The Birth of Slaanesh
According to this myth the Eldar race had become so technologically sophisticated by the beginning of the 25th millennium that they no longer needed to toil and could spend their entire mortal lives indulging in pleasure and intellectual gratification. Even those who resisted the temptation could not deny it, and as the Eldar became more obsessed with their own pleasure and indulgence, so the power of the warp entity which was being fed and formed by these emotions grew stronger and more powerful.
By the beginning of the 30th millennium, the Eldar civilisation had become almost totally focussed on self-indulgence and self-gratification and had created numerous Cults of Pleasure specifically dedicated to seeking more unique and novel experiences for the gratification of their members.
As a result the warp entity feeding on this veritable feast of decadent emotions had grown so large that it dominated the warp, and having filled the void, it was desperate to grow still farther, straining at the apparent limitations being imposed upon it by the The Warp Gates. Interdimensional space travel through Warpspace was now extremely perilous and ships were becoming lost in the many strange warp storms along their routes. Thousands of planets had been isolated for centuries, or even millennia, including both Warhammer and Earth.
What happened next is pure conjecture, but it seems plausible that in their determination to find even more extreme experiences for their member’s one or more of the Eldar Cults of Pleasure came up with the exciting idea of offering its members a pleasure trip to the warp. It was common knowledge by now that one of the natural properties of the energy in the warp was its ability to manifest anything that a mortal mind might imagine. In fact, many of the Eldar technologies which made their lives so easy were based upon the exploitation of this natural property of Warp energy which could be used to create anything from sex slaves to buildings. So, the thought of being able to indulge in whatever hedonistic fantasy one could imagine must have been the ultimate temptation. It was something that no Eldar had never been experienced before, and after five millennia of self-gratification pretty much everything else had been tried and become dull and boring.
Whether it was the act of opening the warp gate portal, to enter the warp, or whether it was the moment that some enterprising but foolish Eldar starship captain decided to enhance the experience of his passengers by completely dropping the psychic shields of his ship to give them unrestricted access to the warp energy around them, we shall never know because no-one who was in the warp at the time survived. What we are told is that given sudden unrestricted and unlimited access to the raw emotional psychic emanations of the Eldar, Slaanesh the god of pleasure exploded into full sentient existence in the warp with a terrible howling scream.
This event created a massive psychic shock wave that spread like a tsunami across the void consuming and absorbing everything within it, including the minds and bodies of every mortal, Eldar or otherwise, present at the time. In fact, the psychic shock of Slaanesh’s birth was so great that it temporally cleared the whole of Warpspace either absorbing or blowing away the warp storms caused by its earlier torment and frustration and finally ending planet Earth’s long isolation.
However, the awesome power unleashed by this psychic shockwave was so great that it could not be contained within the limitations of the warp itself. Wherever populations of Eldar were greatest, Slaanesh literally burst through the warp gates to reach them, spilling through their minds and becoming mixed with material space.
Whole areas of material space where exposed to the void and warp energy now had free and unrestricted access to the emotions of mortal creatures living on the thousands of planets unfortunate enough to within those areas. The largest and most significant of these areas was that which was populated by the Eldar homeworlds. This has since become known as The Eye of Terror, where thousands of planets have been corrupted and swept up in the chaos of the warp.
'Embrace your hunger, your lust, your desire. The universe is ours for the taking!'
— Sanctifer LeVay, Cult of the Sacred Union
'Find pleasure in every moment, indulge in every whim. Let lesser races feel the burden of their crude lives. We are beyond such concerns or worries. Every power is ours to use, every sensation ours to experience. We are truly masters of the galaxy, and all others exist only to satisfy our curiosities. We have earned our position of power. Let us forever taste the fruits of such achievement. Time itself is ours to command. We are eternal.'
— Translated Aeldari glyphs found amidst the ruins of the Shrine of Celestial Grandeur
'Well of course my people love me. Only the insane would consider otherwise! Accelerate work on the Grand Hall of Statuary, so all may adore me even when I am not with them.'
— Walash Prixetti, Planetary Governor of Prixetti VII
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