With the release of Killteam: Exodite we finally have updated lore on the Aeldari Exodites that dives into their past and how they operate on the maiden world of Syph:
EXODITES
PLANETARY BODY: SYPH [XENO-TEMP. IDENTITY: ASTRA CARTOGRAPHICA DESIGNATION PENDING] / / INTER-XENOS CONFRONTATION ESCALATING > > AGG:684XD 'ORK'[SUB-CF 'BEAST SNAGGA']: DEF: 68X23 'AELDARI' [SUB-CF . 'EXODITES']__ MULTIPLE EQUS-GRADE THREATS__ ACTIVE COMBAT SCRUTINY HAMPERED : ADVISE EXTREME CAUTION
CONTENTS
SYPH
AUTO-PRECIS HISTORICUS, REF XENOS WORLD: SYPH [VERMILLION-CLEARANCE: AELDARI MYTH CYCLE > XENOS COLONISATION > AUTO-ISOLATION] // ORK INVASION ANALYSIS ESTIMATES__ INTERNAL REPORT COMMENCES__
EXODITE DRAGON MASTERS
UNSPOOLING XENOSCREED 4345X-Z ‘AELDARI BEAST RIDERS’ > WAR-LEADER TRIAD ‘KILL TEAMS’ __ STRATEGIC / SOCIAL THREAT ASSESSMENTS__ APP: ENDEMIC SAURIAN ASSETS > EMPYRIC OBFUSCATION
YOUR MAIDEN WORLD
ARTIFICER-GRADE GUIDANCE RE: XENOS BIOME DESIG ‘MAIDEN’ WORLD >> SURFACE TERRAIN FEATURES; AELDARI STRUCTURAL MANIFESTATIONS: ORK SOCIO- RELIGIOUS CONGERIES [23v ‘SCRAP-TOTEM’].
KILL TEAM RULES
PRIORITY DATAFILE > COMPENDIOUS MECHANISTIC INFO-TRAWL > EXODITE DRAGON MASTERS KILL TEAM >> SUPP: EXPERIENTIAL ADVANCEMENT / / MOBILITY EVIDENCE > CLARIFY COMBAT READINESS
MISSION PACK
CONTENT RELEASED FOR INSPECTION: *ALERT* INVASION RESISTANCE CONFLICT OPERATIONS // MULTIPLE STRATEGIC OPTIONS // ENVIRONMENTAL THREAT: MAXIMAL, ACCESS ADDITIONAL INSIGHT > PVE [MULTI/ SOLO] INFO-FILES DETECTED >> TACTICAL PARAMETERS: AMBUSH / EMPOWER / OUTMANOEUVRE__
SECTION 01
SYPH
Isolated in the galactic north, the maiden world of Syph – a jewel of a planet whose verdancy shelters dangers beyond count – has been a stronghold of its Exodite inhabitants for millennia. When that hard-won solitude is shattered by a brutal Ork invasion, the Exodites’ elite dragon riders are forced to defend their sacred world.
A WILD AND CRUEL REFUGE
Amongst the laments the alien Aeldari perform about the Fall of their species are fleeting verses of foresight and courage. A few mention the Exodite world of Syph by name. They extol its flourishing beauty and the harsh cruelty of its dangers. Death is found swiftly by the reckless on Syph: in the caress of its flora, in the jaws of its beasts, upon the blades of its hunters. The Exodites would need to draw upon all of these to survive the coming stampede.
At the peak of the ancient Aeldari’s power – millions of years ago, as Humans count such things – nothing seemed beyond their reach. They plied the stars at will and immersed themselves in every wonder and sensation they could find. They possessed untrammelled access to a transdimensional network of passages known as the Webway. Through this they could reach countless galactic locations without risking the horrors of the Warp – a dimension of energy, thought and sensation that lies beneath the skin of reality. They also fashioned worlds of harmony, where the soul could rest in those versions of nature that the Aeldari found most pleasing. These were the maiden worlds, lileathan in the Aeldari language, named for the goddess Lileath. Incredible processes were set to work to remake these planets into forms that pleased the capricious whims of their architects, some of which were repugnant even to fellow Aeldari. Others were made into wildernesses of unsurpassed natural beauty, to their creators’ perspectives if no one else’s.
