Estimate based on how they are portrayed in the malus dark blade books. Everyone in Har ganeth took to the streets and started murdering each other, and malus narrates this happens everywhere on that night, but Har ganeth takes it more seriously
In this circumstances DE to be viable threat they need have allies. In world of TW WH3 i see them as armies composed from elite DE regiments + lots of monsters and norsca units with some other races.
@@ce4879they do that bs with Black Templars too. Makes absolutely zero sense, but hey. Why care about your universe when you can make some mildly interesting stories?
Your first mistake was assuming GW have any idea what numbers mean. They do not, and they have no intention of ever learning. Their authors write whatever they think sounds cool and call it a day. This is the case in every single warhammer setting.
This. Their writer Gav Thorpe literally said back in 2014: “There’s as many elves as the plot demands.” So trying to make sense of their settings beyond “cool faction makes toy soldiers sale” is futile. That’s why I like AoS’ worlds-building, it leans into the gonzo crazy setting so doesn’t expect you to over-analyze everything. Important info guy dead? The afterlives are physical places you can still find him. Cosmic war decimated populations? Life goddess Alarielle celebrated her victories over Nurgle by spawning a 1000 new races/species. Lumineth recovered fast from a war against a billion ghosts? They have a nation that specializes in magical cloning and even have a kingdom ran by one woman because they cloned her over ten thousand times to populate it.
@@ce4879I get that this style of storytelling gives freedom for the writers and readers, but imo it doesn't feel grounded, if that makes sense. Everything's trivial, there's no real stakes, because there's always more gimmicks in the lore to explain it. There's always more realms, or in 40k, there's always more planets. A place is important because the writers SAY it's important. Whereas in the old world, a city burned to the ground will not have another replacement of "oh look there's another city just like that city." It's still preference, but I guess the reason we do this over-analyzing stuff is that the writers could've done better.
The main problem of this video is thinking that every single dark elf came ONLY from Nagarythe. Morathi's cult of pleasure were spread all over Ulthuan. Secondly, they think that no other Asur joined the Druchii (willingly or not) after they fled. Then there's the whole deal about slavery, especially considering that they were more often than not the ones murdered in those holidays rather than dark elves themselves, and they have all sorts of dark magic for healing and whatnot; they also reproduce like rabbits (cult of pleasure + dark magic will get that for you) like Malus Darkblade for instance had over two dozen brothers and sisters, maybe even more than that iirc.
@@Asraeks And yet some of the most degenerate societies on Earth seem to have no problems multiplying. Mostly because of authoritarian, Darwinian structures that force people to serve the most base and corrupt version of the common good, i.e: multiply and pay the evil forward.
I think you are underestimating how desastrous the sundering was. It is stated in those same books, that every kingdom was split somewhat evenly. It was a civil war as disastrou it can be. It wasnt Nagarythe vs everyone else, it was 2/3 of Nagarythe + half of every single kingdom more or less exccept caledor, vs half of every single kingdom and Caledor. The civil war was alot more even that it seems at first. then again, in those same books it is stated that Nagarythe and Caledor are the most powerfull of all the ten kingdoms militarily. Caledor due to the dragons and Nagarythe due to the war likeness of its population. Nagarythe was basically elven Prussia, it could punch leagues above their weight, and remenber Malekith is a military genius (i know he hasnt managed to conquer ulthuan, but you got to give him credit. Every single time the Asur are saved by circunstance, like at the end of the sundering. Caledor lost the war, it was by chance that the tip of the halbard of a phoenix guard hit malekith and the flames erupted again forcing him to withdraw from the battle. Caledor didnt win it still, but he wasnt cruched.) So its fair to assume Nagarythe had both the largest army of the 10 kingdoms and the most veteran of it pre-sundering even if it never had the highest population. Also population wise, none of the 2 miitary powerhouses of Ulthuan, Caledor or Nagarythe have the highest population. Hell due to its mountenouse terrain Caledor has least people, they just have their dragons (who are nuts but still), and the smaller outer kingdoms, Crace and Cothique for example have just a few million more than Nagarythe. After all Nagarythe is large as a kingdom, it can be sparesely populated and have but a few economic centers (one of which is the powerhouse that is Anlec as a military citadel), and still be run eficiantly. Also lets not forget at this point in time, the outer kingdoms are the richest, in Ulthuan, Nagarythe being a prime example, with malekith personally having gonned around the world estableshing and protectig various colonies. Colonially wise he is at this point the unofical ruler of the colonies, as Ulthuan is too self-centered to actually bother. The colonies look to Malekith for protection and support, even if they are not Naggarothi The inner kingdoms are too peaceful, they were shielded by the worst of the demonic incursions by the outer kingdoms and the valor of Aenerion and the people of Nagarythe. Even if they have a standing Military its mostly a peace time militia. (except Eataine for obvious reasons.) So we can conclude Nagarythe had both a reliable, eficient and powerhouse of military and had enough manpower to sustain a desvestating civil as it was. Remenber Melektih recalled some colonials to help him in the war. Concerning the Black Arcs. I agree with you in the sense that they were not the population centers, but you are underestimating the worth of citadels in a military campaign as well as the likehood of their garrisons at this point. The War had been lost efectivly, if they wanted to survive these miltary centers would have been filled to the tea with multiple armies worth of a garrison. Even if but a portion survived in the Black arcs, they had the manpower to restart as well the expertise to endure. Also earlier slaves for the Druchi would have been the sparese human population of Naggaroth (which exists in lore). The war was too devasteting for the high elves to go on punitive campaign against the druchi thats why they had time to rebuild. Concerning the Blood Festival or whatever its called. The cult of khaine wasnt yet with this enough power to perform this. and the festival isnt just murder or blood. its a release of their entire dark emotional spectrum. Sex-orgies, ect is also in it as well as the entire cult of atharti. and culturaly the druchi are much more free concerning babies. true enough its a scheming society where death is never far, but when elves do not mind having 10 kids even if some are bastards the population will grow. Remenber these elves do not have the stigma that the Asur have concerning their darker side of the pantheon. asur fathers might have 2 or 3 kinds, while in the same time druchi with all the sex and orgies that happen might have 7, 8 or 9. as a summery. your starting point is wrong in the assumption that the civil war was a portion of Naggarythe vs everyone else, and from there you underestimated the military competence of the Naggarothi as well as the cultural impact of the dark side of the elven pantheon on them. I welcome anyone to make holes into here. Also i recomend Lawbeards with Andy hall a former GW fantasy writer and loremaster of sotek, they have one about the sundering that elucidates and goes over many of the points i made here. See you , loved the video.
Thank you I might have missed it because I was skimming but it’s important to note that lots of the elven colonies supported the dark elves and nagarond had some colonies already not as large as those on the old world but they still existed and would help in setting up a new nation
Wasn't half of the other kingdoms by the time of the Sundering. There was a period immediately after the attempted coup where nobody knew what was going on and things were split relatively evenly, but once word got out, it settled down to be most of the other Kingdoms and some of Nagarythe, versus most of Nagarythe and some of the other kingdoms.
The sundering is both the name of the event that broke the island and the civil war. So when one speaks of the sundering it may mean one of the 2. When the sundering started due to general confusion yes that happened, but eventually things settleout out, but until that happened half of each kingdom can be considered loyalist or traitor Saphery's own heir tried to coup her father to have her kingdom suport malekith. It didnt work and she was banished, but if this was happening at this level, with the higest families fighting themselves we can only guess on how things were on the ground at the lowest level.@@Draxynnic
I've heard some lore people say that there's a cultural difference between Asur and Druchii reproduction, for some reason Asur rarely conceive despite doing the deed just as much or maybe slightly less than the Druchii. It's a stretch and I agree that the numbers really don't make much sense, but figured it might be worth mentioning.
@@sythrus she has made a lot of deals with both Slaanesh and other dark forces, is a Hag Queen of Khaine, is the source of the Cauldrons of Blood and is the first elf to learn Dark Magic. It is said that she rivals Teclis and Nagash in power (pre-end times, probably). From potion crafting and magic innovation to possessing the only flawless Cauldron of Blood, Morathi would almost certainly be able to remedy low fertility, although doing so might come at a cost - the lives of a few slaves, perhaps?
Even with slaaneshi boons, its not like women in DE society sit on their asses and make kids like seedbeds, they also participate in raids, politics, intrigue and wars, so assuming that they won't all suddenly start producing 2-3 kids PER pregnancy this shit is straight on unsustainable. Not to mention that elves in here age like humans to their adult-ish years so before new kids can have their own kids they would need to go through puberty first, so even with everyone getting pregnant amount of babies per year would DECREASE, and that's not even accounting for fact that kids can die before that age cuz again, raids, politics, intrigue and wars are a thing. Oh and its unlikely Slaanesh would do something nice like that, just amount of magic that mothers would need to be flooded by would probably wear down even elves, and even if they wouldn't just croak instantly, between founding of Naggarond to End Times, that's almost 5000 years, it would be impossible to be able to tell dark elf apart from beastmen at that point with all the mutations they would be sporting
To be fair on the food aspect, I imagine the Black Arks double as pretty much the largest fishing ships you can imagine. All their population centers are near the ocean, and if we're continuing with the North America motif, the east coast was said to have a seemingly unnatural abundance of fish when the first Europeans came over. I imagine the sea is their lifeline and agriculture is basically nonexistent. There might be some opportunity for raising livestock as well near some of the territory a bit further south of their domain, probably starting around Clar Karond. Their geography really has a lot of similarities with northern Europe it seems. The population is a problem. I don't mind the idea that they are hyper-militarized and literally every single individual is also a soldier, by virtue of all their manual labor needs being met by slaves, but even still, they could not compose large enough armies to actually be much more than a nuisance, and they especially could not afford letting people die for no good reason. The DElves really should have been written a bit more differently, where they obsessively avoid casualties to themselves as the elite troops and commanders, and employ an enormous amount of slaves to do all the shitty parts of war. Have some Norscan-like tribes from the north that are subjugated and pretty much fill the same niche as the Hobgoblins of the chorfs, being entrusted with a lot more responsibility and being less a slave but certainly still subservient and answering to a dark elf. Have it be a civilization with an absurdly lopsided population pyramid, where the dark elves all live as the 1% elite, and their bloodthirstiness is largely kept to being unleashed on their underlings. You can still do nights of murder, but only non-dark elves can be targeted. And in fact, it would make a lot more sense, because we actually had a society in real life that did just that. Sparta would "declare war" on their helot slaves (a neighboring group that they subjugated early in their history) every year, and it was totally allowable for Spartan citizens to kill them. Supposedly, it was a sort of rite of passage for a Spartan youth to slay a helot in cold blood. So just do that. Make the DElves the Spartans. Super militarized, reliant on slaves to a dangerous degree, and have an extreme superiority complex with little empathy for lessers.
Never made sense to me that the Witch King would allow his own subjects to murder each other so nonchalantly, even given their veneration of the literal God of Murder societies need some sort of set of rules or else they cease to function.
or if we are doing large rewrites to the lore, just have Naggaroth be much much larger, and much much better at supporting life. have the dark elves be the relatively rural frontier warrior culture [high birth rate] and the high elves be the overly urban sedentary population [low birth rate].
@@matthiuskoenig3378 High Elves already have *SLOW* population growth. Like their estates are slowly withering because the Great Vortex has some effect on High elves (Probably due to their proximity to it), that slows their reproduction...
