how does an entire craftworld of tasty souls survive in the Eye?

[Athlan na Dyr]

So Altansar is pulled into the warp and... then it comes back out a few thousand years later. We see they still have crappy guardians, like anyone else, because that horrible magenta colorscheme shows up in the 4e codex.

Did they 'covertly' get sucked into the Eye and no chaos marines noticed? None of the 4 gods noticed? No demons casually noticed?
We got fluff of a single keeper of secrets annihilating a craftworld. We got fluff single marine chapters destroying craftworlds. We got fluff of tyranid swarms accidentally bumping into craftworlds and starting a fight...

So how the heck did Altansar not get eaten by an army of demons immediately?

Question: Are you sure they didn't?
Pretty much every Eldar bar those from Altansar think they're dodgy. Personally I agree with them.

GW were the ones suggesting Craftworlds couldn't be invaded: they still say the last invasion attempt ended in disaster. Craftworld forces also contain many titans, and they can do warfare with many of them and be able to have them plotted by birth triplets, stating triplets are a rarity; this implies that the population pool is large enough to provide sufficient pilots for these war machines.

The Iyanden board in doom of the Eldar had domes containing seas and continents with mountain ranges. The picture of inside a Craftworld in the 5th rulebook looked like a never ending metropolis.

^what he said. Not to mention Imperial Policy is generally 'don't attack Eldar'

[Shadey]

Was any clarification on size and population ever done, though? As far as I know, there are no detailed explanations of craftworld demographics, at least nothing official from GW. I do not know what is the average population for a major craftworld - a million Eldar? Fifty million? 2-3 Billion? Is a minor one on average a third of that? A tenth? A hundredth? Considering the human, orc, tyrannid or even necron numbers any of these would be a drop in the bucket compared to the other factions, but the difference is huge; especially if the craftworld is expecting an invasion and is undergoing near-full mobilization.

As for size, the only details I am aware of is that that BFG made them planetoid to planet-sized. That is a lot of space, especially if the interior of the craftworld is also populated.

The HH Fulgrim novel had the Ulthwe craftworld at somewhere between 9 and 14km (tbh I can't be bothered thumbing through to find the reference). It was intentionally hazy due to funky Eldar ECM which caused the size and position to waver. I was a little disappointed however I rationalized it that that ECM also made the craftworld appear about 10% of it's true size on the Imperial scopes.

I have little evidence for the following, it mainly being wishful thinking and extrapolation. I was thinking along the lines of 50 - 300km long but for this I am going to cherry pick 150. The basic shape would be roughly the bottom half of an egg perhaps a little flattened with fins and wings, dorsal and ventral spines and projections and a tail section dozens of kilometres long. The top half would be a dome within which are towers up to maybe 15km in height. The living space would protrude bellow the dome giving the living area a total depth of some 20 - 25km. This would initially create a rather high population density however there are two things that could effect that. First, I see open areas, parks, groves etc being quite common. The other being the personal Eldar living space. I could see this going either way. My inclination is that Eldar like their privacy and have a decent amount of personal space but equally, depending on how challenging an engineering feat these craftworlds are, most Eldar may have sacrificed this liberty. I prefer the former and am going to assume that. While those two factors would lower it, I think final population density would still be very high, maybe 3x or more that of a place like Hong Kong which is very crowded.

So take a craftworld with a doom roughly 90km long for a total area of about 3200km2. I just looked up some population density figures and the highest one is Macau, China at just under 20k per km2. They don't have anything approaching 25km high in living area but lets assume a very conservative estimate for the craftworld at double that of Macau (40k), no pun intended. This gives us a final figure of 128 million space Elves on this rather large example of a craftworld. This is in living area and likely infrastructure and life support capabilities may lower than number possibly significantly, but then that is part of why I assumed a mere double that of Macau despite significantly more vertical space.

I should reiterate, this entire thing has next to no fluff justification I have seen, short of that BFG reference.

Slightly more official, to assume a 9km long living area as (roughly) seen in Fulgrim, that still leaves us with over 5 million Eldar. I would be fairly confident in suggesting that as a lower end estimate.

[Poseidal]

Fulgrim's estimate is probably more like 1%, and the Craftworld had grown since then. The length of a Craftworld is going to be thousands of kilometres, not a hundred.

