“This question still needs to be researched, but I see two solutions. Temporary solution is the installation of protective spells on your souls. That’s way she can't get you while you're alive. And the second is cutting off you from the Warp energies.”
"But the Warp is the foundation of all our psionics.” – Arienal objected. - "Every time we use our power, it resonates with the energies of the Warp. Therefore, strong Eldars spells have a chance to attract the attention of daemons as a side effect. If this connection is broken, our powers will be reduced by hundreds of times, which makes all our psionic skills useless.”
“I think I will be able to solve this problem.” - I reassured her. - "We just need to do some research, find out how your psionics working basis, how is the Warp influencing to you, and so on. Then I can find a solution that allows us to achieve the desired result.”
"So, won't it be quick solution?" - The seer sighed.
“No. That's why I suggested the option of installing protection on your souls. It will take some time to study your situation, but in a couple of weeks I will be able to offer a specific action plan.”
This was the end of the 'political' part of our conversation, and I began to delve into the technical details. Contrary to my expectations, Arienal gave me full access to all the scientific databases of the Eldar, and descriptions of all researches they had conducted over millions of years, and was even able to organize my personal communication with some of the Eldars who conducted these experiments, whose souls were imprisoned in the Tears of Isha.
After learning that I was able to capture the daemon, and then purify his soul, Eldars literally 'started dancing'. Even one soul saved from Slaanesh's enslavement clearly showed that my words were not empty words.
After a couple of weeks, I was able to more or less understand the current situation on the ship. And to be honest, the situation was aching. I could only wonder how Arienal had managed to ensure the survival of her kind in such conditions.
Naturally, the main problem was the tyranids. These creatures can reproduce with great speed and were able to penetrate through the strongest bulkheads of the psi-bones. At the same time, they could do both completely unnoticed by the Eldar. As a result, the clearing of the ship's interior had only a temporary effect, and even the most protected areas offered no guarantee that the Eldar would not be attacked by a tyranid.
The second problem was too few Eldar survivors, and most importantly, almost zero fertility. As you know, to conceive a child, a man and a woman need to have sex. In the case of the Eldar, sex had to be performed daily for at least six months. Only in that case the embryo could receive all the necessary genetic information from the father and become viable. But constant sex engendered in the minds of the Eldar craving for pleasure. And this loophole was immediately used by Slaanesh, driving such Eldar mad and turning them into daemons.
Another problem with the first two was the inability to use strong psionic techniques. The Eldars were too few to take the tyranids in numbers. And the use of a large amount of psi-energy led to the opening of natural portals to the Warp, which was immediately compounded by the invasion of daemons from these portals.
The solution was found in the use of military equipment like ‘robot panzer’. Since the living Eldar were not enough even for piloting this equipment, the dead Eldars were harnessed to this task. Since the Fall, their souls have been encased in Tears of Isha to prevent their absorption by Slaanesh. These souls retained awareness and even has ability to generate psi energy. As a result, they were inserted into robots as a control module and power source.
But Tears of Isha were not suitable for containing an active-minded soul. Initially, these stones were created for the eternal storage of the souls of the dead. And to keep these souls from going mad, Tears of Isha plunged them into a state of timelessness. In this state, the consciousness of the dead Eldar could be in complete peace for thousands of years, without feeling the slightest concern. But when from this soul began to demand active independent actions, they felt strong discomfort. It's one thing to be asked for advice once every couple of decades, and another if you have to patrol the ship's premises around the clock and clear them of tyranids. As a result, the technique 'driven' by Tears of Isha had a bad tendency to 'fall into hibernation’ at the most crucial moment, which further worsened the overall situation.
Well, the final cherry on the cake were the results of the study of psionics Eldar. As it turned out, every race in this universe had its own kind of psionics. Orcs, Necrons, humans, and Eldars had different influences on physical reality. I mean, the very mechanism of their influence was different. For example, Necrons’ psionics had no connection to the Warp at all, so they had no chance of using the Webway to move or the Warp to enhance their abilities.
