The Exodites! Stone Age Eldar With Laser Gun Dinosaurs In Self Imposed Exile. 40k Lore 

This video is a prime example of why I think Arch is a top-notch lore master. He keeps having to force himself back on the topic because he keeps waffling off track when trying to explain things. It is hilarious, and you often learn something completely tangential in the process.

Something just struck me: Wouldn’t it be cooler if the reason the Eldar doesn’t have that many children was because they so utterly fear losing themselves to pleasure if they engage in intercourse that they force themselves to abstain for decades or even centuries, and formalizing the affair to the degree that it is almost a ritualistic endeavor? It would tie-in with their lore and backstory much better than just them becoming randomly almost infertile for no good reason.

Maybe the reason the Exodites figured out what they did, and the Craftworlds took forever to come up with an anti-Slaanesh device, is exactly because the Craftworlders were focused on coming up with some kind of hypercomplicated super technical solution, and the Exodites were not blinded by those preconceptions.

To me, these World Spirits almost sound like the results of Eldar God Forging. Maybe while the craft world Eldar where busy panicking and searching Crone Worlds the Exodites just picked up the old technique and dreamed spiritual hoblah up, he'll maybe these crystals are some form of wraith bone that had either been forgotten about or specially made by the Exodites.

Exodites as auxiliaries for the Craftworld Eldar is a genius idea !

Lets be real... at one time a lot of the lore was contrived because people kept wanting to play different kinds of games with their play army guys. It's the 5-year-old logic that if you're playing with army men and your friend shows up with his dinosaur well now the army guys are fighting off a dino attack. Cause your army guys are cool and your friend's dinosaur is cool and you both want to play with your cool toys together.

"They move in herds...they do move in herds" *Salamanders cocking the heavy flamer*

I love that the Eldar version of roughing it is basically playing Minecraft in creative mode.

this video's title should have been "Arch rants about the Amish for 35 minutes and advocates for a return to medieval warfare"

Ah yes, the Amish Eldar. I've always thought that they would be a cool and interesting addition to the Eldar roster, even if they can't be their own full faction. They could be a mini faction like the Harlequins, maybe?

One thing to point out is that "living in a harsh world" has a benefit of a sort for an eldar. And that it can bring an excitement. Excitement is what I believe to be a recourse on its own in eldar society. Too much/too hardcore can make your soul being eaten by slanesh. To little/ too boring can make it wither. Having a healthy source of excitement like such is a way of living for a race as sensitive.

Independence Day meets Jurassic park = Eldar exodites (the summer blockbuster you never knew you wanted) 😂

Tribal Eldar with Dinosaurs with laser cannons for mounts. Lion sure would love this kind of Eldar waifu. And he and Guilliman can chat together about their waifus and their benefits. Guilliman has a Dark Eldar, while Lion has a Dinosaur with laser cannons on it.

I'd have taken an army of Amish Eldar of the ''Leagues of Votann'' any day.

The amazing trazyn book, infinite and the divine, shows some of the exodites at war. Raptor cavalry, brontosaurus heavy battle tanks, and a few others. Repurposing some of the seraphon/lizard men dinosaurs and creating an exodite range could work wonders. But that would present the same issues as the wood elves in old warhammer fantasy. Namely, narratively they’re only ever going to be defending their home rather 99.9% of the time rather than getting out there and doing something. Even if you count the webway, the logistics of transporting *dinosaurs through it* is probably beyond them.

According to the very old chaos god books, Slaanesh existed long long before the space elves. What the Eldar did was make Slaanesh aware of the material world, and rip a hole in reality. The no-longer canon lore, goes into great details of how Slaanesh was imprisoned and space elf souls where slowly + painfully extracted from -IT.

27:00 Eldar acting actively malicious, that's never happened before.

I'd still kill for Exodites to become a mini faction like Eldar Corsairs and Harlequins

I don't have a problem with the exodites finding a solution to the slaanesh problem first. They aren't actually technologically inferior to the craftworlds they just choose to live their day to day life in a more rural way. They set up their worlds to keep their population as strong and hardy as the original war in the heavens eldar. So really they should be considered more as the custodians of the Eldar. Incredible elite troops who are tougher than the other eldar and have stronger psychic weapons and abilities.