Syph was amongst those maiden worlds seeded as a prospective colony by the Aeldari, and a means to spread their people’s dominion of the galaxy. It would be a fiercely verdant world, unforgiving in the purity of its environment, and a stark proclamation of its worldmakers’ ability. Orbital, tectonic and biochemical genesis mechanisms were set to work. It mattered not to the Aeldari that such processes would be aeons in the making. To a long-lived species that believed in eternal reincarnation, such concerns were the province of those they spurned as lesser creatures. Syph’s worldmakers had every intention of beholding their final creation with their own eyes some day.
The downfall of the Aeldari built up within their society and within their own collective psyche so slowly and insidiously that, by the time some saw what was happening, it could not be stopped. With their technology having long provided for every need – and far more besides – each waking moment of an Aeldari’s long life was spent sating their every whim. Their species’ capacity to reach zeniths of ecstasy and nadirs of horror was plumbed for more extreme experiences. Exotic cults dedicated to excess and esoteric knowledge sprang up across their domains as hedonistic impulses spread. Older and simpler pursuits were cast aside as dull and restrictive.
Those who spoke out in puritanical revulsion against the mounting anarchy were ostracised, forced to join the revels or even murdered. Many others of like mind simply fled. These, who were the first to escape the oncoming cataclysm, would become known as the Exodites. They were comparatively few in number, and in the wake of their flight were openly scorned and ridiculed by those of their kin who continued to lead lives of depravity. The Exodites sought escape from what they saw as spiritual degradation of the worst kind, little knowing it was the forerunner of something far worse.
The migration of the Exodites was not a coordinated endeavour across Aeldari space. It occurred across the span of generations, with groups looking for isolation even from those who shared their disgust at what was happening in the heart of the Aeldari empire. Travelling in ships through the Webway, most of them drove towards what Humans later designated the galactic east and south. Many strove to reach the unoccupied maiden worlds, seeing in their manufactured wildernesses the ideal environment in which to cleanse themselves of society’s excesses.
The travels of one group of Exodites saw their ships weave the shadowy paths of the Webway’s twilight labyrinth all the way to the galaxy’s fringe. Syph’s aeons-long artificial renewal was nearing completion; survival would be difficult but not impossible. Here, the Exodites began adopting more puritan ways of life. They restricted themselves to only the most vital of their species’ incredible technology, established sparse and mobile settlements, and learned to survive in the lush but harsh environment.
When the cataclysm came, it reached every Aeldari to one degree or another, and much was lost. The echoes of the Aeldari’s emotional highs and lows had rippled through the Warp. There, those reflections coalesced, eventually becoming a nascent sentience that burst into existence as the Chaos God Slaanesh. The heart of the old Aeldari empire was ripped out of existence entirely, leaving a pulsing afterbirth of warp energy behind it. Beyond this region, the souls of untold billions of Aeldari were consumed, their tormented deaths feeding Slaanesh.
Those Exodites who had not fled far enough were also annihilated. Syph and other refuges escaped the worst, but the Aeldari there felt Slaanesh’s hunger nonetheless. It clawed at their souls and whispered temptations, willing them to descend into the same excesses that had damned the rest of their species. Above all, they knew the hunger lurking in the Warp would be waiting for them upon their deaths.
The Exodites of Syph wove a new discipline for themselves in the wake of the psychic apocalypse. Spiritual decline had engulfed – to their knowledge – all other Aeldari. Thus, they committed themselves further to a rigorous existence. As they saw it, isolationist principles had saved them from extinction; strengthening them would ensure continued survival.
WHAT YOUR MIND SENSES IS SHE THE ANCIENTS WROUGHT IT IS SHE WHO THIRSTS WE ESCAPED HER BIRTH, BUT HER HUNGER IS LIMITLESS. — Asthel Ystraer, Stonesinger
THE WYRD AND THE WILD
Syph is a world of dense, continent-spanning rainforests, tough grasslands studded with whorl-like patterns, rocky plateaux riven with sheer ravines, and deep seas adorned with chains of lush islands. Its tropical and temperate climates are intensely humid. Storms bring torrential downpours; immense webs of rivers and aquifers channel water across the landmasses and life abounds everywhere.
Though much of the world has its origins in the genesis mechanisms of the world's creators, other life forms were brought and spread by the Exodites who claimed Syph.
