Watching the humans before him brimming with passion, Uslan felt a little bitter.
If only the Aeldari could be like this too.
How magnificent and great the ancient Aeldari Empire had once been. Their great enemy, the C'tan, had been shattered into countless fragments; the Necrons had retreated into slumber to avoid their edge; the Orks had fallen into stagnation and decline, devolving from the mighty Krork into the primitive, savage creatures they were today.
And the Aeldari had survived to the end, becoming the greatest victors of the War in Heaven.
But what about now? Most Aeldari, including the legendary Aeldari gods, had been devoured by Slaanesh, leaving only this scant remnant struggling desperately across the galaxy.
As far as Uslan knew, fewer than thirty Aeldari craftworlds remained in the galaxy. For a civilization, that was unspeakably tragic.
Thirty craftworlds—even if each one could rival a planet in size, what use was that?
A mere thirty planets, while humanity occupied more than a million worlds throughout the galaxy.
Too small a population made it difficult even to pass down a civilization's legacy. Even humanity in the second millennium had tens of thousands of disciplines requiring people to study and preserve them, let alone the Aeldari, whose psychic arts and science had both flourished to their utmost heights.
Yet the craftworld Aeldari had only a population on the brink of extinction, and some of them still had to train in the various Paths to defend their homes. Naturally, most technologies and knowledge would be lost.
They had never had, nor ever would have had, the chance to consider whether their forces might become numerous enough to clog the Webway.
Uslan felt both envy and sorrow. He consoled himself that the stronger their allies were, the safer the Aeldari would be,