Okay, let's break this video down. Hopefully I will be able to shed some light on a lot of interesting points raised in this video. The Sundering : The vast majority of the elves who fought on Malekith's side were from Nagarythe, but there were also plenty of elves from other kingdoms in his armies, like Hellebron for example, who actually came from an elven colony in the Old World. Hellebron even then had amassed a large following of Khainite fanatics from all over Ulthuan and elsewhere. This is crucial to keep in mind ; the ancestors of the Dark Elves were never "just" the people of Nagarythe. Nagarythe was the most militarized kingdom of Ulthuan, but Malekith would have gotten his ass whooped a lot sooner if it was just him and the descendants of his father's soldiers. Malekith himself had acquired a bit of a cult following during his travels throughout Ulthuan's colonies in the Old World. Armed conflicts at Ghrond and the Northern Watchtowers ; Lore may vary when it comes to Ghrond, in the Malus Darkblade novels, a large scale chaos invasion coming at Ghrond is considered worrisome news by Malekith and Morathi, whereas some other sources maintain that Ghrond is always dealing with legions of chaos worshippers throwing themselves at its gates. What I do know for certain is this ; most of the other Watchtowers usually only have to deal with minor skirmishes, which they are well-equipped to handle, due to being specifically designed to hold off armies. It's not entirely unheard of for a garrison of a Dark Elven Watchtower to get wiped out by some chaos army or another, but that's not a regular occurrence. And when it does happen, it's always cause for major alarm. Greenskins in the Plain of Spiders ; This is quite literally the first time I'm hearing about Greenskins in that region and I like to consider myself pretty well-read on Dark Elf lore. If there are any Greenskins there that haven't been eaten by the local monsters, I would assume they'd be escaped "Labourers" from Druchii slave pens. High Elf incursions into Naggaroth : Just ask the Executioners of Har Ganeth how well those incursions usually go. High Elf raids happen VERY rarely, almost never, and it is even more rare that they are successful or don't end in disaster. Dark Elf raids : You say that raiding is not a profession that comes without casualties, but I think you're underestimating just how underhanded the Druchii can be. They almost always target defenseless villages where the biggest threat to their lives is some guy with a pitchfork. They almost always do it under the cover of night, when everyone is asleep. The average Dark Elf is usually faster and stronger than the average human, nevermind a random peasant with a pitchfork. And their ships are specifically designed to be super fast, meaning they can outrun and out-manouver the local coast guard. So what ends up happening is that a group of superhuman warriors who have honed their skills over decades attack a small town or a decrepit village under the cover of night when everyone is asleep and are then already gone with loot and "living cargo" before the locals can mount a cohesive defense. And with not a single casualty either, unless one of them trips and falls down a manhole or something. And that's not to mention when corsair captains make deals with local rulers ; you give us prisoners from your dungeons and we don't raid your shores. Win-win for everyone except the prisoners from the dungeons. They tend to suffer casualites when they choose riskier targets, such as small forts, large towns or entire cities, but like, the standard Dark Elf raid just involves a bunch of cowardly pirates pillaging a coastline village and running away. Death Night : Yeah I have nothing to add. Death Night lore is dumb. Although it is worth noting that most of the people who are killed during Death Night tend to be slaves. Basic backstabbing and murdering, Dark Elf families ; Funnily enough, we actually do know that Dark Elf families can be pretty huge. Malus Darkblade for example has five siblings ; Urial, Isilvar, Nagaira, Bruglir, and Yasmir. Dark Elves are nothing if not....productive. It's impossible to say how many times the Dark Elves backstab and murder each other, but there are a few things that keep those things in check. In Har Ganeth, if a Dark Elf murders someone, their head ends up on the chopping block. Literally. Familial ties ; Obviously, this is not always enough to stop a Dark Elf from murdering another Dark Elf...but often, it is. Discipline : This is how they differ from Skaven. The Dark Elves usually don't backstab or murder each other when they have a job to do, whether it be guarding Naggaroth against the forces of Chaos, invading Ulthuan, raiding foreign shores, or launching expeditions into the Chaos Wastes. Several invasions of Ulthuan ; Typically those invasions tend to be spaced out. There are usually centuries upon centuries between every Dark Elf invasion of Ulthuan that they spend replenishing their lost numbers. Hell, if I remember correctly, there is even a period in their history called "The Age of Hateful Peace", where they did just that. Food ; They actually do have a ton of food! You have to keep in mind that not all of Naggaroth is a frozen wasteland. There are plenty of crops around the city of Clar Karond for example. Okay, with all that being said, what does the Dark Elf population actually look like? Bad writing aside, this is what we know ; The Dark Elves have at least 20 Black Arks that we know of. Six have been confirmed destroyed, captured, or sunk. Two were presumably destroyed. Another two Black Arks were beached ( or wrecked ) in Nagronath in Albion, and presumably abandoned. So, let's say that ten Black Arks were destroyed, sunk, or abandoned. That still leaves ten confirmed Black Arks. One of them is the beached Ark of Naggor, which is home to a modest Druchii population. Each Ark is usually a giant fortress in its own right, so if we lowball its population and garrison to two-thousand, that means there are at least twenty-thousand dark elves across all Black Arks, including the dormant Naggor. If we highball the population of each Black Ark to five thousand, fifty-thousand elves. Now, for some *actual confirmed numbers* and not just idle speculation, let's look at the garrison of Ghrond. In the Malus Darkblade novel "Lord of Ruin, Ghrond had 15.000 spearmen, one thousand Black Guard divided into sixteen regiments, 500 unused chariots, and 1500 Cold One Knights, and an unknown number of crossbowmen etc. The total number of soldiers in the garrison of Ghrond was twenty-four thousand Dark Elves, which according to Malus Darkblade is twice as many elves as any other garrison in Naggaroth. That means that Hag Graef, Naggarond, Har Ganeth, Clar Karond and Karond Kar have 12.000 regular soldiers in their garrison each. If we add Ghrond's number to the tally, that means the Dark Elves have 84.000 regular soldiers in total, not counting random civilians conscripted from their population, the various Autarii tribes in the Blackspine Mountains or elsewhere, or the elves dwelling in the half a dozen confirmed Black Arks. In other words, the Dark Elves allegedly have enough of a population to maintain an active military force of eighty-four-thousand elves. The more you know!
"Unless they trip into a manhole or something." ... "Malekith, Sir! We've suffered unprecedented casualties on today's raid- *Two* dumbasses fell into a river in Lego city, while we were kidnapping the children making lego city!" >If Malekith laughs, The messenger is merely flayed but let go afterwords. >If Malekith doesn't laugh, that's when terrible things happen.
Yes, the druchii lore lacks logic and should have become extinct long ago. I've been thinking about it for years, the numbers don't make sense, not to survive, not to maintain the population, much less to prosper. I would say that the self-murder festival kills fewer people than the raids and constant threats of the place where they live, but it is more about exchanging numbers than suffering fewer casualties. Supposedly all non-magical, military, beastlord, administrative, etc. work is done by slaves so that the druchii can militarize their society as much as possible, but even then it doesn't make sense. The druchii are not the only society of evil elves that makes no sense, they are designed to be hyperbole not to make sense under logical examination. The skaven suffer from exactly the same problems as the druchii, but their entire lore revolves around how they reproduce en masse, eat almost anything, grow incredibly fast, and even though they literally die in the millions, there are always more and more, so it makes sense.
It doesnt make sense because ya'll forgeting this is a magical world, with actual magic. The main problem of this video is thinking that every single dark elf came ONLY from Nagarythe. Morathi's cult of pleasure were spread all over Ulthuan. Secondly, they think that no other Asur joined the Druchii (willingly or not) after they fled. Then there's the whole deal about slavery, especially considering that they were more often than not the ones murdered in those holidays rather than dark elves themselves, and they have all sorts of dark magic for healing and whatnot; they also reproduce like rabbits (cult of pleasure + dark magic will get that for you) like Malus Darkblade for instance had over two dozen brothers and sisters, maybe even more than that iirc.
@@gustavosanches3454 "but magic tho" is a hand-wave and isn't a valid argument, because internal consistency is necessary for any good fiction, whether fantasy or otherwise.
I can make sense of them and easily 1) there is historical precedent for tiny nations threatening and conquering huge ones. The Mongols and later Manchus conquered 100s of millions of Chinese with maybe a million to a few million people respectively. They had a big cavalry advantage, while the dark elves have a big per capita magic strength advantage. This is basically implied, dark magic is wild and only the top level high elf mages can match them. 2) they have lots of babies due to cultish stuff. Idk how long an elf ladies gestation period is but if it's actually similar at all to humans they could have way more kids than high elves. Maybe there is a cultic rite that literally allows them to have children more often. 3) I was gonna say more people evacuated to the black arcs but they had no warning didn't they lol. They would just need cult population growth. 4) the khaine night is exaggerated in the accounts. Maybe 1% actually are murdered for such a purge to make sense.
Dark elves also have a huge monster advantage actually. A single Beast masters can drive hundreds of animals, a few manticore or a fricken hydra into battle. iirc war lions of chrase are small and elite troop and they have less dragons than the dark elves.
@@keropnw3425 High Elves have always been described as having more dragons than the Dark Elves, it's just that most of them are normally asleep. But for the Dark Elves, Black Dragons are basically their equivalent of Steam Tanks - I think the most they've ever had at any one time is about a dozen, maybe two. High Elves probably have about that or more as a general thing, and a LOT more when someone manages to wake up a significant portion of those sleeping under the mountains in a crisis. There are also phoenixes, gryphons, and eagles, though we don't know their numbers. Dark Elves probably do have more mid-range monsters, but the likes of manticores and hydras are still rare and valuable - it's probably not that huge an advantage.
Also I don't think it was just the traitor Nargarythe fighting in Malekith's ranks. Its worth considering the influence Morathi and the Cult of Pleasure held over the High Elf population before the civil war.
I mean Boldly assuming that the cult leeched a full 10% from all the other kingdoms, round it up to just doubling the starting population for ease of math, it still kinds doesn't work.
I love dissections of the more ridiculous propaganda lore regarding the various factions. The dark elves are apparently the supreme power in their land except they can't even defeat the high elf beach head at Arnheim that's existed for so long it's now proper city. This is like how the Empire books claim Altdorf is an unworkable mess but also houses 1 million plus people, something that requires quite a bit of infrastructure they don't have. General rule of thumb for WHF, any number GW gives for nation sized events, armies or populations. Remove a zero, if it still seems unlikely, remove another.
Right away I can tell you, that map is Nagarythe *after* the Sundering. The OG Nagarythe was a coherent body of land from what you have circled, all the way to the northwest til it became part of what is present-day Naggarond. Also as back-stabby as the Druchii are, they have lots of kids whereas Asuryii rarely have children
If I remember correctly, while Nagarythe itself is sparsely populated it also has by far the largest colonial realm out of all the elven kingdoms so it probably made up far more than 5% of the elven population. Also the elves probably had a population closer to 10 million rather than 1 billion. And in regards to relative population: Cothique basically got exterminated by Hellebron and Tiranoc was occupied for years, so neither of those are anywhere close to their starting populations.
Yes, although it’s true that Dark Elf society as a whole only really functions when you don’t think about its population and manpower, the video does seem to gloss over how bad the casualties were for the other Elf Kingdoms and seems to act as if they were all still basically at full strength.
