empty, the body having long since been consumed within the suit itself. Exarch suits are studded with the spirit stones of all the eldar who have ever worn the suit. Their spirits continue to circulate through the psycho-supportive environment of the suit, like a miniature version of the infinity circuit of the craftworld. It is the presence of this spirit-pool of raw psychic energy that gives the suit and warrior (for the two are indistinguishable) their special warrior powers.

Once he has become an Exarch a warrior is known by the ancient name associated with his armoured suit. The warrior's personality flows into the spirit pool of the suit and is cojoined with the personalities of all the other eldar who have ever worn it. Their lives and experiences meld with his own, and his named is added to the long list that constitutes the suit's full title. As a rule it is the first Exarch whose name alone denotes the warrior within, and whose personality remains strongest within the spirit-pool. Thus an aspect warrior who becomes an exarch is reborn an ancient warrior hero. His spirit breaths life into the suit once more, and the exarch lives again, empowered by the reinvigorated spirit pool.

The 4th ed eldar codex quotes much of the 2nd ed one, even going so far as to copy the last sentence of the above paragraph verbatim:

It is the presence of this spirit-pool of raw psychic energy that gives the suit and warrior (for the two are indistinguishable) their special warrior powers.

A few of the most ancient exarchs have no shrines, for they call no craftworld home. [...] These exarchs are known as phoenix lords and they are great heroes of the eldar race. [...] No-one knows exactly how many phoenix lords there are [...] Some of the phoenix lords are as old as the Fall. [...] Whatever their past they are the most fearsome of all Exarchs, and the most powerful warriors of all the Eldar.

This shows that not only are phoenix lords Exarchs, but that there are an unknown number, they are all ancient, but only SOME are as old as the fall.


A phoenix lord is therefore just a particularly old and powerful exarch.

Hellebore

[Scalebug]

Allright, motion withdrawn...

[TheLaughingGod]

I like the idea. It would very much make sense. there's kind of a phylactery thing going on anyways with the waystones and the wraithguard and wraithlords do double duty as undead and war machines.

[chromedog]

The key phrase in hellebore's post of the quote is "If SLAIN, the warrior's costume will be found to be empty.". Nowhere does it specify that once donned, the suit immediately absorbs the warrior.

[Hellebore]

Yes, I believe the reconciliation of the two is that the body is absorbed by the suit over time. As you become an exarch you give up your mortal being in pursuit of the perfection of your art. Your body withers away into nothing.

Hellebore

[Lord-Caerolion]

Well, otherwise we wouldn't be able to have the helmetless Exarchs we've been shown in both models and the design sketches of Jes. Even when helmetless, they still wear war-paint though.

[sgtspiff]

Though as written in Path of the Warrior (if I recall right). The eldar actually becomes an exarch in mind before he puts on the armour. After the suit is put on the exarch never leaves his shrine except for war (or becoming so old that he/she becomes a phoenix lord).

[Poseidal]

It's sort of two stage. When Korlandril becomes mentally an Exarch, he's still the same person as before but is lost in the path.

When he puts on the armour, Korlandril is gone. The spirit Korlandril joins with the others, who collectively is the entity that is the Exarch. His body is in effect a meat puppet controlled by this soul-stone with the suit's identity, and has the combined power of Korlandril and those who were there before him.

The location of his 'soul' is in the stone and through the suit (if it works as a matrix) and not his body.

[FarseerMatt]

My personal interpretation of it is that the exarch's mind meshes with the souls in the suit more and more over time; he still has an independent physical body, but he gradually becomes less and less inclined to take the suit off as it feels like losing a part of his mind. Perhaps after many centuries he never takes it off at all and is absorbed by the suit, but in the meantime it explains how an exarch is capable of stripping off for the Young King ritual, and how the shrine can continue if its exarch is sacrificed (most of the spirits remain in the discarded suit).

[Poseidal]

I got the impression that in one chapter he was Korlandril and the next chapter he wasn't, though I may need to recheck the book as it was a while ago I read it.

[FarseerMatt]

When I said my interpretation of it, "it" was the exarch process in general (sorry, got ninja'd by several posts that made it look like I was talking about PotW specifically). It's an opinion I formed before reading PotW, so obviously my interpretation will differ a bit from Gav's.

Perhaps you might reconcile the two by saying that PotW showed an unusually fast "exarchification" () process in all respects, with the mind-melding being just as atypically rapid as Korlandril becoming lost on the path.

[Poseidal]

I think the main point to consider is they say the bearers spirit merges with the ones on the suit, implying it goes into the stone. I don't know how fast that could be though, but it would happen before the body starts being absorbed.

[sgtspiff]

I think the main point to consider is they say the bearers spirit merges with the ones on the suit, implying it goes into the stone. I don't know how fast that could be though, but it would happen before the body starts being absorbed.

So easily said an exarch armour without a helmet would surely not waste the head of the bearer. Which probably would mean that such an exarch armour would not dissolve the exarch body in the same way as fully closed armours would (cause if no body hard to make the head stay in place).

[tublin601]

I think it's safe to say that the source material for this debate is multiple books and WD articles, written by many different people, across 20 years of game development. It would be something on the level of ridiculous to expect each and every word spoken or written about the Exarchs to mesh perfectly. Suffice it to say that Eldar are xenos. Their bodies and souls don't work the same as ours. In fact, I would go so far as to say that we CAN'T understand how their body and soul work, simply because we are human and we look at everything through a human lens.

[AndrewGPaul]

My reading has always been that the continuing Exarch identity in the suit's soulstone is the sum total of all the wearers. This would make it critically different to a liche, because the Exarch's personality will be altered with each new wearer. Older Exarch suits will have more stable personalities, because adding one new soul to a hundred existing ones will have less of an overall effect than adding one to ten.

[Poseidal]

Well, not literally the same as a classic Lich, but a sort of parallel since their soul is no longer placed in their body but in the soul stone; they are a special case where it's several souls merging as one rather than a single one.

[Sai-Lauren]

Yes, I believe the reconciliation of the two is that the body is absorbed by the suit over time. As you become an exarch you give up your mortal being in pursuit of the perfection of your art. Your body withers away into nothing.

Hellebore

I guess only recently trapped exarchs can get chosen as the Young King then - as they are naked when the ceremony for awakening the Avatar takes place. Not to mention that there have been times in the fluff where Exarchs are depicted out of their armour and dressed more normally.

And empty suits holding the psyches of great warriors, sounds a little like the Thousand Sons.

What about an inversion of that idea? They're always flesh, and can remove the suit in times of peace (although they tend to stay in or near their aspect temple, partly to train ther warriors, partly to stay away from polite Eldar society), but when the exarch is killed, their soul is absorbed into the suit to join the gestalt conciousness, but the process utterly consumes the flesh, so that the suit is empty when picked up?

[FlashGordon]

After reading "Path of the Warrior(by Gav Thorpe)" im mostly wondering how "normal" Eldar (not having their "warfaces") cope with battle and of course Wraithconstructs.
:/