Orcs could use the Warp, but the basis of their power was the 'social consciousness' of the whole species. In fact, all orcs at the highest level were one creature whose psionic power was enough to withstand all other races. People have followed the path of developing personal psychic power, connecting a crystal-clear mind and bubbling emotions. This connection was extremely close in its characteristics to the Warp, so it was easiest for people to draw energy from it, at the same time 'clogging' the Warp with their thoughts, emotions and desires. But this power had its price, and people could 'lose themselves' by scooping up too much from Warp.
The Eldar, unlike other races, had a completely artificial psionic gift. This is how the Ancients created them. Their connection to the Warp was strong and stable, allowing them to use the power of the Warp without worrying about overload. It could be said that the Eldars were created in order to freely use the Warp without negative consequences for themselves. This power at one time allowed them to almost destroy the Necrons. But when Slaanesh appeared, the strength of the Eldars became their weakness. Unlike humans, the Eldars did not convert Warp energy before using it. Therefore, the corrupting influence of the God of Lust reached their souls unhindered, and only a high level of self-control allowed the psykers to remain sane.
After studying the whole situation, I offered the Eldars the following sequence of actions. First, I developed a spell to cut off Eldar's consciousness from Warp. If desired, this protection could be turned off by volitional psionic effort enhanced with the help of Warp energies, but then a blue glow would appear around the Eldar. The Slaanesh agents, of whom there were many, could not imagine themselves without a constant connection with their God, so they would have to constantly walk around with the 'aura of Chaos' turned on, which would inevitably betray them. If such Eldars masqueraded as normal, then the influence of Slaanesh on their minds gradually faded, and they were able to think adequately.
Such protection automatically solved the problem of the impossibility of reproduction. After all, no matter how much the Eldar engaged in sex and other forms of debauchery, it did not make them vulnerable to the God of Lust. But since such hedonism was destructive in itself, I gave the Eldars a way to control themselves without giving up to pleasures.
This method was called Buddhism. This is the 'middle way' that allows you to develop spiritually, while not oppressing the body and living in your own pleasure. This philosophy was a revelation to the Eldar. Moreover, the Warp protection spell had another function. If an Eldar was immersed in sensual pleasure, then his psionic gift was blocked. As a result, such Eldar became 'stupid meat', even unable to open the door. After all, all Eldar technology worked at the expense of psionics. In this way, meditation and working on development of consciousness became vital.
Having solved the problems of the living, I moved on to the problems of the dead. I developed a special version of the Central crystals of the Vritras body that protected the Eldar’s souls from the influence of the Warp. In addition, these bodies themselves had to be powered by the psionic energy of the Eldar soul, so that in their development I used the technology of necrons to optimize for the use of psionics. When the Eldars learned of these details, there was a howl that could tear my ears. I was accused of trying to turn the Eldars into Necrons and that I am an evil worser than Slaanesh.
For such accusation, I cut off the rebels' access to psionic abilities and declared that there wouldn’t be democracy. Their leader signed the contract, so I'll save them whether they want to or not. And if someone is not satisfied with something, they can go from here to all four sides or directly to the lair of the gods of Chaos. Oddly enough, there were a couple of thousand renegades who, after these words, gathered and piled on ships in an unknown direction, naively hoping that there they would be out of my power and their psionic abilities would be restored. But the protecting spell imposed on the Eldarы already made them my 'slaves' and it was impossible to get rid of it. In this universe, no one knew what is magic look like, so, could not effectively counteract it. So, when the rebels flew away, I sternly turned off their defense against Warp, and all of them transformed into daemons in a couple of days.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
When the passions subsided, the phase of transferring the souls of the Eldar from the Tears of Isha to the bodies of Necro-Vritras began. Such souls were given the opportunity to lead a normal life, have sex and even reproduce. However, the latter required the use of Central crystals created by me. After all, they worked on magic.
Since the souls of the dead Eldar were not fully connected to the material world, I had to make their protection from the Warp permanent. This significantly reduced the strength of their psionic abilities, which was nevertheless compensated by their complete and absolute immortality.