Beware of wall of autism: Let me do my take on this with a bit of the math to make this a bit more tangible with added context and lore. I will just make minor adjustments I am not saying I disagree with you but just to add a bit of context based on what you have said since those would be my thoughts on the subject. I think a starting population of 40,000,000 for the Elves is reasonable if you compare it with historical precedents. For example, late medieval France had a population of 20,000,000. Medieval Japan had a population of around 15,000,000. Medieval China had a population of around 20,000,000. Given that we know that the Elves didn’t have as many children as Humans but also basically did not die from natural causes, it is almost impossible to make a model of what their age or growth would be without knowing how many children they had. Otherwise, it would be possible. I decided to just double the population of these societies since it can account for the lack of death to natural causes, explain the naturally low fertility rate of Elves, and reflect historical standards for a nation of the time. With a starting population of 40,000,000, I will divide them into two categories: those living in Ulthuan and those living in the colonies. Although the colonies had existed for hundreds of years at the start of the civil war, I think we can safely assume that roughly 90% remained in Ulthuan. I used 90% but feel free to use any number you want. I will also keep your presumption that the population is distributed evenly and say that around 3.6 million elves live in each kingdom to keep things simple. Now it is said that compared to the other elven kingdoms, Nagarythe is the most militaristic. As such, I will assume that they are able to muster a larger army than the rest of the Elven Kingdoms. A society cannot muster over 10% of its population to serve in the army without severe ramifications to food production and administration. Accordingly, I will presume that Nagarythe can muster 10% of its population to serve in its military, whereas the other Elven Kingdoms can muster around 5%. This should account for the discrepancies in military tradition while also accounting for historical precedents as it pertains to mobilization. Finally, although the colonies played a minor role in the civil war, it is important to note that they were loyal to Malekith and not Caledor/Bel Shannar. This is because Malekith received their loyalty when he relieved them from siege when he was exploring the Old World. However, since they are not from Nagarythe, I will also assume that they mobilized around 5% of their population. Another important point to remember is that Nagarythe was only the center where cults were originated; it was not their sole location of them. To the dismay of many elves, the cults had converted a significant portion of elven society. Much of this division came from the fact that elves, out of boredom and Morathi’s expansive list of fetishes, worshipped the Cytharai. The point I am trying to make here is that it is not just Nagarythe that became "dark elf" but a significant portion of the other kingdoms also defected for religious reasons despite the source of that corruption being in Anlec. Accordingly, I will presume that around 1% of all Ulthuan elves joined the dark elves as combatants, with the assumption being that 2.5% of all Ulthuan elves joined the dark elves. Again, feel free to use any number you want. Based on these arguments/assumptions/half-guesses, we can now make our calculations. Nagarythe: A population of 3,600,000 with a maximal standing army of 360,000 (10% of the population). Cultists: A band of 810,000 Cultists, which were split around all elven kingdoms, produced militias of 324,000. Colonies: A population of 4,000,000 with a maximal standing army of 200,000. Based on the above, the total maximal force for the Dark Elves is around 884,000 (360,000 from Nagarythe, 324,000 from the militias, and 200,000 from the colonies). The total maximal force for the other Elven Kingdoms is 180,000 with a population of 3,600,000 each. Given that there are 9 kingdoms, the total maximal force that can be leveraged is 1,620,000 (180,000 multiplied by 9) with a population of 32,400,000 (3,600,000 multiplied by 9). If you include the timeline of events where a few Elven Kingdoms were destroyed by surprise (for instance, Tirranoc surrendered and Cothique was taken by surprise), you then have 7 Elven Kingdoms actively resisting, which brings the number down to 1,260,000 (180,000 multiplied by 7). Now, if we compare the total maximum mustering capabilities of each army, 884,000 vs. 1,260,000, we can see that the Dark Elves were not completely helpless during the Sundering, as it initially seems. During the Sundering, it is also important to note that the Dark Elves were the only kingdom that had a standing army, most of which was composed of veterans from serving in Malekith’s campaigns with the dwarves. The Druchii were thus feared by the rest of the elves since they were the elite of martial prowess at the time. Despite the initial advantages, what prevented the Druchii from being able to win the Sundering was the absence of a navy (due to its destruction at Lothern (I believe)) and the fewer number of dragons at their disposal. By the time the Druchii were defeated, most of Ulthuan was destroyed since the High Elves eventually employed scorched earth tactics, burning and destroying Ulthuan rather than surrendering it to Malekith. After the Sundering, we can assume that roughly 50% of all elves in Ulthuan were killed or murdered, whereas 90% of the Druchii population was destroyed. If we take these numbers into consideration, that leaves the starting population of Naggaroth at 360,000 (10% of 3,600,000) vs. a population in Ulthuan of 18,000,000 (50% of 36,000,000). By then, the Druchii further militarized and became a slave society akin to the Spartans, where all non-Druchii were slaves, and they composed the workforce of Naggarothi society. There are two more factors to bare in mind, it is worth noting that the Druchii typically have a higher fertility rate than High Elves and that they were unaffected by the War of the Beard, which truely sealed it for the High Elves. It basically becomes a guess as to how they survived, but perhaps we can say that the Druchii gained a better navy with the Black Arks and could thwart any High Elven incursion to stabilize.
Clearly if we take the fact that they survived with such a low starting population compared to Ulthuan, we DO KNOW how they survived. Only thing that would make sense is very high fertility compared to high elves. Which could be natural - low of orgies, less scrupulous about traditional family, just lot of sex and babies. And it could also be magical effect, after all lot of them follow the cult of Morathi, it could be effect from that.
We can actually infer that Dark Elves have more children. For example, Tyriom and Teclis are some of the few mentions of Elves having siblings at all. Nevermind twins. But we know Malus Darkblade himself is one of six children. He had five siblings. Those are just some examples. But it's safe to say dark elves have more children. Probably from 2-5x as many.
Bretonnia has a ton of plot armor as well, there is no way a society like that would’ve lasted as long as they did if not for the direct blessings of an elf goddess. I think the Empire also has these sort of issues to, at least when it comes to the constant amount of crisis that pop up constantly. Like the skaven wars and the black death plague that came before it supposedly killed 90% of the whole Empire’s population, but not only were they able to eventually recover from it but they managed to somehow beat back the Skaven invasion and I think there was a massive chaos invasion that proceeded it. And this is just one example of massive population losing crisises, there are many other likewise ones like the Vampire wars, the norcsa raids and invasions including a massive one that happened in recent times to Ostland killing most of its population, the succession crisis civil wars, the Tamurkhan invasion, that Groom invasion where he pretty much took control of the Empire for a bit, another orc invasion that lead to the entire elector province Solland destroyed and never being properly resettled until recent times. Granted these big events may have happened centuries apart from each other, but it gets a bit ridiculous how the Empire manages to remotely stay afloat enough for basically another population culling event every few centuries.
I imagine this is like a High Elf conspiracy theorist explaining how the Dark Elves don't exist and that the Pheonix Court made the Druchii up to fool Asur civilians into paying more tax XD
I don't know much about the lore of the Dark Elves, but to be fair to the Night of Blood- even if every citizen takes part, it doesn't mean that every citizen kills one other citizen. If you look at historical human society for inspiration, typically something like that would often come down to lynchings, where a mob of people targets one person (or a group of people) who have been particularly asshole-ish. Many of the 'participants' are likely spectators watching the scenes play out. But that's assuming that there's not an actual detailed description of this that contradicts what I'm saying, which I have no idea if there is or isn't.
I haven't seen the conclusions yet, but depending on the sources, if your numbers are compared to real work numbers on historical sources, they are often wildly exaggerated. So one could, in theory, suppose things such as 2/3rds dying or fleeing could really be like a quarter. If your being EXTREMELY generous and assuming faulty sources
Thank you! I know you have been talking about this, and I mentioned it too, but yeah, completely agree with the video. To go into bit (way) more detail, I think you can easily take off a zero, and say 100 million elves started out on Ulthuan. Which is still double or more, considering populations in 'medieval themed' fantasy, but whatever. So Id say 200k elves making it to Naggarond is about right, for them to inhabit that whole area across a dozen bigger cities or so. Ive only read the Malus books, and Teclis+Tyrion trilogy, but the Khaine night you might be overplaying a little. Its probably a large number in Har Ganeth, but way lesser everywhere else. And its also likely Har Ganeth's population isnt big to begin with, just swells for that one night, as 'tourists' came to murder each other, so dwindles at the same time. Whilst the other factors claim way more lives, most likely. Warding off Chaos and Greenskins aint easy task, although lets say its mostly dumb monke, beastmen and... well, greenskins mostly dumb, period. There also wasnt... really, threatening leaders during these lesser invasions, and fortifications are built well. Okay, as you say, they still lose thousands yearly, from a... 200k pool in my version. More if high elves raid them back. Depending on where they go raid, they lose less or more. More against Ulthuan, less against others. Considering they dont give af about their own, and actively backstab each other, its likely more than they could get off with each time. I believe its also very generous every say 80 yo dark elf *only* killed 3-4 other dark elves to get there. There's also the fact male magic users are constantly hunted down by Malekith due to that dumb prophecy. So thats actively throwing out fighting-abled mages, who probably kill scores of elves before they go down. There's also Shades, living outside society, killing regular dark elves at every opportunity. There's Beastmasters actively hunting monsters, claiming much of their lives, and likely monsters just all around Naggaroth kill a bunch before they are hunted down/dominated to begin with. There's Malekith constantly killing his underlings, who are already the most successful of their society. Sometimes alongside big purges of their entire families. Just one proper invasion of Ulthuan would wreck Dark elf society for centuries to come, if not doom it outright. And thats by High Elves never counterinvading for some reason. Nor Chaos using the situation to their advantage, for some reason. And even one kid every 10 years is generous, considering... its elves. And thats by saying that one kid will grow up to be an adult each time. Luckily we can say malnutrition, or childhood sicknesses would claim about no lives in a deeply magical society, and with elves having more resistances to begin with. Not as many as dwarfs, but still. So yah. Its a constantly dwindling population by its very nature and literally every circumstance around it. It wouldnt survive a century, let alone 10k years. Even if we say about 2/3 or even 3/4 of them are combat ready in some way, whether as pirates, assassins, mages or proper soldiers. At the very least, entire cities would rebel, knowing they are weaker than their neighbors, due to various geographical reasons or mere unluck, which in their society is like sharks smelling blood in the water. Like Ghrond warding off Chaos, and being primary mage city, it must have a large fighting population, but small overall. And Morathi is also there, who might or might not join a rebellion against her own son. A rival city could also easily take Har Ganeth right after its Blood Night. But this is just hypothetical now. Although I believe there have been cases of certain cities of Arks rebelling, but those were usually squashed... resulting in again, thousands of deaths, especially for the rebels, duh.