An earlier source than BFG gave moon sized as an estimate IIRC.

[Athlan na Dyr]

The HH Fulgrim novel had the Ulthwe craftworld at somewhere between 9 and 14km (tbh I can't be bothered thumbing through to find the reference). It was intentionally hazy due to funky Eldar ECM which caused the size and position to waver. I was a little disappointed however I rationalized it that that ECM also made the craftworld appear about 10% of it's true size on the Imperial scopes.

I have little evidence for the following, it mainly being wishful thinking and extrapolation. I was thinking along the lines of 50 - 300km long but for this I am going to cherry pick 150. The basic shape would be roughly the bottom half of an egg perhaps a little flattened with fins and wings, dorsal and ventral spines and projections and a tail section dozens of kilometres long. The top half would be a dome within which are towers up to maybe 15km in height. The living space would protrude bellow the dome giving the living area a total depth of some 20 - 25km. This would initially create a rather high population density however there are two things that could effect that. First, I see open areas, parks, groves etc being quite common. The other being the personal Eldar living space. I could see this going either way. My inclination is that Eldar like their privacy and have a decent amount of personal space but equally, depending on how challenging an engineering feat these craftworlds are, most Eldar may have sacrificed this liberty. I prefer the former and am going to assume that. While those two factors would lower it, I think final population density would still be very high, maybe 3x or more that of a place like Hong Kong which is very crowded.

So take a craftworld with a doom roughly 90km long for a total area of about 3200km2. I just looked up some population density figures and the highest one is Macau, China at just under 20k per km2. They don't have anything approaching 25km high in living area but lets assume a very conservative estimate for the craftworld at double that of Macau (40k), no pun intended. This gives us a final figure of 128 million space Elves on this rather large example of a craftworld. This is in living area and likely infrastructure and life support capabilities may lower than number possibly significantly, but then that is part of why I assumed a mere double that of Macau despite significantly more vertical space.

I should reiterate, this entire thing has next to no fluff justification I have seen, short of that BFG reference.

Slightly more official, to assume a 9km long living area as (roughly) seen in Fulgrim, that still leaves us with over 5 million Eldar. I would be fairly confident in suggesting that as a lower end estimate.

Yeah I agree, 9 to 14 km is waaaaay to small. The craftworlds are said to dwarf the Dragonships that make port, and the dragonships are roughly of a size with an Imperial Battleship. Seeing as an Imperial Battleship is between 6 and 8 km long...
Furthermore, their growth in volume since the Fall is between 10 and 100 times that of the original (from Lexicanum).
So, somewhere in the region of 140-1400 km seems reasonable. I'd put it in the upper region (so 900+), though that is the Eldar fan in me.
However, bearing in mind the Dome structure of the Craftworlds and this picture of such a dome , would seem to agree with the upper limit.

So even your large craftworld might be a conservative estimate. As an Eldar fan, I'm fine with this
Cheers for the population size analysis. Interesting reading.

[Shadey]

I didn't know they grew, that's cool. Though could the reproduction rates of the Eldar keep up? Are they even multiplying?

At that size you could easily have the population of Earth in half a dozen of them. At those numbers makes me think the whole 'we're a dying race thing' is just some attention getting victimization..

[Rockerfella]

Indeed.

as I remember, in the Novel 'fulgrim', when Ulthwe decides to reveal itself to the emperors children, the command bridge at first thought it was a 'moon'.

That gives some idea of an average Craftworld size.

EDIT- Hmmmm. After reading some of the earlier posts, maybe I've confused Fulgrim with another novel......

[Idaan]

As I said in the other thread, nothing suggests that the craft in "Fulgrim" was Ulthwe.

[Polaria]

The HH Fulgrim novel had the Ulthwe craftworld at somewhere between 9 and 14km (tbh I can't be bothered thumbing through to find the reference). It was intentionally hazy due to funky Eldar ECM which caused the size and position to waver. I was a little disappointed however I rationalized it that that ECM also made the craftworld appear about 10% of it's true size on the Imperial scopes.