When the 'production' of new Necro-Vritras was put on stream, this immortal army went to clear the ship from the tyranids. They simply went into melee and tore the enemies to pieces, completely ignoring the damage inflicted on them.
Then I began the process of complete and final 'sanitization' of the ship from the tyranids. No matter how powerful these creatures were, they needed organic matter to live and reproduce, i.e. carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, calcium, and so on. When the Vritras killed another tyranid, they took its corpse to the processing unit, where there was equipment that split the body into basic chemical elements. After that, the chemicals were sent to different parts of the ship, where they were stored under heavy protection. In other words, to be able to create organics, the tyranids had to rob at least a dozen warehouses located in different places.
In addition to the disposal of corpses, all available organics were sent to recycling. After the clean-up, only bare walls and a vacuum remained in the premises, which were impossible to breathe. At least for the tyranids. They might be in a vacuum for a while, but they couldn't live in it all the time.
While the ship was being cleaned up and the Eldars were 'breeding and multiplying' at a rapid rate, I was researching the nature of psionics. As I already knew, Eldars psionics was tied to the use of the Warp. So, in the world of Mass Effect, they would be useless. Therefore, I decided to create a new type of psionic abilities, generally independent of the universe in which their user is located.
Fortunately, the Eldars have been researching psionics and physics for millions of years. Their science was so advanced that even the Ancients of the Stargate world were savages compared to them. Of course, this knowledge was limited to the material world and the Warp dimension, but I had the missing elements of the puzzle to create a truly revolutionary kind of magic. And now I was fully loading the computer in my body to analyze all this information in order to develop a new type of psionics.
This stage lasted for a long ten years. I didn't think the Eldar had so much information that it would take my quantum computers so long to analyze it. But by the time I got my first draft of how to achieve the desired result, the Yanden Craftworld was already completely cleared from tyranids and had a population of ten million Eldars and more than a hundred billion vritras. We 'reanimated' more than three-quarters of all Tears of Isha that were present on the ship. The other souls refused to return to the world of the living, so we left them alone.
And so, the development of my 'Great Plan' was completed, and I presented it to the public. I mean, I've brought to the attention of all Eldar what they're going to do next. No one could resist me, because I firmly kept in short lead all Eldars. As soon as someone rebelled, I would disable their protection from Warp, and in a couple of days such Eldar would transform into a Slaanesh’s daemon. After all, they quickly get used to the good situation and the Eldars could no longer fit themselves into the rigid framework of the previous dull existence. I did not suffer moral torment from being such dictator, because for me, all Eldars were tools for achieving my goals. At the same time, I did not just use them, but gave them the opportunity to live and enjoy this life.
The first stage of the plan was the creation of a new God, whose personality matrix was my consciousness. No, I wasn't going to become a God myself. Form of existence as God has several limitations, although it had some positive aspects. In fact, the Eldars God were the embodiment of their thoughts. A sort of 'average arithmetic' of their expectations. And that is why the gods could not independently determine who they are. It was a product of 'advanced democracy', where crowd of sheep determined the quality of consciousness of a higher-level being. Quite a funny situation, in my opinion. A shepherd created by sheep, and therefore unable to be smarter than them.
The created God had to have quite clearly defined characteristics, for which the ritual of worshiping to him was strictly regulated, and all the energies sent to him passed multi-stage quality control. In other words, we needed a god that matched the design technical documentation, whose raisond was to perform a certain function. My personality matrix here played the role of guaranteeing that the self-aware astral entity would not decide to start its own game. After all, according to the law of similarity, I could control the consciousness of this God and all his actions.
The new religion of worship of this God was based on the same Buddhism. That is, the basis of everything was self-control, calming the mind and self-development. Every 'believer' was obliged to follow certain spiritual practices and to produce the energy of faith in the rituals of worship on a daily basis.
When I made a promise to the Game Judge about not using of the Warp energy, I mean that I would not use the Bahion already embedded in it. But here I 'generated' a completely new Bahion, which originally belongs to the new God.