Due to its cool factor though, its high value upon individuality, ruled by a small, elite cast, and having large slave population, I would liken Naggarond to the Sith Empire from Star Wars. The proper one from EU Kotor times, that is. And its noteworthy to say Sith are also extremely self-defeating, and their empires fall apart every single time in EU lore. Not in small part due to their constant infighting. And their control of the galaxy is also usually 1/10th of the Galactic Republics'. As for dark elves, although at this point Im sure most people checked out long ago due to 'tldr', I have a warhammer-esque fantasy world slowly built up myself. I noted the faults of warhammer dark elves, and tried to eliminate or lessen at least some of them. In my version, elves live in the southwest corner of a continent (the only big continent). With Chaos living to the north. Dark elves are turned by Chaos to begin with, thus have constant backing of demons from north. They invaded, and took a huge coastal province, providing place to build their navy, and the 'bread basket' province of high elves, providing food forevermore. When humans arrived to the world, they claimed eventually two of the eastern-most elven territories, thus high elves really got stuck in a corner. Trading also got less due to their eventual mistrust of other order races, largely thanks to human and dwarf sheningans. Dark elves also have way less infighting, as their main 'Chaos Lord' and their Queen (A Morathi-esque character) focuses on desire and lust, which also comes with faster population growth. Thus they about equalized their numbers to high elves, whose empire got smaller and smaller as time went on. They still fight between each other just about constantly, but its either a 1v1 of countries, or even dark elves having demonic support. Thus I tried to equalize them. High Elves also noting sometimes a full on invasion against dark elves, or demons prievously, would just cripple their country, so at this point they just refuse to sacrifice themselves for the 'greater good' of the world. Plus, due to scarce, but massive Chaos invasions, its kinda better for the world for them to be around, as they still 'soak' a lot of damage from baddies. And in my story I also have a Lovecraftian evil faction invading in the 'present', much like Void in Warcraft. Which will see even the demons fighting the tentacle monsters, so I sort of 'needed' to not fully eliminate any big players across my world's history, as only a united front of good and bad factions can defeat this newest threat. Demons and other baddies want to rule the world, whilst the tentacle people want to destroy it outright, so there is all the reason baddies need to fight them. Im sure there is room for improvement, and its not done by any means, and I mostly wrote this as a counterpoint and for my amusement. I dont really expect anyone to read it, but thank you if you did. I still love Sith as well as dark elves, so I tried to make them work... better, at least, outside the confines of copyrighted Warhammer.
The impression I get with the Death Nights is that most of the victims tend to be slaves, because the Druchii themselves are either participants or they're mostly able to keep out of the way. That said, I do find it hilarious when Dark Elf mains claim that it's the High Elves that have plot armour because they always manage to rally after initial defeats during an invasion. Thing is that's something that's happened multiple times historically - a smaller but more militaristic nation or alliance with good leadership takes a larger but more peaceful nation or alliance by surprise, sweeps all before them in the opening stages of the war, but doesn't quite manage to land a fatal blow and the war settles into one of attrition that the larger side eventually wins. That's every one of the invasions up to the End Times. But it could just as easily be the world wars, the Napoleonic wars, and more stretching back into history.
Warhammer druchii and forgotten realms drows, same fundamental problem of a cool evil race that is way too backstabby and chaotic to be the functional superpower that it is supposed to be in universe.
They live long, have Slannesh cults and a desire to be better than their kin. Not hard to think they bred vigorously as part of their desire to be powerful. I wanna know where the dark elf touched Human Boy YesYes.
If America is any valid real-life comparison, you can have a population start with a few hundred and balloon up to over 300 million in the span of just 500 years.
How do the Druchii keep their numbers up? Maybe magic or divine intervention. Even if we haven't seen it written down doesn't mean there couldn't be some in-universe explanation for it. Maybe Druchii fertility was an unmentioned part of Morathi's deal with Slaanesh. The population numbers of the Empire have also been rewritten many times. One old source lists Altdorf as a city of around 15.000, but that sounds incredibly small considering the Warhammer world of Malus is supposed to be 5 times bigger than Earth.
Yeah, Altdorf with 15000 inhabitants (and other Imperial cities with such low pop) is ridicolously small even for 16th century standards. I always give Altdorf, Nuln and Middenheim the populations that cities like Berlin, Koln or Prague had back in 16th century
@@andresr.viguera9791 Why aim for 16th century though? It would be one of largest cities in Europe at 15k just a few centuries back. Naturally we see empire with early guns, swords, nice hats, plate armor so we go there. But they mostly learnt this from drawfs. Bretonnia is clearly early medieval society. So it could basically be 11-12th century Europe just with guns and plate armor given to humans by dwarfs.
@@fridericusrex6289 It´s not just The Empire. Basically every human nation sans Bretonnia is in the Renaisance period, so pointing Warhammer as happening during those times is more fitting. Edit: and also Albion, which are in the Iron Age period
@@andresr.viguera9791 Would not really say Norsca is renaissance either. Estalia etc. could be considered same case as empire though, contact with dwarves made them technologically advanced.
@@fridericusrex6289 By human nations I mean the order ones, naturally not counting those guys from the Chaos Wastes. Well, so what the Dwarfs made them progress? Back in 16th century there were many civilizations that didn't know gunpowder yet but the core of Europe already knew it. And btw, Bretonnia isn't a good example because while the land is in Medieval stasis its navy is the most gunpowder happy in the Old World
Lol ive thought about this myself. Chaos Dwarfs have a similar population problem but it is answered with the way they manage labour, and alliances with other races (ie hobgobos) plus they are not really that militarily aggressive, plus they do still have some gorms of alturism. Skaven too but they breed like crazy. To be fair though I feel when you look into the deeper logistical analysis of many fantasy stuff it becomes pretty obvious how little sense it makes. Even Tolkien and Song of Ice and Fire have similar issues like these. Also worth saying that there was a real life society that did function like the Dark Elves. That is the spartans. It was largely a part of why Sparta collapsed. After Sparta would fight a war, a massive quantity of their Spartan population would die, and in response Helot lower classes would rebel. Spartan history is riddled with constant Helot rebellions, and eventually it was too much
I feel like the little lore chaos dwarves have take their small population into consideration. Their slave population outnumbers themselves something like 10 to 1 and they don't really venture out of the Dark Lands since they don't really have the population to expand into new settlements.
Few points to make here Not all dark elves are from Nagarythe that was just the place that Morathi and Malekith had the largest base of support because its the Kingdom they ruled / originated from - the sundering was a conflict across all of Ulthuan not just in Nagarythe The Druchii likely have a much higher birthrate than the Asur just based on their culture, behaviours and dangerous lifestyles Yes Elves were slaughtered en masse during the sundering and lots of them left Nagarythe to escape Malekith but plenty of them would also have went to Nagarythe to join him and support his claim which you dont account for in your math The Black Arks are cities not citadels even if thats the term that is used to describe them - they are large enough to house entire fleets by themselves each one houses tens of thousands of warriors alone, not counting the beasts, slaves etc Lastly GW has never focused on numbers for WH Fantasy, in some stories Altdorf is only a few thousand people and only important because of the colleges of magic and the cult of sigmar - in other stories there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people there and the city is gigantic You also barely account for the shattering of Ulthuan itself which would have killed far more Asur than the war itself probably tens of millions if not more using your math Theres no definitive answer on any nations in WH Fantasy
Few points to make here Not all dark elves are from Nagarythe that was just the place that Morathi and Malekith had the largest base of support because its the Kingdom they ruled / originated from - the Sundering was a conflict across all of Ulthuan not just in Nagarythe also to that point the Sundering lasted CENTURIES it wasnt just a few months of war, plenty of time for Malekith’s supporters to concentrate themselves in areas The Druchii likely have a much higher birthrate than the Asur just based on their culture, behaviours and dangerous lifestyles Yes Elves were slaughtered en masse during the sundering and lots of them left Nagarythe to escape Malekith but plenty of them would also have went to Nagarythe to join him and support his claim which you dont account for in your math The Black Arks are cities not citadels even if thats the term that is used to describe them - they are large enough to house entire fleets by themselves each one houses tens of thousands of basic warriors alone, not counting the beasts, slaves, sorceresses etc Lastly GW has never focused on numbers for WH Fantasy, in some stories Altdorf is only a few thousand people and only important because of the colleges of magic and the cult of sigmar - in other stories there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people there and the city is gigantic Theres no definitive answer on any nations in WH Fantasy trying to invent them is just an exercise in futility
I wish I could remember where I heard this, though I simply can not, but I do know it was explicitly stated that "there are enough elves for whatever is needed" and GW explicitly did not actually keep numbers consistent.
They could just make it that dark elves use dark magic to have kids at a faster pace and kids grow faster but the magic also takes away their souls. Could be a nice dark way to explain how they can muster forces so often and attack so many people
I thought it was mentioned in a book or a brief lore snippet that the Great Vortex does harm elves due to some sort of sensitivity to magic more than most mortal races?? Which mostly affect the high elves due to their close proximity to it? So in an elven book where "And the Dark elves massed an army to threaten the High Elves" it isn't absurd because like, Dark Elves don't have the leg weight that they have to keep on to keep the world spinning.
The issue with the civil war was that it wasn't just Nagaryth against everyone else. Malekith was the son,\ (and in the opinion of many the rightful heir) of the late god-king and hero of Ulthuan, and until he poisoned the Pheonix king, if was the presumptive successor, to the extent that the phoenix king was about to resign and nominate him as his successor. The Sundering split the population in many parts of Ulthuan. In addition to that, Malekith was a hero in the colonies, and some people in them, such as Hellabrond ended up following him. The constant murderous backstabbing, war, raiding, and inherently low elvish birth rate points are totally sensible though. There's no way to make that sustainable without ludicrous plot-armor, or skaven birthrates.
Took a bit to come up with this but. I completely agree the the dark elves would be doomed in a real numbers test vs the high elves however a perspective. 1. This murder festival of khaine, perhaps it’s inspired and therefore more like a real like event that occurred like this. The Spartan’s regularly declared war on their slaves called helots, this was to cull the weak population and instill fear into the slaves. Perhaps the murder festival of khaine isn’t done with the idea of killing dark elves but murdering slaves. 2. What are the genetic differences between a dark elf and a high elf? Perhaps like races like the Beastmen, they increase their numbers of children in Naggaroth, with captured high elves women. This doesn’t fix the dark elves numbers however it does slightly alleviate the negative numbers a tiny bit.
Maybe Slaanesh and Nurgle said “let there be life” and gave the Druchii weird plant pods to fuck and grow their kids in. Love me some Warhammer Lore, it really stretches suspension if disbelief
As some others have said, Malekith didn't only have elves from Nagarythe. It was full on civil war across Ulthuan. Now, Civil Wars rarely involve 100% of the population. Usually between 1/3 and 1/2 of a population will not actively participate in the war and just keep their heads down, becoming civilian casualties and such as things happen. Nagarythe was the main power base of Malekith, but he would have had fairly large chunks from the other places too. And these elves naturally joined him and became Dark Elves as well. And did they all leave aboard the Black Arks? Of course not, they have normal ships too. As for keeping up their numbers. Elves have very long lives, so under normal circumstances they have little incentive to populate quickly. Especially in Ulthuan where it is relatively safe. However, Elves in Warhammer seem to be capable of reproducing as fast as humans if they wish. So in a harsh environment like Naggaroth the Dark Elves could easily go into reproductive overdrive(relatively speaking) and keep their numbers up. Its really just a case of cultural shift to focus on that. Ulthuan still maintains the older Elvish culture, which would naturally limit reproduction as with many thousand year lifespans you don't want everybody having children, even 1 child every few decades would quite rapidly get out of hand if you live for 3-5 thousand years. But that would be a purely cultural stopper on Elven population growth. Perhaps that was actually one of the main objections to the cult of pleasure, the danger of overpopulation. Even a slight increase in birthrates could be a problem over the course of thousands of years for the Elves. But since the Dark Elves have changed their culture so radically, they have something keeping it in balance with the higher casualty rates they naturally have. Regarding the holiday of murder, I suspect that actual participation in that is very low. Its tradition, and you CAN do it. But then again just because you can do something doesn't mean everybody will do it. I imagine that the bulk of the Dark Elf population, while certainly warlike and cruel, are a little less stereotypically bloodthirsty than you might expect. The over the top crazy murder orgies, that's for the Dark Elf nobility in the castles and temples. The average joes are far less so. Not to say that the numbers given by GW aren't garbage. They certainly are, but you can at least kinda find some way to make it work if you squint your eyes a bit. This would actually lead to an interesting thing where the Dark Elf population as a whole is a lot younger than the normal Elf population, sure there are still a lot of Dark Elves who are thousands of years old, but the bulk of the population is a lot younger. Maybe only a few hundred years old typically, and they all tend to have a lot of kids. And when you live for hundreds or thousands of years, the time it takes to raise a child becomes relatively less and less. What is 9 months of pregnancy and 15ish years of child rearing when you have centuries and millenia?