I have little evidence for the following, it mainly being wishful thinking and extrapolation. I was thinking along the lines of 50 - 300km long but for this I am going to cherry pick 150. The basic shape would be roughly the bottom half of an egg perhaps a little flattened with fins and wings, dorsal and ventral spines and projections and a tail section dozens of kilometres long. The top half would be a dome within which are towers up to maybe 15km in height. The living space would protrude bellow the dome giving the living area a total depth of some 20 - 25km. This would initially create a rather high population density however there are two things that could effect that. First, I see open areas, parks, groves etc being quite common. The other being the personal Eldar living space. I could see this going either way. My inclination is that Eldar like their privacy and have a decent amount of personal space but equally, depending on how challenging an engineering feat these craftworlds are, most Eldar may have sacrificed this liberty. I prefer the former and am going to assume that. While those two factors would lower it, I think final population density would still be very high, maybe 3x or more that of a place like Hong Kong which is very crowded.

So take a craftworld with a doom roughly 90km long for a total area of about 3200km2. I just looked up some population density figures and the highest one is Macau, China at just under 20k per km2. They don't have anything approaching 25km high in living area but lets assume a very conservative estimate for the craftworld at double that of Macau (40k), no pun intended. This gives us a final figure of 128 million space Elves on this rather large example of a craftworld. This is in living area and likely infrastructure and life support capabilities may lower than number possibly significantly, but then that is part of why I assumed a mere double that of Macau despite significantly more vertical space.

I should reiterate, this entire thing has next to no fluff justification I have seen, short of that BFG reference.

Slightly more official, to assume a 9km long living area as (roughly) seen in Fulgrim, that still leaves us with over 5 million Eldar. I would be fairly confident in suggesting that as a lower end estimate.

Your estimations assume that the craftworlds are basically build as huge pancakes. Basically 2-dimensional flatlands with comparatively low buildings (even scyscrapers are comparatively low when compared to a dome with 45km radius). This is a sensible assumption inside a gravity well like a planet, but craftworlds are spacehips, right? If they are build in three dimensions like you would expect from a spaceship the amount of living space goes up exponentially. For example, if we assume a dome 90 km across and shaped like a half of a ball the radius and height of the dome is 45 km. The total volume is 2/3*pi*45km^3 = 190852 cubic kilometres. Even if you'd assume a HUGE average ceiling height like, say, 100 meters, the total habitable area of the dome would be 1 908 520 square kilometers or roughly the size of Mexico (the whole country, not just Mexico City).

The "Fulgrim Ship" only 9 kilometers across (radius of 4.5 km) and built as a half of a ball would have volume of 191 cubic kilometres. With average ceiling height of not-so-ridiculous 20 meters it would have the total habitable area of 9550 square kilometers. Which is three times as much as your assumed pancake-craftworld had.

[Shadey]

I did mention the shape was an assumption based on my own fanciful thinking. What I did not say, is that it was a pancake or that was flat (I said slightly flattened). I also said the living area, basically the dome, was 25km high. I was working on the dome being roughly half (I mentioned half an egg) of it's height which gives the craftworld a total height of 50km, at 1/3 of the ships length that makes a pancake does it?

I also doubled the highest population density we have on Earth specifically for the depth.

I also mentioned large open spaces.

I also mentioned it was a very conservative estimate.

I also didn't assume the entire volume was filled but specifically mentioned that it was filled with towers, not one colossal solid megastructure (apart from the lower half).

[Polaria]

From all the material I've read describing the insides of the Eldar craftworld the ceiling of any specific space seems to be visible even in so-called "outside areas". Thus one should expect that the ceiling of the large open spaces is not 25 km high. Actually it might very well be as close as 1 km or less and the space would still have the large and open space feeling.

Your calculations as rough and estimate they might be, were based on structures in modern cities which, like I mentioned, are very, very, very low and "pancake-like" in comparison to the vertical distances we are talking about. The problem is that even the highest popualtion densities we have in this planet are basically using the horizontal structure with very, very limited vertical element. If you take Hong Kong or Macau, for example, the average height of the buildings is just a few dozen meters and a very large portion of the city is build very low and has large open spaces which could not be built on at all. Actually 75% of Hong Kong area is countryside. Macau has no countryside, but its build considerably lower than Hong Kong.