As a result, a hundred billion souls fiercely worshipped me and formed the necessary astral structure. Ten years later, the process of energy accumulation was completed, and I moved on to the next stage. By this time, I had a complete model of my new psi abilities ready. This psionic was to combine the ability to control matter with simple willpower, as the Eldars did, the ability to mathematically calculate the structure of spells, as it did in the magic of spiders, and the ability to adapt to any laws of material and astral world. The latter should allow me to be independent from the limitations imposed by the laws of different universes. However, the last function would require some time to be able to 'adjust' to the current laws of physics
Finally, when everything was ready, the synthetic God used his power over reality to make possible the existence of a new kind of psionics. And the first being who got access to this power, of course, was me. I initiated another 'tail' in my soul with this psi energy, thus forever getting access to psi power. In addition, information about various techniques, spells, and ways to influence to the reality was recorded in the energy core of the tail. In fact, I received the combined result of all Eldars’ knowledge which accumulated by them over tens of millions of years.
After this, a ritual was developed to allow the Eldars to 'change their psionic orientation'. They lost their natural psionic powers, permanently severing themselves from the connection with the Warp, and in return received access to 'new psionic power', the source of which was their God. His name, by the way, was Atman. This name was a certain point of fixation of thoughts. Initially, Bahion went from Eldar to me, and then I redirected the stream to a new astral entity, while retaining control over it. This way I could always keep my hand 'on the pulse' of the new God, and if necessary 'cut off his oxygen'.
After all living Eldars had passed through the initiation ritual, it came vritrases queue. After correcting the structure of the astral body, they received a new physical body, whose work was based only on the new psionics. This allowed them to reproduce on their own, regardless of the supply of central crystals.
In the religion of Atman worship, I have paid sufficient attention to the existence of the Eldar in two types of bodies. Organic bodies were considered as 'natural' and had greater potential for development. While the ‘vritras' bodies were obviously more comfortable and stronger.
Along with the new psionics, the Eldars also got the opportunity to immediately choose whose soul to put into it, and after birth of child, he could retain most of the memories of a previous life. On the one hand, this approach allowed them to form a new personality with new habits, and on the other, it did not lead to the loss of important knowledge and experience.
The next stage was the 'salvation' of the Eldars souls defiled by the Warp. The astral mechanism created by me, can pull out daemons which were once Eldar, from the Warp and perform an operation to remove their 'daemonic astral shells'. After that, to cleaned Eldars was given a choice: to be imprisoned in the Tear of Isha or to become a follower of the new God. In a couple of years, we were able to 'catch' a couple of hundred billion of new inhabitants to the Craftworld.
By this time, the Craftworld itself had been completely restored and returned to the state of shining glory that it had boasted before the Fall of the Eldar. Finally, Joanna Arienal received the long-awaited confirmation of her 'quest', and I was able to move on to the next stage of the 'Great Plan'.
To begin with, we collected the Tears of Isha with the souls of the 'standard' Eldars encased in them and sent this cargo to other Craftworlds. Only the followers of the new God will go to the Mass Effect world, and nothing else. After the ship was fully ready for departure, a huge Stargate was built under my direction, capable of transporting a ship whose size was measured in hundreds of kilometers. And at the last stage, we used the energy of a blue giant star to power the gate and open a passage to another universe.
I looked at the ship disappearing in the portal, activated the Stargate's camouflage system, and then considered my next move. I have secured the participation of the Eldars in my game, but I have not yet helped to the Necrons. The new God had gone to another world with his followers, so now I could only rely on myself. But I was no longer restricted by the 'public opinion' of the Eldars, so I could direct my efforts to destroy their gods and get free the Necron gods. And since I had all knowledge of the Eldars, achieving the desired result will not be particularly difficult. Moreover, my next step will 'kill two birds with one shot'. I couldn't ignore the fact that the Judge of this Game was greedy to give me some Bahion. Well, my revenge will be terrible.