I can easily imagine 90% of Druchi being born from slaves who are basically treated like broodmothers. But there is really no justification for why the Asur struggled so much, trying to get rid of them.
I literally remember one of the writers, possibly Gav, who said that a society like the Dark Elves will just tear by the seams if you look too closely into it. It doesn't work. But that's not really the point of the setting.
Numbers? What numbers! There's like 1000 space marines for an ENTIRE FUCKING SECTOR. And when an author wants a bunch of space marines they just go "And like 5 chapters just came from my ass to assist in this battle"(Third war of Armageddon had 50000 marines, THAT'S 50 CHAPTERS), in fact just in tabletop you wield a big part of a chapter.
I think this is one of those cases in writing where the logistics themselves are your most interesting plot device AND it practically writes itself. To be fair, this kind of writing mindset wasn't nearly as common back when WHFB was originally conceived as it is today.
First if all, youre right it doesnt make sense. Now, one fundamental mistake, Nagaryrhe before the subdering was not sparsely populated, pretty sure it was one if the most populous and largest kingdoms. The sundering fd it. So assume 20-30 % of all elves lived there before the sundering. Fun video!
Great video really fun thought experiment! I wounder if perhaps on the holiday they kill majority slaves and less of themselves? But that would be a huge stretch. Also if they took enough wifes from the high elfs that could help with some numbers. Not enough though. Idk i never realized that they didn't make sense till now 😂
Nagarythe is sparsely populated specifically because of the devastation caused during the civil war. It was not really hte case before that. Also remember that elves were actively moving there during Aenarion's reign, because he was attracting elves who were most hurt by the war (having their family murdered etc.) and during the civil war, they mostly sided with Malekith. During the civil war. And those dark elves fled to the cities that were turned into black arks, those cities were not just magically spearated on a whim one afternoon, it was the direct result of losing the war. Also Dark elves are not nearly as treacherous as Dark Eldar (and I mean between themselves, they will absolutely betray anyone else). Also the vast majority of Dark Elf economy s based on slavery, which means they have a lot of warriors and other specialised people, instead of menials, like High Elves.
death night becomes more plausible if we make some additional assumptions about it: it's supposed to be the witch elves doing it mostly. the dark elves have a class society with numerous slaves. the slaves are the most likely targets of death night. it seems unlikely that death night is claiming significant numbers of people that are capable of defending themselves; it's about murder, not combat. the witch elves are supposed to rove around in bands, so it's not clear that they each need to personally kill someone at a 1:1 ratio. it could be many witch elves all participating in the ritual murder of fewer people than the number of witch elves. it is not clear just how much blood the witch elves need to rejuvenate themselves. and many of those killed might be abducted high elves or other slaves. since the main target of death night would be the powerless, and the powerless are largely property of more powerful dark elves, those more powerful dark elves have a good reason to try to at least limit the numbers taken from their own holdings if not prevent it altogether. just because murder is legal does not mean that there aren't situations of successful deterrence. so we might assume that death night mostly targets weaker households and that its terror outstrips its material impact: even just a small amount of annual ritual murder is pretty scary, after all. it could even be the case that dark elf households could use death night as a way to discipline their slaves and servants, choosing to protect some and let others be taken. we might further assume that witch elves have some inclination of who it is more damaging to dark elf society to kill, and choose their targets accordingly (if for no other reason than that they will want the stock available to be murdered to grow rather than decline). they might even prefer killing men just as a matter of taste. either or both being the case, there would be less impact on the reproductive capacity of their society than we might otherwise expect. similarly, low status free dark elves would have a reason to become corsairs if only to avoid being present during these death nights, instead raiding far off shores from a black ark, and thereby bringing more slaves home to eventually be murdered. or as breeding stock to produce more (among other things) murder victims.
GW writers have actively stated something along the lines of "There are exactly the right amount of elves to make the story interesting." When referring to populations. It would also pretty much extend to all other races I would guess but there are so many schlock reasons that people can come up with.
I think anyone who has scrutinized the Dark Elves of WHF has come to the same conclusion. Their murderous ladder climbing in their society is the real problem. Without it, there's no issue. I do know they have a higher rate of reproduction than the other elves. Death Night isn't as chaotic as you describe either. The murders aren't random slaughter(it is in some places) but rather it's targeted and many victims are slaves anyway.
Ok yes. But counter point - how cool would it be to have a Video game with the premise of trying to build Naggarond ? with all the shit you described going on - and Shadow of war style gameplay. wouldnt that be something :)
Hahah! I remember having this exact same rant a little while ago...considering their murderous habits, the attrition from constant warfare, raiding and so on, it makes no sense! The only bone of contention I have to this is that the Sundering actually had a lot of the other kingdoms nobility defect to Malekith, turned by his promises etc, something like a third of every other kingdom except Caledor defected and turned on the others, causing all kinds of chaos. Still though, they are poorly thought out, but I have never really liked ridiculous "evil" versions of the races and so on.
I like the idea that the Dark Elves are brainwashing (through torture) the elves they capture (sea elves/colonists, high elves, wood elves, etc) to fight in their rank and file.
overall agree with your perspective. does the dark elf population get supplemented from cults in high elves? i can't see it as the known hatred of dark elves towards high elves would suggest that the majority of high elf defectors would end up as slaves if they encountered dark elves unless they ascertained dominance by killing some dark elves.
Colonies again are left forgotten. And also it is important to understand that Nagarythe army during the Sundering ≠ shitshow of current druchii warhost. During the Sundering it was basically the biggest and most trained army group of elves, possibly being the height of their military power, with Nagarythe, not Naggaront military traditions and without all that edgy backstabbing. Nagarythe + colonies was centralized militarized society which practiced war for centuries, while other kingdoms were just existing on buble. If you want history example - look for Ceaser in the Gallia, where despite them having big edge in populace they crumbled before his politicking and military might of legions.
There weren't 1 billion elves? I always try to be also very generous with populations and sizes (Ulthuan is the size of a continent and the kingdoms are nations) thus having the possibility of having 1 billion elves back in their prime (again, I am generous as well. But that is the only way you can have so much war and still room for development and recovery)
Also reminds me of Norsca somehow continuing to exist after how many times a army walked all over them and randsacked everything they can find. But those guys are actual savages wich nobody cares about neither in the videogame, tabletop or lore itself either. Atleast the dark elves do not have this problem in 40k by simply adding cloning into the mix.
If there's one thing I learned from Warhammer (Fantasy and 40k) and later from DND, it's that all 'Species of Evil' are spoiled trust-fund babies, with their god/goddess (Khaine/Lolth) being their bankroller. Hell, even Venture Bros. had a similar idea with the Calamitous Guild, because of its mysterious (maybe alien maybe supernatural) 'Investors' that keep giving them money for stupid villain plots! Okay, sure, you 'can' make excuses for some like Orcs/Orks and Skaven 'because biology' or something, but their biology is basically magic. Your plot armor requires a lot of stupid-proofing for these guys. Or, a tyrannical god of evil that kicks in their teeth whenever they're going really off the deep end. Tolkien had the same problem with Sauron and his minions, but his letters show he understood the horrifying implications of all this and thought it better left unspoken.
people like dark elves don’t breed like Skevan Carl Frances empire are described as super bread baskets of the world. it’s used to help them gain Allie’s since food dweafs can’t grow large amounts of food underground and end of mountains ain’t best corp Fields unless there entire empire is built around terraces and rice Fields. so nah elves should have a population close to humanity, since they can often field massive armies. Like Roman.
you don't get it. Malekith's huge and innovative secret is that Naggaroth is full of his inventions: photocopiers. whenever he needs a huge army, he just copies a lot of his kin. And because of the use of toner, is that they get their name: dark elves
The Games Workshop "As many elves as the plot demands" quote already proves you right, but honestly most of the races are nonsensical However, I do think it's likely that Dark Elves (and Wood Elves to an extent) have more children than High Elves given all the orgies
I am not going to make the case it makes sense. It probably doesn't and GW never really bothered to think if it did. But a lot of what you said is not correct. Not even just in terms of the maths. But just as an example, how you're describing Nagarythe is how it is now. Not at the time of the Sundering. We also know that a big part of the issue with the time of the Sundering, was that Morathi had spread her cult all through Ulthuan. And it's part of why Slaanesh is a particular concern for Elves. It was a big civil war. And the Elves at the time were the ascendant species with a much larger landmass. Your answer is probably correct in principle. GW just wrote it to sound cool. But the working you did to get there is mostly wrong.
Interesting video, but it kinda feels like you had an angle, then tried to justify it. Even if you divide your numbers by 10 it still works. This assumes that the only dark elves to ever exist came on the arks from Nagarythe. Maybe being an Island culture most coastal settlents had boats? Just not mentioned in the tales because they focus on the flashy stuff just like real life the plebs don't get a mention. It is also implied that the cult of pleasure was widely spread so not just Nagarythe. BTW the population of Denmark at the start of the viking age was only around 500,000 and they developed a raiding and sailing culture that became feared across Europe. Couldn't it also be assumed that most of the deaths on the night of blood are slaves? Seems fine to me, and it is fantasy after all, who knows how many elf babies a Narsasistic cult pops out 😂
Skaven *DO NOT* make sense. What do they eat sir? I've seen this question asked, and people always say. "Skaven will eat anything." "Skaven eat anything." I didn't ask what are they willing to eat? I asked, what do they eat? *How can you feed that many rats?!* *SAY HOW HUMAN BOY!* *SAY HOW!!*
To all the comments that agree, hey thanks man I am great.
To all the comments that disagree, HEY. HEY. STOP IT. HEY! We only agree here. (jokes)
how did you get to the 10% on death night?
How dare you lump the Skaven with the bad guys!
Estimate based on how they are portrayed in the malus dark blade books. Everyone in Har ganeth took to the streets and started murdering each other, and malus narrates this happens everywhere on that night, but Har ganeth takes it more seriously
In this circumstances DE to be viable threat they need have allies. In world of TW WH3 i see them as armies composed from elite DE regiments + lots of monsters and norsca units with some other races.
Playing the devil's advocate, 'but your whole premise revolves around the Dark Elves only coming from Nagarythe' 😏
Poor dark elves wanting to be backstabbing and murderous, but don't have the reproduction of the Skaven.
In 40k GW gave them vat grown children
As the old saying goes...