Even if the craftworld was build, like you suggested, as basically a "lets take a piece of planetary surface to the sky" and encased in what is, for structural purposes, a single-level structure with single floor level and single ceiling there is no reason why the eldar would basically waste 25 kilometers height worth of superstructure while building their towers or spires only few hundred meters high.

They could very easily build spires several dozen kilometers tall that could house several millions of eldar each and still have plenty of room left. A craftworld the size of "Fulgrims 9 km", if build with any sense, could easily house millions of eldar and still have large open spaces so big that you could only see the ceiling when there is no clouds and where you can have a forest big enough that you can't get from one side to another in less than several hours of non-stop walking. Basically what I am saying is that any ship larger than 10 or 15 km across will be ridiculously big even with several tens of millions of inhabitants.

[FarseerMatt]

*Double take* Rockerfella's back!

Question: Are you sure they didn't?
Pretty much every Eldar bar those from Altansar think they're dodgy. Personally I agree with them.

Completely meta reasoning here, but the usual theme in 40K of things not being as they appear makes me think it far more likely that they are (at least mostly) pure if nobody trusts them. If they'd been welcomed back with open arms, they'd probably be revealed to be a secret Chaos cult working their way in amongst the other craftworlds to bring them down.

[Hendarion]

I won't try to put too much explanations into Altansar. They survived the eye. They look uncommon. That is the typical way GW writes fluff - make it spooky and make it unclear. Trying to argue whether or not it indeed had been invaded by Chaos is funny, but has no goal. We can speculate about a lot of things having happened to it or not, but we can't argue. There is no material to find arguments about any side. Anything could have happened from totally staying pure to being corrupted, mind-controlled, physically dead, possessed, whatever.

Other Craftworlds being sceptical about Altansar isn't any indication for anything. Alaitoc for example is sceptical about nearly any other Craftworld out there, most importantly about Saim-Hann and Ulthwé probably. Living that far from each other probably is a good reason to turn suspicious about everybody else in general.

[Grentain]

Fluff Hyperinflation is such a great term

Hey, keep yer creepy fetishes out of my Eldar fluff. :V

if a lone person can survive in the warp then why is it so strange that a fully armoured armed and manned craftworld can survive in the eye? And as for corruption the eldar have much better controll over such things than humans.

For one, I'd wager it's probably because an individual body is much harder to locate than a giant *******' floating space-orb city.

[Shadey]

From all the material I've read describing the insides of the Eldar craftworld the ceiling of any specific space seems to be visible even in so-called "outside areas". Thus one should expect that the ceiling of the large open spaces is not 25 km high. Actually it might very well be as close as 1 km or less and the space would still have the large and open space feeling.

Your calculations as rough and estimate they might be, were based on structures in modern cities which, like I mentioned, are very, very, very low and "pancake-like" in comparison to the vertical distances we are talking about. The problem is that even the highest popualtion densities we have in this planet are basically using the horizontal structure with very, very limited vertical element. If you take Hong Kong or Macau, for example, the average height of the buildings is just a few dozen meters and a very large portion of the city is build very low and has large open spaces which could not be built on at all. Actually 75% of Hong Kong area is countryside. Macau has no countryside, but its build considerably lower than Hong Kong.

Even if the craftworld was build, like you suggested, as basically a "lets take a piece of planetary surface to the sky" and encased in what is, for structural purposes, a single-level structure with single floor level and single ceiling there is no reason why the eldar would basically waste 25 kilometers height worth of superstructure while building their towers or spires only few hundred meters high.

They could very easily build spires several dozen kilometers tall that could house several millions of eldar each and still have plenty of room left. A craftworld the size of "Fulgrims 9 km", if build with any sense, could easily house millions of eldar and still have large open spaces so big that you could only see the ceiling when there is no clouds and where you can have a forest big enough that you can't get from one side to another in less than several hours of non-stop walking. Basically what I am saying is that any ship larger than 10 or 15 km across will be ridiculously big even with several tens of millions of inhabitants.

I said the dome was 25km high and that there were multiple towers inside it, just like the skyline of a regular city. I don't know where you are getting this impression that I said the structures were only a few hundred metres high, I never said anything approaching that. I specifically doubled Macau's density purely because of the difference in vertical height which I surmised to be at 15km (which I admit would hold far more), yet again taking a very conservative estimate in order to get a lower end estimate.