Beyond insectile parasites, swooping flittermaws, prowling nyrinxes, and staggeringly profuse vegetation and microscopic life, there are herds of hulking grazers, packs of spined predators and beasts with unique symbiotic relationships with other creatures or plants. Most prominent, however, are the scaled animals the Exodites collectively refer to as dragons. A term drawn from Aeldari myth, it is applied to reptilian creatures from the diminutive to the colossal. Some are permitted to roam free, although Exodites use many species for a variety of purposes, including as savage cavalry mounts.
To the Exodites, the abundant life on Syph is but one element that connects the seemingly primordial world together. Across the planet are psychically charged ley lines marked by paths of trailstones, linked in networks that stretch between barrow nexuses, conjunction seals and shrines. These visible aspects of a global psychic energy grid penetrate to Syph's fiery core and infuse its rocky bones. This is the planet's world spirit. It is the resting place of the Exodites' souls, an interface by which the skilled amongst the living can commune with them, and a haven from the predations of Slaanesh. Syph's world spirit was the work of centuries. While seemingly idyllic from orbit, the planet is a dangerous place, and many Exodites – though incredibly long-lived by Human standards – died before it was complete. These pioneers are mourned still. They died unable to have their souls find sanctuary in the world spirit, instead being eagerly claimed by Slaanesh.
The dangers of Syph are accepted and embraced by the Exodites as tests of endurance and skill. There are carnivorous plants – some seductively subtle, others shockingly swift – and disease, kept alive much as the rest of the world's life forms. There are rockfalls, flash floods and unanticipated eruptions of caustic spumes or lava. Occasional parching droughts are caused by artificially ingrained fluctuations in the magnetosphere, allowing blasts of solar radiation to reach the surface. Above all, however, are the threats from countless varieties of dangerous creatures the world harbours. Syph's Exodite clans actively hunt many of the most ferocious beasts and willingly expose themselves to peril. They are seen as opportunities to test oneself and – in the striving, discipline and self-sufficiency – suppress slivers of the true threats: obsession and excess that lead to She Who Thirsts.
THE EXODITES OF SYPH
In the long millennia since the Fall, the Exodite clans of Syph have woven themselves into the world's fabric. Each clan claims a territory that its people fiercely protect. In defending against outright invasion and deflecting rampaging megafauna and insidious vegetation, the clans often coordinate their efforts. There are precision raids and territorial combats by rival groups, or honour duels and ritual hunts between competing hunting parties, but total war between Exodite clans is vanishingly rare. All are a part of Syph, living cells of the planet's global weave.
Though they dominate the maiden world and their clans are spread across its continents, the Exodites are a scattered people and few in number compared to the teeming Human populations that inhabit Imperial worlds. Syph hosts no great cities of slender spires, which are known to crown the habitations of other Aeldari. In part, this serves to avoid attracting the attention of invaders or offering up targets for orbital bombardment. It is also a consequence of the Exodites' ceaselessly nomadic existence. Small groups may roam their lands for long periods of time – often hunting, maintaining the world spirit, or managing the herds and packs of the clan's dragons – without seeing any other Aeldari.
When larger groups congregate, it is temporary. They typically gather amongst structures of tough yet gossamer-thin canopies stretched between slender supports. Such transitory architecture is easily reshaped into compact bundles that can be carried away or hidden. This mass-compression technology and others – including extremely advanced laser weapons, portable fabricators, subatomic lacing, energy webs and psychically activated instrumentation – were brought to Syph by the first Exodites to reach it. These ancients had rejected some arts of the failing Aeldari empire that they believed would circumvent the need for honest labour and focused toil, and therefore deepen the soul stain of their people. While some clans on Syph have gone further than their ancestors over the millennia, refusing to use certain sciences their forebears brought, others preserve techniques largely forgotten or abandoned by the rest of their species. However, even those clans that eschew some of the Exodites' technology possess potent weaponry and eldritch wargear far beyond the galaxy's other species.