_"There's only so many elves as the setting requires."_
Not even that old.
“There’s as many elves as the plot demands”
-Gav Thorpe, Black Library writer 2014.
@@ce4879they do that bs with Black Templars too. Makes absolutely zero sense, but hey. Why care about your universe when you can make some mildly interesting stories?
Your first mistake was assuming GW have any idea what numbers mean. They do not, and they have no intention of ever learning. Their authors write whatever they think sounds cool and call it a day. This is the case in every single warhammer setting.
I remember how in 40k some battle or other spanned a whole planet and lasted ten years yet still came up with less casualties then ww2
This.
Their writer Gav Thorpe literally said back in 2014:
“There’s as many elves as the plot demands.”
So trying to make sense of their settings beyond “cool faction makes toy soldiers sale” is futile.
That’s why I like AoS’ worlds-building, it leans into the gonzo crazy setting so doesn’t expect you to over-analyze everything.
Important info guy dead? The afterlives are physical places you can still find him.
Cosmic war decimated populations? Life goddess Alarielle celebrated her victories over Nurgle by spawning a 1000 new races/species.
Lumineth recovered fast from a war against a billion ghosts? They have a nation that specializes in magical cloning and even have a kingdom ran by one woman because they cloned her over ten thousand times to populate it.
@@ce4879I get that this style of storytelling gives freedom for the writers and readers, but imo it doesn't feel grounded, if that makes sense. Everything's trivial, there's no real stakes, because there's always more gimmicks in the lore to explain it. There's always more realms, or in 40k, there's always more planets. A place is important because the writers SAY it's important. Whereas in the old world, a city burned to the ground will not have another replacement of "oh look there's another city just like that city."
It's still preference, but I guess the reason we do this over-analyzing stuff is that the writers could've done better.
@@ce4879 Age of Sh*temar sucks
The Horus Heresy only had 46 million which is smaller then ww2 and ww1
"Why Dark Elves are poorly written" well they are elves, for starters
Secondly, GW doesn't know numbers.
Oh so very wise
@@12SickOne34mason what do the numbers mean?
Rather short-sighted take tbh
@@cityofbhat7722
bro is asking for trouble
The main problem of this video is thinking that every single dark elf came ONLY from Nagarythe. Morathi's cult of pleasure were spread all over Ulthuan. Secondly, they think that no other Asur joined the Druchii (willingly or not) after they fled. Then there's the whole deal about slavery, especially considering that they were more often than not the ones murdered in those holidays rather than dark elves themselves, and they have all sorts of dark magic for healing and whatnot; they also reproduce like rabbits (cult of pleasure + dark magic will get that for you) like Malus Darkblade for instance had over two dozen brothers and sisters, maybe even more than that iirc.
You forgot one thing about the Druchii: Morathi and the cult of pleasure. I don't think the Dark Elves have contraception.
I think it works in completely different way. Having a degenerate society doesn't support having families and raising many children
@@Asraeks And yet some of the most degenerate societies on Earth seem to have no problems multiplying. Mostly because of authoritarian, Darwinian structures that force people to serve the most base and corrupt version of the common good, i.e: multiply and pay the evil forward.
To be fair, the decadent society of the High Elves would also not have many children.
Nazis had weird sex parties and they were all about reproduction
@@Asraeksuh, the shittier the society the larger the families irl
I think you are underestimating how desastrous the sundering was. It is stated in those same books, that every kingdom was split somewhat evenly. It was a civil war as disastrou it can be. It wasnt Nagarythe vs everyone else, it was 2/3 of Nagarythe + half of every single kingdom more or less exccept caledor, vs half of every single kingdom and Caledor. The civil war was alot more even that it seems at first.
then again, in those same books it is stated that Nagarythe and Caledor are the most powerfull of all the ten kingdoms militarily. Caledor due to the dragons and Nagarythe due to the war likeness of its population. Nagarythe was basically elven Prussia, it could punch leagues above their weight, and remenber Malekith is a military genius (i know he hasnt managed to conquer ulthuan, but you got to give him credit. Every single time the Asur are saved by circunstance, like at the end of the sundering. Caledor lost the war, it was by chance that the tip of the halbard of a phoenix guard hit malekith and the flames erupted again forcing him to withdraw from the battle. Caledor didnt win it still, but he wasnt cruched.)
So its fair to assume Nagarythe had both the largest army of the 10 kingdoms and the most veteran of it pre-sundering even if it never had the highest population.
Also population wise, none of the 2 miitary powerhouses of Ulthuan, Caledor or Nagarythe have the highest population. Hell due to its mountenouse terrain Caledor has least people, they just have their dragons (who are nuts but still), and the smaller outer kingdoms, Crace and Cothique for example have just a few million more than Nagarythe. After all Nagarythe is large as a kingdom, it can be sparesely populated and have but a few economic centers (one of which is the powerhouse that is Anlec as a military citadel), and still be run eficiantly.
Also lets not forget at this point in time, the outer kingdoms are the richest, in Ulthuan, Nagarythe being a prime example, with malekith personally having gonned around the world estableshing and protectig various colonies. Colonially wise he is at this point the unofical ruler of the colonies, as Ulthuan is too self-centered to actually bother. The colonies look to Malekith for protection and support, even if they are not Naggarothi
The inner kingdoms are too peaceful, they were shielded by the worst of the demonic incursions by the outer kingdoms and the valor of Aenerion and the people of Nagarythe. Even if they have a standing Military its mostly a peace time militia. (except Eataine for obvious reasons.)
So we can conclude Nagarythe had both a reliable, eficient and powerhouse of military and had enough manpower to sustain a desvestating civil as it was. Remenber Melektih recalled some colonials to help him in the war.
Concerning the Black Arcs. I agree with you in the sense that they were not the population centers, but you are underestimating the worth of citadels in a military campaign as well as the likehood of their garrisons at this point. The War had been lost efectivly, if they wanted to survive these miltary centers would have been filled to the tea with multiple armies worth of a garrison. Even if but a portion survived in the Black arcs, they had the manpower to restart as well the expertise to endure.
Also earlier slaves for the Druchi would have been the sparese human population of Naggaroth (which exists in lore).
The war was too devasteting for the high elves to go on punitive campaign against the druchi thats why they had time to rebuild.
Concerning the Blood Festival or whatever its called. The cult of khaine wasnt yet with this enough power to perform this. and the festival isnt just murder or blood. its a release of their entire dark emotional spectrum. Sex-orgies, ect is also in it as well as the entire cult of atharti.
and culturaly the druchi are much more free concerning babies. true enough its a scheming society where death is never far, but when elves do not mind having 10 kids even if some are bastards the population will grow. Remenber these elves do not have the stigma that the Asur have concerning their darker side of the pantheon.
asur fathers might have 2 or 3 kinds, while in the same time druchi with all the sex and orgies that happen might have 7, 8 or 9.
as a summery. your starting point is wrong in the assumption that the civil war was a portion of Naggarythe vs everyone else, and from there you underestimated the military competence of the Naggarothi as well as the cultural impact of the dark side of the elven pantheon on them.
I welcome anyone to make holes into here.
Also i recomend Lawbeards with Andy hall a former GW fantasy writer and loremaster of sotek, they have one about the sundering that elucidates and goes over many of the points i made here.
See you , loved the video.
Thank you I might have missed it because I was skimming but it’s important to note that lots of the elven colonies supported the dark elves and nagarond had some colonies already not as large as those on the old world but they still existed and would help in setting up a new nation
Exactly what I wanted to say lol. This was the kind of war where family fought family and it probably wasn't even rare.
Underrated comment
Wasn't half of the other kingdoms by the time of the Sundering. There was a period immediately after the attempted coup where nobody knew what was going on and things were split relatively evenly, but once word got out, it settled down to be most of the other Kingdoms and some of Nagarythe, versus most of Nagarythe and some of the other kingdoms.
The sundering is both the name of the event that broke the island and the civil war.
So when one speaks of the sundering it may mean one of the 2.
When the sundering started due to general confusion yes that happened, but eventually things settleout out, but until that happened half of each kingdom can be considered loyalist or traitor
Saphery's own heir tried to coup her father to have her kingdom suport malekith. It didnt work and she was banished, but if this was happening at this level, with the higest families fighting themselves we can only guess on how things were on the ground at the lowest level.@@Draxynnic
I've heard some lore people say that there's a cultural difference between Asur and Druchii reproduction, for some reason Asur rarely conceive despite doing the deed just as much or maybe slightly less than the Druchii. It's a stretch and I agree that the numbers really don't make much sense, but figured it might be worth mentioning.
I'm sure Morathi and her magic could be the reason for that.
@@SleepyFen Dark Magic is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... Unnatural.
@@SleepyFenisnt she a follower of slanesh or smthin?
@@sythrus she has made a lot of deals with both Slaanesh and other dark forces, is a Hag Queen of Khaine, is the source of the Cauldrons of Blood and is the first elf to learn Dark Magic. It is said that she rivals Teclis and Nagash in power (pre-end times, probably).
From potion crafting and magic innovation to possessing the only flawless Cauldron of Blood, Morathi would almost certainly be able to remedy low fertility, although doing so might come at a cost - the lives of a few slaves, perhaps?
Even with slaaneshi boons, its not like women in DE society sit on their asses and make kids like seedbeds, they also participate in raids, politics, intrigue and wars, so assuming that they won't all suddenly start producing 2-3 kids PER pregnancy this shit is straight on unsustainable.
Not to mention that elves in here age like humans to their adult-ish years so before new kids can have their own kids they would need to go through puberty first, so even with everyone getting pregnant amount of babies per year would DECREASE, and that's not even accounting for fact that kids can die before that age cuz again, raids, politics, intrigue and wars are a thing.
Oh and its unlikely Slaanesh would do something nice like that, just amount of magic that mothers would need to be flooded by would probably wear down even elves, and even if they wouldn't just croak instantly, between founding of Naggarond to End Times, that's almost 5000 years, it would be impossible to be able to tell dark elf apart from beastmen at that point with all the mutations they would be sporting
After reading some dark elven lore I came to the same conclusion that the society doesn’t sound like it can even function, let alone thrive.
To be fair on the food aspect, I imagine the Black Arks double as pretty much the largest fishing ships you can imagine. All their population centers are near the ocean, and if we're continuing with the North America motif, the east coast was said to have a seemingly unnatural abundance of fish when the first Europeans came over. I imagine the sea is their lifeline and agriculture is basically nonexistent. There might be some opportunity for raising livestock as well near some of the territory a bit further south of their domain, probably starting around Clar Karond. Their geography really has a lot of similarities with northern Europe it seems.
The population is a problem. I don't mind the idea that they are hyper-militarized and literally every single individual is also a soldier, by virtue of all their manual labor needs being met by slaves, but even still, they could not compose large enough armies to actually be much more than a nuisance, and they especially could not afford letting people die for no good reason.
The DElves really should have been written a bit more differently, where they obsessively avoid casualties to themselves as the elite troops and commanders, and employ an enormous amount of slaves to do all the shitty parts of war. Have some Norscan-like tribes from the north that are subjugated and pretty much fill the same niche as the Hobgoblins of the chorfs, being entrusted with a lot more responsibility and being less a slave but certainly still subservient and answering to a dark elf.