You forgot to mention the weird Animal-Gods that the Exodites have , the serpent,cobra,scorpion gods that represent different mindsets. They're a weird situation of spirits that I'd like to see expanded,

I don't know if this is Canon, as it came from a 1d4chan page, but I like the idea that if an outsider invades an Exodite Planet, the planet's World Soul turns hostile towards the invader and makes that planet as dangerous as a Death World for said invader.

Makes me wonder if there's different varieties of Eldar Exodite for the worlds they live on. Say a Maori like type of Exodite that live solely on a massive ocean world, a frozen over hellscape like Fenris, or a giant dead desert world with little green.

I thought that psychoactive crystals (including Wraithbone) of all manner could just be summoned (for lack of a better word) by Wraithseers. Exodite Worlds wouldn't need to have them already existing on those worlds if the founder of the Exodite movement designed these World Spirits as a network of psychoactive crystal altars and distributed the blueprints to any Exodites.

I always wanted the Exodites to be given a full codex.

Ah yes, the Elves cosplaying as Lizardmen

Ah, space elf protestants.

Great now maybe the lion can have an elder waifu like Robute.

James workshop not exploiting this part of their lore always struck me as very strange. I mean what kid doesn't love dinosaurs?!? It's pretty much MADE FOR their intended target audience. Dinos with guns, 6yold me would've been all over that shit and it's a lot more parent friendly too. Missing out on this is like shooting themselves in the foot really.... Ooor modern kids really think boring, blue spacemen are the hot shit no idea maybe l'm just old.

Closer to Mennonites than Amish. They can have modern vehicles and farming equipment, electricity, phone lines, firearms, yadda yadda. Pretty good and decent folk. Big on crop, cattle, and fish farming around here. Unfortunately I haven't seen a Triceratops parked at the local hardware stores yet.🤔

Erm, about the World Spirits, I am pretty certain ALL Exodite Worlds have at least one entrance to the Webway, which means that they do indeed all have access to the Crone Worlds, even if the journey might be difficult. As those particular crystals as far as I remember can ONLY be found on the Crone Worlds, it means that both the Craftworld and Exodite Aeldari HAD to go to them. The fact their technology is not as advanced as the Craftworld Aeldari does not mean a huge amount travel wise considering they still have those active Webway Portals. The Exodites can still get to them, just as the Craftworlders can.... EDIT: And don't forget, while the Exodites technology may not be up to the Craftworlders, these are STILL Aeldari, which means they STILL have that vast Psychic potential that is common to the Eldar (sue me, I got sick of using the new name!). The soul stones, Infinity circuit, and world spirit are as much psychic constructs as they are technological ones, and in that respect the Exodites are no more backwards than the Craftworlders.....

First time I saw them mentioned was in the Titan legion codex for Space Marine/ 40k epic. The boxed set where you got 2 Mega Gargants and an Emperetor Titian. The context was with the introduction of the Knights

So basically if the unabomber was a faction of space elves.

I remember seeing the 'coming soon' range of 6mm exodites models that were in the Titan Legions catalog included with the box set. Since I'd been a huge fan of Dino Riders as a kid it made me want Eldar despite my dislike of all things elvish. Especially as the lore for Imperial Knights had them fighting the exodites for control of Dinosaur herds. Herds they raised the way us Texans do cows, and other livestock. Sadly those concept models never came to pass, and in time even the original KNights lore was changed to edit the exodites out. Plus they got rid of the bit about all knights being dinosaur ranching space cowboys.... There was also a short story included in one of the early Inferno Anthologies that came out in the late 90s. All in all it was a neat story with a bit of dork angels lore driving the plot. There were also a few chapters devoted to them in the Craftworld trilogy that came out in the early 2000s. Most of which was in the Farseer novel IIRC. Oh, and the Infinite and Divine. Which has the most recent 'modern' interpretation of the faction Which gives me some hope that we'll finally see actual models. After all, we got Knights after they began appearing in the Heresy novels.

so basically someone at GW played a cold one heavy Dark Elf army and wanted it to be playable in 40k

DINO RIDERS HARNESS THE POWER

...there's a title I never thought I'd see. I approve.