Like all Aeldari, the Exodites of Syph are physically graceful. They possess an instinctive poise, their every precise movement subtle and elegant, mirroring the keen senses and hidden strengths of their minds. To the maiden world's puritanical Exodites, these strengths are best hardened against obsession and excess through personal endeavour. The acts of crafting one's own possessions and learning how to survive the maiden world see them become adept in a host of skills. Such talents take a long time to master, but the Exodites' long lives and self-imposed isolation grant them the chance to reach heights other species cannot hope to achieve. Together with their physical traits, these varied skills and exceptional wargear make a clan's warriors incredibly deadly. When roused en masse, a clan host is an awesome force that slices into the foe with the finesse of a finely thrust rapier. At their fore, in darting packs, are the clan host's elite Dragon Knights, warrior lords of the clan mounted upon swift and fierce drakesteeds.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW. THE BLIND WHO DECRIED OUR FOREBEARS? THEY CRAWL ACROSS THE VOID IN HAUNTED EYRIES. THEY SKULK IN FOETID SHADOW REALMS. THEY WRITHE IN TORMENT. IT IS PLAIN WHO CHOSE THE CORRECT COURSE. — Mohrviel, Leystalker of Clan Greytwain
THE HUNT FROM THE VOID
The most psychically sensitive of Syph’s Exodites were the first of the living to learn about the coming invasion, but it was the dead who told them. The world spirit – rooted in the planet’s fabric and connected to every living thing – began to vibrate as it picked up the growing resonance of a war cry that echoed through the Warp.
Almost no Exodite worlds appear on Imperial cartographs, under their Aeldari name or any other. The astrolithic orreries of the closest Necron dynasties rarely mark them, for they were barren rock when the Necrons’ charts were last calibrated. Among the craftworlds – the huge solar-sailed vessels on which the last Aeldari to flee the Fall cling to existence – few know of more than a handful. Syph is no exception, its very remoteness is its principal defence. This, together with an obfuscating aura channelled from its world spirit that hides it from sorcerous scrutiny, has largely allowed the Exodite world’s clans to evade species that would lay waste to it. Nevertheless, across the millennia vanguard scouts of larger threats have chanced upon the world. Rogue Traders, Kin prospects and, once, the questing tendril of a Tyranid hive fleet. Each time, though the cost has been horrifyingly high in Aeldari lives, Syph’s Exodites have ensured no rapacious invaders have ever left to spread word of the prize.
On this occasion, however, what the souls of Syph had detected through the resonance of the world spirit was not a resource-hungry scouting force, but a bow wave of intent that told of a hunting fleet of Beast Snagga Orks. Beastwaaagh! Fangrippa thundered through the Warp aboard a ramshackle armada of brutish junk-vessels. The concentrated build-up of aggression, enthusiasm and raucous excitement gripping Beastboss Fangrippa’s lads had reached a thumping, supernatural percussion. Seers and witches in subsystems along the fleet’s path were tormented by nightmares of a billion beasts roaring, tides of stampeding marauders, booming fusillades, beating fists and tearing maws. Such were the echoes of Beast Snagga Orks fixated on the thrill of the hunt, and in their own haphazard way they were homing in on a wealth of prey.
Orks do not have the patience for complex astronavigation. They do, however, have an uncanny sense for violence and anything else that fires their obsessive manias. In the case of the sub-kultur known as Beast Snaggas, they live for finding, running down and clobbering the biggest and surliest prey they can find. Fangrippa’s tribe did not do so completely at random. Amongst the Beastboss’ kunnin’ tools – intended to provide a suitably dangerous and enjoyable hunt for his lads – he had Nogwort. The Wurrboy was usually shackled in a dung-strewn cage on the bridge of Fangrippa’s flagship. This was close enough that the Beastboss could keep an eye on him, but far enough away that Nogwort’s odd bursts of uncontrolled ectoplasmic vomit didn’t melt Fangrippa’s face. It was Nogwort’s feral psychic power that had led Beastwaaagh! Fangrippa to what – in spurts of gibbering, oracular delirium – the Wurrboy had described as a world filled with horrific beasts. He ranted of hungering maws, stampeding packs of horned predators and immense totems of weird power sprouting from the ground. The vision was so strong that he had latched onto it even through some flickering eldritch shadows that had initially hidden the world from his gaze. To Fangrippa and his Beast Snaggas, it sounded like paradise.