Please, this pancake impression you are trying to portray exists only in your posts. Please try responding to what I actually say.

[Chrysalis]

Sorry for the threadomancy...

I was reading some pages from Codex: Necrons yesterday and read that a Necron character (the one who collects rare items), had the "spectral chorus of Altansar" in his collection. Although we can only speculate about what a "spectral chorus" is, I wonder how a Necron character could get his hand on an item coming from a craftworld that was stuck in the Eye of Terror for 10.000 years...

Another thing I read about Altansar is that it was now travelling in Segmentum Solar, hence in the very heart of the Imperium, and that mankind was doing nothing about it... What could it mean???

[ftayl5]

My theory (based on almost nothing truly) is they have a whole council of seers that can cloak the craftworld? They managed to survive in the eye of terror for 10'000 years without so much of a scratch to speak of - or at least to write of. The only explanation for that that I can think of is some kind of cloaking and if they were doing it for 10'000 years they would get pretty good at it.

If the Imperium knows they're there then their lack of hostility towards them is staggering. They're Eldar from the eye of terror, that should rate pretty high on the paranoia-meter.

[Shamana]

Another thing I read about Altansar is that it was now travelling in Segmentum Solar, hence in the very heart of the Imperium, and that mankind was doing nothing about it... What could it mean???

A lot of things, really. It was meant to be a hook to get people speculating. Here are a few ideas:

a) Perhaps after the 13th Black Crusade Eldar are a much lower priority for the Imperium - low enough that the Imperium doesn't do anything about it (yet). Remember, at the end of the EoT campaign the Imperium was s straining to contain a large Chaos eruption which could mean Game Over if not rolled back, and sending everything it had at it, even at the cost of weakening its other fronts. And there are still huge Tyranid fleets, Orks, Necrons etc. The Eldar were just allies in the war - untrustworthy allies, but allies nonetheless. Frankly, the craftworlders have to do something pretty outrageous to even register on the IoM's "to do" list.

b) Alternatively, it could be a sort of complicity - i.e. the Segmentum Solar is the safest (for the Imperium) space around. If it is chaos you are worried about, that would be the best place to hide something from it. Or, if you presume Altansar is somehow infected, to contain it. This presumes some sort of cooperation between the craftworlds (i.e. Ulthwe) and the Imperium - strange, but not impossible under the circumstances.

c) IMO quite likely - the Imperium doesn't know Altansar is there. The Segmentum Solar is still an uimaginably huge place. If Altansar jumped there from the webway and keeps to deep space, what makes you think the Imperium will immediately know? Remember, Altansar was somehow elusive enough to survive millenia in the Eye, it wouldn't be much of a stretch that they would have psychic concealment tricks second to none. But even without it, how would you know that something is far, far in deep space? Why would you even look?

[Poseidal]

They're probably carrying Cypher to his destination or something.

[OgreBattle]

Sorry for the threadomancy...

I was reading some pages from Codex: Necrons yesterday and read that a Necron character (the one who collects rare items), had the "spectral chorus of Altansar" in his collection. Although we can only speculate about what a "spectral chorus" is, I wonder how a Necron character could get his hand on an item coming from a craftworld that was stuck in the Eye of Terror for 10.000 years...

He probably went into the eye to get it. Because he's awesome. That guy is my favorite character in 40k now. He probably wants a Blackstone Fortress just so he can recreate "Eldrad's Last Stand"

[Hendarion]

c) IMO quite likely - the Imperium doesn't know Altansar is there. The Segmentum Solar is still an uimaginably huge place. If Altansar jumped there from the webway and keeps to deep space, what makes you think the Imperium will immediately know? Remember, Altansar was somehow elusive enough to survive millenia in the Eye, it wouldn't be much of a stretch that they would have psychic concealment tricks second to none.

Personally I guess only a few people in the Imperium know what a Craftworld is at all. Only a few will know what Altansar is or where it had been and a few will know there is something in the segmentum solar. Problem is most likely that NONE of these three facts are combined in one person.
Also, reading IA11, it suggests that the Craftworld Mymeara has hidden itself either in or created or projected a cosmic cloud/storm where nobody of the Imperium tried to get too close to. Other Craftworlds, especially Altansar, could likely do the same.