The exidutite eldar used WARP FUCKERY to protect themselves from slannesh. Hell humans talk about the pyschic power of crystals in real life.

Maybe Slanesh doesnt have a claim on ALL Eldar, but just the ones that commited depravity and their bloodlines, so the Exodites trough living in a more puritanical way maybe are totally free from slanesh, i know thats not how it currently stands in the lore but with a couple retcons i feel like that explaination would be more interesting

I think if the exodites were to get a codex it'd be a Ranger-Cavalry-LizardmenDinoMonster . The rangers shoot from a far while the dino-riders goes in for the kill.

I think I saw an army made for them, a citbash of Lizardman and Eldar. They looked cool.

another connection with the amish is that the amish do not abandon all tech either. depending on sect of course, but usually the intent is to not use tech that overly detracts from your own work, so you can see tech that doesnt detract from this ethos in some of those communities.

Man if only they had a kit bash rule system to merge the lizardmen dinos to eldar

The thing about warfare driving advancement reminded me of a conversation I had back in college. Someone, I can't remember who now, was talking about how once we solve mankinds problems on Earth that then we'll finally be able to colonize space. I disagreed and started shooting holes in their utopian ideals. One thing I did was to ask a question. That in this utopian future, which is free of strife, humanity would be free to pursue any endeavor that intrests them. They said yes, you could do and become whatever you wanted. Okay, I said, then I would spend my life making rifles, weapons and so on. I'd devote my existence to the craft like the fabled blacksmiths of old. No, they say, their would be a need for guns or weapons of any kind. I replied that if we could do and become anything, then why couldn't I spend my time making weapons? Why would you stop me? Who would do so? How would one do it in a utopian world? His answer was that people would prevent me, laws would, any weapon made would be destroyed because thwur wouldn't be a need for them. So their is a need for my beautiful rifles then, I said. Because you've just proved that humanity will always have conflict and thus the need for weapons. The rest of the conversations went more or less along those lines.

Return to Mon'keigh.

One thing that Arch missed about the American Indian warfare is that nomadic people generally require a larger % of their population to provide for the tribe, so their type of warfare evolved to minimize losses, because winning a decisive battle doesn't matter if your tribe starves afterward.

We have Space High Elves and Space Dark Elves. What about the Wood Elves? Damn!

Hey arch, thanks for all you do. I've listened to a lot of your lore vids and find them all amazing. Especially your vid on skaven. Just wondering, are you going to cover anything from 10e 40k?

Yeah, I would love a Dino-Riders like faction in 40k :D

My head canon is that The Laughing God looks after the Exodites and "lead" them unwittingly through chicanery to settle on worlds with the needed psychic crystal world tree things. I also like to think they're part of his master plan to finally defeat she who thirst, but that's probably just me finding the idea of distracting Slaanesh with the galaxy's most flamboyant and deadly dance troupes just to kill her with Amish dinosaur herders hilarious.

Best part of this video is arch taking the khorne pill

I love Eldar lore ... ths you so much man you re the best .... great video hope we see more soon

I camt wait for Arch's thoughts om Lion El Johnsons return

Nice lore video. Also really hope Arch make some lore videos about Dark Angels now and what he thinks about the Lion return.🦁

So… if it’s an Exodite fishing village would they have sharks with fricking laser beams attached to their heads? *holds a pinky finger to the corner of the mouth*

23:51... waaaaaaaait...didn't Fenris have a "World Spirit" too?

If their infinity circuit is a freaking glowing tree I'm going to loose it.

"... bathing in wine..." Yeah, sure, that red liquid was definitely wine...

Going full Rasczak at 14:00 there, Arch. I could almost feel the stump on my shoulder. "The empire Eldar probably wouldn't say anything about the Exodites, sir, because they were destroyed - from the asshole outwards."

Now I want to see a Not true space elves riding Dinosaur's vs Tyranids fight...

