Chapter Text
Fate < > Stone
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Life
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Wind < > FirePictured here is the double balance of the Eldar elements, which the Harlequins call the Hand of Gea. Fire and Wind balance to form the axis of change; Fate and Stone the axis of eternity. Life sits at the fulcrum, balancing both these axes. Wind is associated with transience and confusion, fire with destruction and renewal, stone with tenacity and stability, and fate with inevitability and time. Life is considered a vibrant mix of all four, and to be the telos, the fundamental purpose, of the universe; Death is the absence of all. Properly balancing all five is an unknowable task, one the Eldar believe is achievable only by divinity. Nor can I confidently say they are wrong in this belief, for the God-Emperor most surely has in himself a balance of the five - eternity, change, life, and death all in balance. He did not attribute psychic or spiritual significance to these elements in any record or gospel I have ever seen, but it does make a man wonder. Did the xenos discover a fundamental truth of reality, or is it mere coincidence that the task they ascribe to divinity has been attained by the one true god?
-- Teachings of the Unholy,Inquisitive Bronislaw Czevak
The Eldar pantheon is still worshiped to the present day, though almost all its gods are dead. Cegorach is wounded and in hiding but alive; Khaine is shattered into small avatars and shrines. Isha, it is said, may be alive, trapped as a captive of Nurgle. But the others are entirely dead. And yet prayers are still made. The Eldar see their gods are reflections of themselves, and by worshiping them, they encourage those aspects. Some are considered entirely positive, some negative, and some both, but all are part of the experience of being Eldar, and so they are parts of the Paths.
Before the Fall destroyed their gods, they organized their primary gods in two sets of three. The female - the Maiden, Lileath, of purity and prophecy; the Mother, Isha, of protection and love; the Crone, Morai-Heg, of fate and insight. Lileath is Isha's daughter; myth is silent on whether Isha's mother is Morai-Heg, though her father is Asuryan. And the male - Asuryan the Phoenix, the King of Justice; Khaine the Bloody-Handed, the Lord of Murder; and Vaul the Smith, the Maker of Beauty. They are brothers, and share a wife, Gea, of whom little else is said; Vaul is said to be only technically married, never having expressed marital interest, nor in any other woman. Who the children of Gea are is also left unsaid, and some interpretations suggest that it is not any person or god at all, but the universe itself, with all that is just from Asuryan, and all that is cruel from Khaine. And perhaps all that is beautiful from Vaul.
But these were not the only gods. The divine spirits, the Banshee, were said to be Morai-Heg's daughters by a 'god of death unborn,' given to and adopted by Khaine in a trade for the wisdom of divine blood; also the Crone's daughter was the Mother of Spiders. Kurnous the hunter, who is said to have given Eldar the capacity to seek and desire, and bodies with all the sensation and need they bring, is Isha's husband, and not the son of Asuryan. (Though some believe Khaine is his father.) And Cegorach, most prominent in the modern era, is not related to any of the others by any known tale, though the stories show him treated as irritating but respected family.
Also significant, though most often in stories of Cegorach, is his friend the Cosmic Serpent Dromlach, who stood astride the real and unreal at once, father of snakes and guardian of secrets; his three children, the Weaver Brood, were all promised to serve Cegorach and the Harlequins, by friendship, wager, and favors paid. Dromlach appears in many non-Eldar religions, and is likely not entirely dead. Several other powerful and intelligent divine beasts are noted; Kurnous had a falcon sister Faolchu, the spirit of revenge and teacher of flight, and she had a consort the Great Hawk, who taught his descendants to carry the ghosts of the slain to haunt their killers. His brother was Endobai the Eagle of Heaven, a friend of Vaul and Cegorach who watched over them when Khaine grew angry at them teaching Eldar to create, to protect them against his wrath on Asuryan's behalf. There are also three great steeds the gods rode - Sunstorm for Asuryan, Alean for Khaine, and Felthal for Lileath.
Others, however, exist. Hoec, god of the mind and the Webway, was little worshiped, but included in lists of the family of the gods. He is said to be the husband of the Mother of Spiders, his web of space interweaved with hers of souls. Also mentioned in similarly rare accounts is Nethlann, god of the void between stars and the hunger it holds for life, light, and hope, a god who is appeased, not worshiped, but who accedes with grace when propitiated. Old accounts say that both are tied to the more common gods. Hoec the Wayfinder is the brother of Cegorach, patient and quiet where the Trickster is showy and insistent. And Nethlann is the brother of Kurnous. The same old accounts suggest each pair has a sister, and even that Kurnous's sister is pledged to Cegorach, if he ever deigns to remain still long enough to enact the wedding, but none remain that give names to either. Nethlann's nature certainly encourages the theory that Khaine sired him and Kurnous, but other theories say that it was Morai-Heg's husband, the unborn god of death. The most common theory for their sister's nature is as keeper of the spirits of the dead, not in the Infinity Circuit but in the Sea of Souls, but if such a realm existed it is certainly devoured or deformed by Slaanesh. The associations of Cegorach's sister are less clear, though it is suggested the three grand steeds came from her stable, and that she was courted by Dromlach.
It is often noted by students of Eldar mythology that for a Mother goddess, Isha seems to have remarkably few children, and Morai-Heg significantly more. Within the realm of the gods, this is true; Isha's only named daughter is Lileath, and her only named sons are not even gods. However, those sons are Eldanesh, first and greatest of the Eldar, and Ulthanash, second-greatest, and many other of the first generations of mortal heroes are Isha's children. She is a mother not of gods but of the race that worships them, and so essential to them all, and in the struggles of the gods she is the one who always takes their side. Lileath is young and joyful, but also spiteful; Morai-Heg is calculating and wise, but self-centered. It is the Mother who loves and cherishes all her descendants, and defies the Phoenix King on their behalf.
Of all of these, only Hoec and Dromlach are suggested to have any chance of life after the Birth of Slaanesh. And only after the Second Sundering do those rumors appear.