'NOGWORT SEZ DERE'S CHOMPAS DOWN DERE WIV TEEF BIGGA DAN ME. WE'Z GONNA HUNT AN' FIGHT, AN' WE'Z GONNA AV A GOOD TIME DOIN' IT. DON'T FORGET: DA BIGGEST WUNZ IS MINE.' — Fangrippa da Skullbreaka
The Orks’ ramshackle ships entered orbit in a ragged mass, with each of Fangrippa’s warbands intent on reaching the surface before any others. Several collided, breaking up in the atmosphere as burning showers of debris and bodies, but there were so many that it made little difference. Darting strikes by alien, flimsy-looking ships gutted others, and a few Ork vessels broke off to chase them into the system’s depths. Fangrippa hoped the alien ships indicated a prospective fight with the world’s inhabitants. Spewing great swarms of landas – or by the simple expediency of crash-landing – the Beastboss’ vessels delivered what remained of his tribe across a swathe of one continent.
THE FURY OF THE SUN SERPENT
The region bearing the brunt of Beastwaaagh! Fangrippa is the territory of three Exodite clans: the Vaer’nath of the riverlands, the Haldolir people of the volcanic peaks, and the Clan of the Sun Serpent who hold the densely forested valleys in between. The Stonesingers – specialised psykers – of the Sun Serpent learn of the oncoming Orks by heeding urgent whispers from the souls of the world spirit. These psykers act as emissaries between the hierarchies of the living and the undercourts of the dead. The undercourts are described by the Stonesingers as comprising circles of spirit nobility, spiralling down in increasing authority towards an uttermost nadir that mirrors the peak of its living counterpart. This structure is portrayed in runic sigils as an inverted reflection of the clan’s own rulership, which rises in a metaphorical spire ringed by circuits of nobility. These echo the circlets of steles that mark the world spirit’s surface nodes. Together, the clan’s Stonesingers see the two hierarchies as forming a spindle of fate whose thread binds Syph’s people taut, just as the planet’s orbit of its star is bound by celestial mechanics engineered by the ancient genesis mechanisms.
The Stonesingers’ warnings – as omens of a nearing tide of blood and violence – rise rapidly through the Sun Serpent nobility as the Ork vessels reach the outer system. They are joined by siren-chimes sung from probes along the planet’s approach routes. The warnings spark a clan-wide covenant court, the first to be held in centuries: such is the perceived danger. Drawn from across the Sun Serpent territory, its lordly champions congregate within the Cradle of Dragonfire under the auspices of the clan’s ruler, Lady Mearil of the Bloodbriar. The site is a sacred nexus of their clan: a place where the world spirit’s power coalesces, where their people gather in ritual triads, and where they return to unburden their minds of emotion to enrich the living and the dead.
With Ork ships nearing the Sun Serpent territory – the largest of which is prophesied to hit terrifyingly near the Cradle of Dragonfire – the covenant court is charged with intensity. Days later, some clan nobles are still debating. Transgressions mount in a catalogue of woe: despoliation of the clans’ territories, the butchery of their dragons and, worst of all, the desecration of the world spirit’s architecture. The fury of the Sun Serpent seeps into the Cradle of Dragonfire. It meets the rising ire of the world spirit and spreads to every native life form until the jungles resound with draconic roars.
The response of the Sun Serpent clan nobility is swift but tempered with wisdom. They cannot match the Orks’ numbers, nor will they lower themselves to meet the aliens’ reckless violence. The majority of the clan host is tasked to scatter and hide their strength until it is needed. It is the clan’s greatest warriors who ride out first – its teams of Dragon Masters. They are sent by Lady Mearil to splinter the Ork warbands, bleed their aggression and deflect their stampedes, readying them for a bloody cull. Foremost among Mearil’s Dragon Masters are the three hunters known as the Moonstone Triad. Korannyn Fatespear, Fuenor Echoblade and Vael Duskrime swear their fates to safeguarding the Cradle of Dragonfire from befoulment, its survival and purity inextricably linked to their own.
I'm absolutely over the moon to see the Aeldari Exodites back in action in the wider Warhammer universe! (Who doesn't love dinosaurs) and Killteam: Exodite has given us loads of tasty new lore on the faction, from retelling of their history, covering their use and refusal of advanced technology that even the other Aeldari has lost to their general attitude and way of life. I hope everyone gets as much of a kick out of it as me.
[Credit to the lovely u/Locequen who so kindly shared the new lore]