Have it be a civilization with an absurdly lopsided population pyramid, where the dark elves all live as the 1% elite, and their bloodthirstiness is largely kept to being unleashed on their underlings. You can still do nights of murder, but only non-dark elves can be targeted. And in fact, it would make a lot more sense, because we actually had a society in real life that did just that. Sparta would "declare war" on their helot slaves (a neighboring group that they subjugated early in their history) every year, and it was totally allowable for Spartan citizens to kill them. Supposedly, it was a sort of rite of passage for a Spartan youth to slay a helot in cold blood.
So just do that. Make the DElves the Spartans. Super militarized, reliant on slaves to a dangerous degree, and have an extreme superiority complex with little empathy for lessers.
Never made sense to me that the Witch King would allow his own subjects to murder each other so nonchalantly, even given their veneration of the literal God of Murder societies need some sort of set of rules or else they cease to function.
or if we are doing large rewrites to the lore, just have Naggaroth be much much larger, and much much better at supporting life. have the dark elves be the relatively rural frontier warrior culture [high birth rate] and the high elves be the overly urban sedentary population [low birth rate].
@@matthiuskoenig3378 low birth rate is kind of quintessential to the idea of an elf though.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 High Elves already have *SLOW* population growth. Like their estates are slowly withering because the Great Vortex has some effect on High elves (Probably due to their proximity to it), that slows their reproduction...
This actually makes a lot of sense. But then again, lots of things in Warhammer are surface-level. GW made them as they are just to sell toys.
Okay, let's break this video down. Hopefully I will be able to shed some light on a lot of interesting points raised in this video.
The Sundering : The vast majority of the elves who fought on Malekith's side were from Nagarythe, but there were also plenty of elves from other kingdoms in his armies, like Hellebron for example, who actually came from an elven colony in the Old World. Hellebron even then had amassed a large following of Khainite fanatics from all over Ulthuan and elsewhere.
This is crucial to keep in mind ; the ancestors of the Dark Elves were never "just" the people of Nagarythe. Nagarythe was the most militarized kingdom of Ulthuan, but Malekith would have gotten his ass whooped a lot sooner if it was just him and the descendants of his father's soldiers. Malekith himself had acquired a bit of a cult following during his travels throughout Ulthuan's colonies in the Old World.
Armed conflicts at Ghrond and the Northern Watchtowers ; Lore may vary when it comes to Ghrond, in the Malus Darkblade novels, a large scale chaos invasion coming at Ghrond is considered worrisome news by Malekith and Morathi, whereas some other sources maintain that Ghrond is always dealing with legions of chaos worshippers throwing themselves at its gates. What I do know for certain is this ; most of the other Watchtowers usually only have to deal with minor skirmishes, which they are well-equipped to handle, due to being specifically designed to hold off armies.
It's not entirely unheard of for a garrison of a Dark Elven Watchtower to get wiped out by some chaos army or another, but that's not a regular occurrence. And when it does happen, it's always cause for major alarm.
Greenskins in the Plain of Spiders ; This is quite literally the first time I'm hearing about Greenskins in that region and I like to consider myself pretty well-read on Dark Elf lore. If there are any Greenskins there that haven't been eaten by the local monsters, I would assume they'd be escaped "Labourers" from Druchii slave pens.
High Elf incursions into Naggaroth : Just ask the Executioners of Har Ganeth how well those incursions usually go. High Elf raids happen VERY rarely, almost never, and it is even more rare that they are successful or don't end in disaster.
Dark Elf raids : You say that raiding is not a profession that comes without casualties, but I think you're underestimating just how underhanded the Druchii can be. They almost always target defenseless villages where the biggest threat to their lives is some guy with a pitchfork. They almost always do it under the cover of night, when everyone is asleep. The average Dark Elf is usually faster and stronger than the average human, nevermind a random peasant with a pitchfork. And their ships are specifically designed to be super fast, meaning they can outrun and out-manouver the local coast guard.
So what ends up happening is that a group of superhuman warriors who have honed their skills over decades attack a small town or a decrepit village under the cover of night when everyone is asleep and are then already gone with loot and "living cargo" before the locals can mount a cohesive defense. And with not a single casualty either, unless one of them trips and falls down a manhole or something.
And that's not to mention when corsair captains make deals with local rulers ; you give us prisoners from your dungeons and we don't raid your shores. Win-win for everyone except the prisoners from the dungeons.
They tend to suffer casualites when they choose riskier targets, such as small forts, large towns or entire cities, but like, the standard Dark Elf raid just involves a bunch of cowardly pirates pillaging a coastline village and running away.
Death Night : Yeah I have nothing to add. Death Night lore is dumb. Although it is worth noting that most of the people who are killed during Death Night tend to be slaves.
Basic backstabbing and murdering, Dark Elf families ;
Funnily enough, we actually do know that Dark Elf families can be pretty huge. Malus Darkblade for example has five siblings ; Urial, Isilvar, Nagaira, Bruglir, and Yasmir. Dark Elves are nothing if not....productive.
It's impossible to say how many times the Dark Elves backstab and murder each other, but there are a few things that keep those things in check.
In Har Ganeth, if a Dark Elf murders someone, their head ends up on the chopping block. Literally.
Familial ties ; Obviously, this is not always enough to stop a Dark Elf from murdering another Dark Elf...but often, it is.
Discipline : This is how they differ from Skaven. The Dark Elves usually don't backstab or murder each other when they have a job to do, whether it be guarding Naggaroth against the forces of Chaos, invading Ulthuan, raiding foreign shores, or launching expeditions into the Chaos Wastes.
Several invasions of Ulthuan ;
Typically those invasions tend to be spaced out. There are usually centuries upon centuries between every Dark Elf invasion of Ulthuan that they spend replenishing their lost numbers. Hell, if I remember correctly, there is even a period in their history called "The Age of Hateful Peace", where they did just that.
Food ;
They actually do have a ton of food! You have to keep in mind that not all of Naggaroth is a frozen wasteland. There are plenty of crops around the city of Clar Karond for example.
Okay, with all that being said, what does the Dark Elf population actually look like?
Bad writing aside, this is what we know ;
The Dark Elves have at least 20 Black Arks that we know of.
Six have been confirmed destroyed, captured, or sunk. Two were presumably destroyed. Another two Black Arks were beached ( or wrecked ) in Nagronath in Albion, and presumably abandoned.
So, let's say that ten Black Arks were destroyed, sunk, or abandoned. That still leaves ten confirmed Black Arks. One of them is the beached Ark of Naggor, which is home to a modest Druchii population. Each Ark is usually a giant fortress in its own right, so if we lowball its population and garrison to two-thousand, that means there are at least twenty-thousand dark elves across all Black Arks, including the dormant Naggor. If we highball the population of each Black Ark to five thousand, fifty-thousand elves.
Now, for some *actual confirmed numbers* and not just idle speculation, let's look at the garrison of Ghrond. In the Malus Darkblade novel "Lord of Ruin, Ghrond had 15.000 spearmen, one thousand Black Guard divided into sixteen regiments, 500 unused chariots, and 1500 Cold One Knights, and an unknown number of crossbowmen etc.
The total number of soldiers in the garrison of Ghrond was twenty-four thousand Dark Elves, which according to Malus Darkblade is twice as many elves as any other garrison in Naggaroth. That means that Hag Graef, Naggarond, Har Ganeth, Clar Karond and Karond Kar have 12.000 regular soldiers in their garrison each. If we add Ghrond's number to the tally, that means the Dark Elves have 84.000 regular soldiers in total, not counting random civilians conscripted from their population, the various Autarii tribes in the Blackspine Mountains or elsewhere, or the elves dwelling in the half a dozen confirmed Black Arks.
In other words, the Dark Elves allegedly have enough of a population to maintain an active military force of eighty-four-thousand elves. The more you know!
"Unless they trip into a manhole or something."
...
"Malekith, Sir! We've suffered unprecedented casualties on today's raid- *Two* dumbasses fell into a river in Lego city, while we were kidnapping the children making lego city!"
>If Malekith laughs, The messenger is merely flayed but let go afterwords.
>If Malekith doesn't laugh, that's when terrible things happen.
Yes, the druchii lore lacks logic and should have become extinct long ago. I've been thinking about it for years, the numbers don't make sense, not to survive, not to maintain the population, much less to prosper.
I would say that the self-murder festival kills fewer people than the raids and constant threats of the place where they live, but it is more about exchanging numbers than suffering fewer casualties.
Supposedly all non-magical, military, beastlord, administrative, etc. work is done by slaves so that the druchii can militarize their society as much as possible, but even then it doesn't make sense.
The druchii are not the only society of evil elves that makes no sense, they are designed to be hyperbole not to make sense under logical examination.
The skaven suffer from exactly the same problems as the druchii, but their entire lore revolves around how they reproduce en masse, eat almost anything, grow incredibly fast, and even though they literally die in the millions, there are always more and more, so it makes sense.
It doesnt make sense because ya'll forgeting this is a magical world, with actual magic. The main problem of this video is thinking that every single dark elf came ONLY from Nagarythe. Morathi's cult of pleasure were spread all over Ulthuan. Secondly, they think that no other Asur joined the Druchii (willingly or not) after they fled. Then there's the whole deal about slavery, especially considering that they were more often than not the ones murdered in those holidays rather than dark elves themselves, and they have all sorts of dark magic for healing and whatnot; they also reproduce like rabbits (cult of pleasure + dark magic will get that for you) like Malus Darkblade for instance had over two dozen brothers and sisters, maybe even more than that iirc.
@@gustavosanches3454 "but magic tho" is a hand-wave and isn't a valid argument, because internal consistency is necessary for any good fiction, whether fantasy or otherwise.
@@BloodwyrmWildheart “It’s magic we don’t have to explain it” would be the fitting hand wave phrase.
@@BloodwyrmWildheart No, internal concistency is not necessary, as evidenced by Warhammer.
@@jukahri Hence the criticism and why it's far worse than it otherwise would be. You're agreeing with me.
I can make sense of them and easily
1) there is historical precedent for tiny nations threatening and conquering huge ones. The Mongols and later Manchus conquered 100s of millions of Chinese with maybe a million to a few million people respectively. They had a big cavalry advantage, while the dark elves have a big per capita magic strength advantage. This is basically implied, dark magic is wild and only the top level high elf mages can match them.
2) they have lots of babies due to cultish stuff. Idk how long an elf ladies gestation period is but if it's actually similar at all to humans they could have way more kids than high elves. Maybe there is a cultic rite that literally allows them to have children more often.
3) I was gonna say more people evacuated to the black arcs but they had no warning didn't they lol. They would just need cult population growth.
4) the khaine night is exaggerated in the accounts. Maybe 1% actually are murdered for such a purge to make sense.
Dark elves also have a huge monster advantage actually. A single Beast masters can drive hundreds of animals, a few manticore or a fricken hydra into battle. iirc war lions of chrase are small and elite troop and they have less dragons than the dark elves.
@@keropnw3425 High Elves have always been described as having more dragons than the Dark Elves, it's just that most of them are normally asleep. But for the Dark Elves, Black Dragons are basically their equivalent of Steam Tanks - I think the most they've ever had at any one time is about a dozen, maybe two. High Elves probably have about that or more as a general thing, and a LOT more when someone manages to wake up a significant portion of those sleeping under the mountains in a crisis. There are also phoenixes, gryphons, and eagles, though we don't know their numbers. Dark Elves probably do have more mid-range monsters, but the likes of manticores and hydras are still rare and valuable - it's probably not that huge an advantage.
