Three sisters, feasible fluff?

[ChaplainCharlie]

So, with the new Allies rules in, I am tempted to adding some Dark Eldar to my Eldar force. Having a Farseer orchestrating my craftworlders, I thought of having either a female Archon or other DE HQ be the sister of my (also female) Seer, by having gone down the path of the Outcast and eventually wound up in Commorragh. And then it occurred to me that I could have a third sister who by some quirck of fate became a Shadowseer. This would give me three very fluffy characters on the battlefield and represent all three (currently) playable non-FW Eldar factions (ie. Corsairs and Exodites notwithstanding).

The thing is, would it be possible for a Craftworld eldar to become a dark eldar or a harlequin at all? Or do they have to be born into those sects?

[All Cing Eye]

The thing is, would it be possible for a Craftworld eldar to become a dark eldar or a harlequin at all? Or do they have to be born into those sects?

It is possible for a Craftworld Eldar to become a Dark Eldar, it happens to some of the Corsairs that get a little to carried away from time to time.

Since Harlequins represent all Eldar, I would guess that any Eldar (DE, CWE, Corsair, Exodite) could become a Harlequin.

[TheDoctor]

Yes to all of your points.

From my understanding of the Harlequins, any Eldar can join them, if they feel the call of the Laughing God. Then they do that ritual that protects their souls from Slaanesh, and the Harlequin troupe has a new member.

[Shamana]

It can work as far as I know. Craftworld outcasts and corsairs may end up as Comorrites, and harlequins recruit from all Eldar groups. Go for it.

[Idaan]

Definitely. And you may want to play up the mythological aspects of these three sisters, seeing how the triad of the Maiden Goddess Lileath, Mother Goddess Isha and the Crone Goddess Morai-heg is pretty significant in Eldar mythology. Maybe these sisters were destined to accomplish great deeds and each went about it in a different way? Or maybe the DE sister tried to rebel against her fate?

An obvious match for the Farseer would be Morai-heg, as a patron of knowledge and foresight. You might want to concentrate on the darker side of Isha as a fertility goddess, by making the DE a powerful macchiavellian matron of a Kabal, who chooses her lover for a year and then ritually murders him (like the Stag King of the celtic mythology). No idea about Lileath, as the Harlequins serve only Cegorach and there's no myth connecting the two - you could always invent one though.

[ChaplainCharlie]

Well my idea was that of the three siblings, one went down the path of the Seer right from the get-go, because her psychic powers of precognition were so strong even as a latent psyker without training, that the visions of impending doom were driving her insane. So to save herself from these visions, she became a Seer. She became an expert psyker, but the vision of doom never left her. She controlled them and could lead her Craftworld to safety because of this, but constant reminders of everyone's doom had a severe toll on her and she became lonely and isolated. Even more so than other seers. When her sister turned rogue, she had sensed it and rushed to intervene, but her vision failed her and she was impaired from reaching her sister in time, only arriving on the scene just as her foot disappeared through the WebWay portal...

Meanwhile, another of the sisters, impatient and arrogant, tried her hand on many of the different paths, but never found them fufilling. Being talented in many ways, she never seemed to reach her full potential. Finally going on a binge of emotions, she found that war was one place where she could experience the emotional release she craved and hence she joined the Howling Banshees. Finding war to her liking, she signed up for every possible engagement and ritual fight she could muster and although the concerns of her friends and siblings were that she would become an Exarch, her motives were much darker.
Sensing this, the Seer tried to intervene, but was too late. Her sister betrayed her own aspect on a mission and caused the deaths of her sisters-in-arms with her reckless behaviour. Instead of returning to the Craftworld and face punishment, she joined the Rangers and took upon her the Path of the Outcast and finally arriving at Commorragh and settling in after finding the Dark Kin much to her liking. Though at first despised and hunted, she proved herself to be a warrior of skill and cunning, her brutality and cold-hearted reprisals on murder attempts earning her a place in one of the Kabals and even the rank of Trueborn in testament of being above the clone-vat grown masses of Commorragh. Being an outsider, the Kabal's Archon made her into his bodyguard, trusting her to be outside local back-stabbery. Though this was true, she had her own agenda and lust for power that the Archon failed to see, veiled as it was behind her luscious exterior and careful artistry. She assassinated the Archon and asumed her place as head of the Kabal, reaching a place of power only few non-Dark Eldar had managed.

The third sister, a calm and gentle spirit, though also timid, had used her time to explore the various aspects in detail. But though she showed proudly her finest works of art, her closets were filled with lesser works, hidden away in fear of anyone finding them and passing mocking judgement on her. When she received news of her sister abandoning the craftworld after causing the deaths of several Eldar, she could not face the judgements of others on her family and she ran into the webway. Having wandered far, she came to rest in some forgotten corner of the Webway and calmed down. Far from home, from friends, utterly lost in the Webway and destined to starve to death all because she could not face her fears of loosing face she could not stop but feel an absurd spark of irony in it all. Her fears of humiliation had now driven her to death and being lost in the webway meant her spirit stones would most likely never reach her craftworld again. Ripping them out of her suit and discarding them, she ritually consigned her soul to She Who Thirsts. She would not be afraid any longer...