Just wanted to leave a quick comment of thanks. I’ve been binge watching your vids really since New Years and seeing how deep this lore is and intricate - for good or I’ll depending on the author - you’ve moved me to start ordering some books and building my own set of models (I know Raven Guard get little love but they appeal to me and how I play other games.). I don’t know if I’ll ever actually play the game or not. I am in a rather rural area that has few if any players within hundreds of km. But I don’t think I need to to enjoy this world and to start a new hobby - model building - that I haven’t done in 30 years. Thanks again.

Yes. Eldar lore.

Well, that's 3 minutes of Raid ads that I just had to skip. That's 10% of the video. I hope Arch gets these metrics on how much of his video we're skipping.

Like the webway, if you try hard enough you can link your very everything to the material plane, the warp is just the landfill before find out recycling was a thing.

As a Mon'Keigh. Even the Amish eldar seem extremely advanced. Image you a guards man get told to bayonet charge a dinosaur with a sword wielding eldar on its back.

I remember when the idea was first pitched…it was called Dino Riders and it was a toy line and cartoon show when I was a kid in the late 80s early 90s

Given, not the most versed on 40k lore, but my first thought on the talk of the world spirit thingamajig is the knife eared Amish could have kept the most advanced bit of old eldar tech: their own afterlife. Cause when the society around you is going murder hobo levels of degenerate, who would want to queue with the freaks in line back to living. Of course, in this idea it wouldn't be what it was. Much more local. Hell, the 'world spitit' could be analogous to human machine spirits. So many pysker souls pass through they imparted a spirit to it and over time the cart got put before the horse in exodite memory. Or a needed defense to she who thirsts. Meh, random musing from someone only the Horse Heresy deep in the universe.

Damn warhammer even has a faction for the Amish! Truly a faction for everyone.

Considering how F-ing old the Eldar are it wouldn't really surprise me if they visited (really) Old Earth, looked at the dinosaurs and thought "Hah, neat", then took a bunch of dinos with them. And there for the Eldar "dragons" look like Earth dinosaurs. I have NO basis for this, but it sounds awesome.

An army of these dino riding amish would be very cool to build and paint. Not to mention it would be awsome to see table top wise.

Giant laser weapons and buildings strapped on dinosaurs. Basically the Ark survival technology

My head canon for the Exodites is that their ancestors got a beef with being the former servants of the Old Ones and therefore got some perverse pleasure in dominating reptilian creatures. When most of the other Eldar enjoyed a far more diverse choises of excess, the Exodites focused theirs on one particular creature that bears certain resemblance to their once great masters.

You’ve done it again.., another great episode….👍🏼😎👍🏼

I know you're not a fan of #CurrentWH40K Arch, but I'd like to know what your thoughts/opinions are on the Arks of Omen situation and Vashtorr.

I always wanted to play a Exodite Faction, but then the Haemonculus Covens came out and well... Fleshcrafting Necromancers just hit all the right buttons for me. Also since the Chaos Dwarf DLC for W:TW was announced, think we might get a new Chaos Dwarf video? its always nice to see someone who has a passion for them talk about them.

Exodite Wraithguard should grow out of the World Tree and be "Groot-like". Kurnoth Hunters from Age of Sigmar could be kitbashed to reflect this.

To be fair... Arches idea at 26:45 is a good one. I would certainly do watch the craftworld Eldar get screwed for a long time before handing them a solution. On the other hand, i am whit the Iron Legion, so... yeah. Point and laugh it is, i gues.

Having Arch do Babylon 5 lore vids is my ultimate wet dream... i think it would fit him very wel.

Return to Mon-Keigh, underrated pun

Friday after work and new lore video appears. It's a good day

I have an idea for the plot hole you found. What if they designed the world soul when they first settled, an alternative to the constant resurrection that the eldar used as part of their...lavish lifestyle. The fact that it protected them against she who thirsts could be a coincidence, and even could have been what the eldar based their infinity circuit off of.

I have a hunch that Sundowner from Metal Gear Rising would find his mood kindred in Arch given their thoughts on war

Space wood elfes ... Now that is something i didn't hear a while !

Starship Troopers stated it best Man has always excelled at being an ass to himself. About war, obviously

In "The Infinite and the Divine" one of the large T-rex-like dinos chew Trazyn (a Necron) to pieces, so yeah...

Archeological evidence suggests that the _inception_ of agrarianism, and basic writing and math, was the desire for _beer._ They figured out how to make bread out of wild grains, which they would then cultivate by picking which seeds to plant before moving on during their nomadic stage, which can be made anywhere, however bread was used to make beer at some point - it's a real thing, look it up. The desire for more beer led to establishing more permanent settlements. This led to counting the grain, then establishing trade and even currency to exchange grain (and later money) in exchange for other things, paying your inevitable taxes and keeping tabs of meeting quotas and etc. etc. you get the idea. Even though the formation of settlements caused a host of new problems - disease, crime, war, etc. - it was largely considered worth it so that people could make a safer-than-water, sorta nutritious beverage that also took the edge off.

I think the expedites have the backup for their souls because they were the equivalent of propers saw the warp going insane and already found a way with their magic psyker abilities.

make an in for the fantasy version of the lizard man( i know it supposed to be the old ones but still could be cool)and to make it competitive you make em master of personal shield kinda like the gungan army in sw(could use the fantasy dark eldar cavalry as mount for a fast kit ,)like a heavy krieg death rider

That's it....... I'm building an amish eldar kill team

would love the Exodites, gives me Dinorider vibes :D

It was great when lads showed up in GW stores with kitbashed Dino Rider toys! One but an Avatar of Kane on one! O.P to say the least!

So it's the Dino Riders cartoon in 40k

Honestly if there was a Total War 40k which there will be mark my words we need an Exodites faction.

Well these are just 40K version of Wood elf.

The new revealed Seraphons models will provide superb convertion for an Exodites army, when GW remember they exist.

A thought on Exodite society and why it is that way: Saim-hann was the first(?) craftworld to leave the eldar empire and their society to this day is more a confederation of clans than the more classic craftworld community. If the exodites were the first to leave than it would be logical that they were even more clanish than the later Saim-hann and rather than deciding to split into warring clans it was simply the natural state for them that they reverted to once safe from their empires perversions.

I am patiently and eagerly awaiting the Lion and Arks of Omen video.

I think it would be a really cool idea that they could borrow from “Rouge Trooper” Every time they kill somebody or somebody dies, their soul gets transferred into a weapon or an object or some thing and the more people you kill with it the stronger it gets or something They’re close connection to nature, or something might allow them to possess their mount or whatever

I could very easily see an Eldar Exodite Kill Team coming into existence lately, just to test the waters. As far as planetary defence, well, there's always the Catachan excuse. They did deliberately pick some of the most difficult places to live in the galaxy, and if Catachan is anything to go by, the galaxy's most awful fauna can handle itself just fine, thank you. Not to mention these are ELDAR, and can likely survive on worlds humanity wouldn't even dream of colonizing. Hence why they're safe from the Imperium, Orks, and Chaos at least.

Not sure if this checks out logically, but bear with me. Distance affected the aeldari. Drukhari got it worst, unable to utilize soul stones because of their proximity. The Aeldari were next closest, having most of their soul still and able to capture it within the soulstone before Slannesh claimed it upon death. The exodites were already long gone at this point, so they had the most distance between themselves and the birth of Slannesh, maybe not affecting their souls at all. I'm no exodite expert, but would it be possible that the "world spirit" is how the exodites can be reborn? Aeldari used to go hang out in the warp until they were reborn, but the birth of Slannesh stopped that. Maybe the exodites did something to their planet, placed a piece of the warp or webway in the center of it, and binded the souls of the exodite people to the world somehow. If they were the ones who were most adept at manipulating the warp, it may have been possible, especially if they wanted to keep themselves separate from Aeldari society at large by only rebirthing exodite souls. Not too sure if this actually could work, but it sounds interesting in my head

I don't know what decade this material was created in, but the divide between the Exodites and the mainstream Eldar society sounds like a documentary of the last five years.