And that was when the Harlequins found her.

Model-wise, I have a female Farseer on a jetbike, the basic Shadowseer (which has no face as the sister was afraid of loosing it) and a Lhamaean with a classic Banshee power sword, because let's face it, that model is absolutely beautiful!

The farseer is named Cyrene, though I am lacking a surname.
Both the ex-HowlingBanshee current Dark Eldar Archon and the Shadowseer lack names. Any suitably Eldarish names anywhere that I could choose from?

[Monospot]

I see no problems with that.

In fact, I miss the "triplet" mythology that Eldar used to have in Adeptus Titanicus (1st edition Epic) - Phantom Titans had triplets as steersmen. Be nice to see that mythology expanded on in your list.

[Chem-Dog]

While I don't have a problem with the idea in general, there are a couple of bits that don't ring true for me.

For me Dark Eldar is the natural setting of the species, it takes an awful lot of discipline to be a Craftworlder and perhaps it might fit better if that sister had followed the path of the Ranger first and then been unsatisfied with the more rigid structure of Craftworld living upon her return, struggled with the Path and eventually abandoned it in favour of running with Corsairs and eventually falling in with "The Comorragh lot".

The other bit is the third sister, ritually consigning oneself to Slaanesh just sounds wrong (unless she is, in fact, a Solitaire) it's one thing to kill yourself over a keenly felt shame, another thing entirely to hurl yourself into eternal torture. I'm not sure how one goes about joining the Harlequins but deliberately seeking them out to join them and leave behind both the name and her disgrace behind sounds, perhaps a bit more in keeping. Especially if she too was less than at home with the Path.

I'm no Expert on the Eldar, so don't take what I've said as gospel, but those bits stood out in what's otherwise a lovely bit of storytelling.

Though I would never encourage the use of his stuff as justification for anything in the setting (and out of consideration for the Eldar amongst us, I will not speak his name ) a certain Deathwatch book does have a rather sinister plot that is cooked up between Eldrad and Lelith Hesperax. There is also the story of the Planetary governor who collected Spirit Stones, The Craftworld lot had a word with the Harlequins who, in turn, had a natter with the Dark Kin and Mr Planetary Governor consequently found himself in several lifetimes worth of hurt, so the links between the three aren't entirely unheard of.

[ChaplainCharlie]

Heh, I don't call myself an Eldar specialist either (why would I be asking for help if I were, eh?) but I do recall (and from what I understand from the codex) is that Harlequins do not have Spirit Stones. They have no need for them, because Cegorach protects them and snatches their souls away form Slaanesh before She can get to them. Well, all Harlequins except the Solitaire. Model-wise this seems to be true, because all Eldar models have a large gemstone above their breast, even the Farseers, though theirs is embedded into the Rune Armor. However, Harlequins do not. Do they have a gemstone? Yes, but that's, as far as I can tell, a part of the Flip Belt and not a Spirit Stone. Either way, they would not have any use for Spirit Stones, because they don't have any place where to release the souls to. No Infinity Circuit or World Spirit.

Thus I thought it befitting that when an Eldar renounces her fears for She Who Thirsts and discards the restraining safety of eternal twilight in the Infinity Circuit for a future that could end up with her very soul devoured and destroyed, she would be ready to become a Harlequin. At least in some form, I think, Harlequins were posessed by demons and then banished them (although this seems to be a quite common feat of passage in the 40k world). Could just be the Solitaire, though or that I am completely wrong. Anyway, I found it symbolical that when she casts aside her Spirit Stones, she discards the last visible link to her family, Craftworld and past.

Not saying your points were in any way wrong, just opening up why I thought her decisions the way I did.

As for our fallen sister, that could work, having her become a Corsair, though I will have her be an Ex-banshee, because I like adding old 3rd Ed stuff to new models. Gives them a sense of age in the game universe, IMO. Perhaps she got hooked up on war whilst touring with the Banshees, but got impatient for slaughter as her War Mask called her constantly and as the Path could not sate her lust of battle, she found it elsewhere, in the ranks of the Pirate Corsairs... That could work quite well. And in the end she lost it and went overboard even for Corsair standards, earning her a permanent exile from the Craftworld.

Oh and I've read said Go-To book and it felt a bit iffy, but it is true that the Dark Kin seem to be able to move in and out of Craftworlds pretty much at will, though perhaps risking life and limb in the process, but still. Like someone said, the Dark Eldar are like the prodigle son of the Eldar family. You don't talk much about them and you really hate it when they barge in unannounced, but you still tolerate them enough to call them over for Christmas dinner, even though they'll probably be drunk, again. Just because they're family...