Also I don't think it was just the traitor Nargarythe fighting in Malekith's ranks. Its worth considering the influence Morathi and the Cult of Pleasure held over the High Elf population before the civil war.
This. I was under the impression that her cult reached all of the Ulthuan
I mean
Boldly assuming that the cult leeched a full 10% from all the other kingdoms, round it up to just doubling the starting population for ease of math, it still kinds doesn't work.
I love dissections of the more ridiculous propaganda lore regarding the various factions. The dark elves are apparently the supreme power in their land except they can't even defeat the high elf beach head at Arnheim that's existed for so long it's now proper city. This is like how the Empire books claim Altdorf is an unworkable mess but also houses 1 million plus people, something that requires quite a bit of infrastructure they don't have.
General rule of thumb for WHF, any number GW gives for nation sized events, armies or populations. Remove a zero, if it still seems unlikely, remove another.
That's funny because it's the other way around in 40k
Right away I can tell you, that map is Nagarythe *after* the Sundering. The OG Nagarythe was a coherent body of land from what you have circled, all the way to the northwest til it became part of what is present-day Naggarond.
Also as back-stabby as the Druchii are, they have lots of kids whereas Asuryii rarely have children
Also he thinks that every single dark elf came exclusively from Nagarythe and that no Asur would join them afterwards.
If I remember correctly, while Nagarythe itself is sparsely populated it also has by far the largest colonial realm out of all the elven kingdoms so it probably made up far more than 5% of the elven population.
Also the elves probably had a population closer to 10 million rather than 1 billion.
And in regards to relative population: Cothique basically got exterminated by Hellebron and Tiranoc was occupied for years, so neither of those are anywhere close to their starting populations.
Yes, although it’s true that Dark Elf society as a whole only really functions when you don’t think about its population and manpower, the video does seem to gloss over how bad the casualties were for the other Elf Kingdoms and seems to act as if they were all still basically at full strength.
Damn, Fantasy writing can sure be lousy at times! Surely it can't get any worse?
End Times:
AoS:
Old World:
Fantasy writing has been mid more than not.
Beware of wall of autism:
Let me do my take on this with a bit of the math to make this a bit more tangible with added context and lore. I will just make minor adjustments I am not saying I disagree with you but just to add a bit of context based on what you have said since those would be my thoughts on the subject.
I think a starting population of 40,000,000 for the Elves is reasonable if you compare it with historical precedents. For example, late medieval France had a population of 20,000,000. Medieval Japan had a population of around 15,000,000. Medieval China had a population of around 20,000,000.
Given that we know that the Elves didn’t have as many children as Humans but also basically did not die from natural causes, it is almost impossible to make a model of what their age or growth would be without knowing how many children they had. Otherwise, it would be possible. I decided to just double the population of these societies since it can account for the lack of death to natural causes, explain the naturally low fertility rate of Elves, and reflect historical standards for a nation of the time.
With a starting population of 40,000,000, I will divide them into two categories: those living in Ulthuan and those living in the colonies. Although the colonies had existed for hundreds of years at the start of the civil war, I think we can safely assume that roughly 90% remained in Ulthuan. I used 90% but feel free to use any number you want. I will also keep your presumption that the population is distributed evenly and say that around 3.6 million elves live in each kingdom to keep things simple.
Now it is said that compared to the other elven kingdoms, Nagarythe is the most militaristic. As such, I will assume that they are able to muster a larger army than the rest of the Elven Kingdoms. A society cannot muster over 10% of its population to serve in the army without severe ramifications to food production and administration. Accordingly, I will presume that Nagarythe can muster 10% of its population to serve in its military, whereas the other Elven Kingdoms can muster around 5%. This should account for the discrepancies in military tradition while also accounting for historical precedents as it pertains to mobilization.
Finally, although the colonies played a minor role in the civil war, it is important to note that they were loyal to Malekith and not Caledor/Bel Shannar. This is because Malekith received their loyalty when he relieved them from siege when he was exploring the Old World. However, since they are not from Nagarythe, I will also assume that they mobilized around 5% of their population.
Another important point to remember is that Nagarythe was only the center where cults were originated; it was not their sole location of them. To the dismay of many elves, the cults had converted a significant portion of elven society. Much of this division came from the fact that elves, out of boredom and Morathi’s expansive list of fetishes, worshipped the Cytharai. The point I am trying to make here is that it is not just Nagarythe that became "dark elf" but a significant portion of the other kingdoms also defected for religious reasons despite the source of that corruption being in Anlec. Accordingly, I will presume that around 1% of all Ulthuan elves joined the dark elves as combatants, with the assumption being that 2.5% of all Ulthuan elves joined the dark elves. Again, feel free to use any number you want.
Based on these arguments/assumptions/half-guesses, we can now make our calculations.
Nagarythe: A population of 3,600,000 with a maximal standing army of 360,000 (10% of the population).
Cultists: A band of 810,000 Cultists, which were split around all elven kingdoms, produced militias of 324,000.
Colonies: A population of 4,000,000 with a maximal standing army of 200,000.
Based on the above, the total maximal force for the Dark Elves is around 884,000 (360,000 from Nagarythe, 324,000 from the militias, and 200,000 from the colonies).
The total maximal force for the other Elven Kingdoms is 180,000 with a population of 3,600,000 each. Given that there are 9 kingdoms, the total maximal force that can be leveraged is 1,620,000 (180,000 multiplied by 9) with a population of 32,400,000 (3,600,000 multiplied by 9).
If you include the timeline of events where a few Elven Kingdoms were destroyed by surprise (for instance, Tirranoc surrendered and Cothique was taken by surprise), you then have 7 Elven Kingdoms actively resisting, which brings the number down to 1,260,000 (180,000 multiplied by 7).
Now, if we compare the total maximum mustering capabilities of each army, 884,000 vs. 1,260,000, we can see that the Dark Elves were not completely helpless during the Sundering, as it initially seems.
During the Sundering, it is also important to note that the Dark Elves were the only kingdom that had a standing army, most of which was composed of veterans from serving in Malekith’s campaigns with the dwarves. The Druchii were thus feared by the rest of the elves since they were the elite of martial prowess at the time.
Despite the initial advantages, what prevented the Druchii from being able to win the Sundering was the absence of a navy (due to its destruction at Lothern (I believe)) and the fewer number of dragons at their disposal.
By the time the Druchii were defeated, most of Ulthuan was destroyed since the High Elves eventually employed scorched earth tactics, burning and destroying Ulthuan rather than surrendering it to Malekith.
After the Sundering, we can assume that roughly 50% of all elves in Ulthuan were killed or murdered, whereas 90% of the Druchii population was destroyed. If we take these numbers into consideration, that leaves the starting population of Naggaroth at 360,000 (10% of 3,600,000) vs. a population in Ulthuan of 18,000,000 (50% of 36,000,000).
By then, the Druchii further militarized and became a slave society akin to the Spartans, where all non-Druchii were slaves, and they composed the workforce of Naggarothi society.
There are two more factors to bare in mind, it is worth noting that the Druchii typically have a higher fertility rate than High Elves and that they were unaffected by the War of the Beard, which truely sealed it for the High Elves.
It basically becomes a guess as to how they survived, but perhaps we can say that the Druchii gained a better navy with the Black Arks and could thwart any High Elven incursion to stabilize.
Clearly if we take the fact that they survived with such a low starting population compared to Ulthuan, we DO KNOW how they survived. Only thing that would make sense is very high fertility compared to high elves. Which could be natural - low of orgies, less scrupulous about traditional family, just lot of sex and babies. And it could also be magical effect, after all lot of them follow the cult of Morathi, it could be effect from that.
We can actually infer that Dark Elves have more children. For example, Tyriom and Teclis are some of the few mentions of Elves having siblings at all. Nevermind twins. But we know Malus Darkblade himself is one of six children. He had five siblings. Those are just some examples. But it's safe to say dark elves have more children. Probably from 2-5x as many.
Bretonnia has a ton of plot armor as well, there is no way a society like that would’ve lasted as long as they did if not for the direct blessings of an elf goddess.
I think the Empire also has these sort of issues to, at least when it comes to the constant amount of crisis that pop up constantly. Like the skaven wars and the black death plague that came before it supposedly killed 90% of the whole Empire’s population, but not only were they able to eventually recover from it but they managed to somehow beat back the Skaven invasion and I think there was a massive chaos invasion that proceeded it.
And this is just one example of massive population losing crisises, there are many other likewise ones like the Vampire wars, the norcsa raids and invasions including a massive one that happened in recent times to Ostland killing most of its population, the succession crisis civil wars, the Tamurkhan invasion, that Groom invasion where he pretty much took control of the Empire for a bit, another orc invasion that lead to the entire elector province Solland destroyed and never being properly resettled until recent times.
Granted these big events may have happened centuries apart from each other, but it gets a bit ridiculous how the Empire manages to remotely stay afloat enough for basically another population culling event every few centuries.
its a problem when you try and write overly satirical or grim dark factions/settings. those things don't make for good long term societal survival.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 I think there is already a term for that, Grimderp.
@@brandonlyon730 indeed
I imagine this is like a High Elf conspiracy theorist explaining how the Dark Elves don't exist and that the Pheonix Court made the Druchii up to fool Asur civilians into paying more tax XD
Watch out Phoenix court is going to sue you for this conspiracy
Norscans and mortal Chaos Warriors also don't work logistically speaking.
As a Canadian, I take great pleasure in knowing that the dark Elves settled in what is effectively Fantasy Quebec
I don't know much about the lore of the Dark Elves, but to be fair to the Night of Blood- even if every citizen takes part, it doesn't mean that every citizen kills one other citizen. If you look at historical human society for inspiration, typically something like that would often come down to lynchings, where a mob of people targets one person (or a group of people) who have been particularly asshole-ish. Many of the 'participants' are likely spectators watching the scenes play out.
But that's assuming that there's not an actual detailed description of this that contradicts what I'm saying, which I have no idea if there is or isn't.
Asur propaganda, they are clearly the evil faction. Also pretty sure malekith had half of the elves or something similar.
I haven't seen the conclusions yet, but depending on the sources, if your numbers are compared to real work numbers on historical sources, they are often wildly exaggerated. So one could, in theory, suppose things such as 2/3rds dying or fleeing could really be like a quarter. If your being EXTREMELY generous and assuming faulty sources
Thank you! I know you have been talking about this, and I mentioned it too, but yeah, completely agree with the video.
To go into bit (way) more detail, I think you can easily take off a zero, and say 100 million elves started out on Ulthuan. Which is still double or more, considering populations in 'medieval themed' fantasy, but whatever. So Id say 200k elves making it to Naggarond is about right, for them to inhabit that whole area across a dozen bigger cities or so.
Ive only read the Malus books, and Teclis+Tyrion trilogy, but the Khaine night you might be overplaying a little. Its probably a large number in Har Ganeth, but way lesser everywhere else. And its also likely Har Ganeth's population isnt big to begin with, just swells for that one night, as 'tourists' came to murder each other, so dwindles at the same time.
Whilst the other factors claim way more lives, most likely. Warding off Chaos and Greenskins aint easy task, although lets say its mostly dumb monke, beastmen and... well, greenskins mostly dumb, period. There also wasnt... really, threatening leaders during these lesser invasions, and fortifications are built well. Okay, as you say, they still lose thousands yearly, from a... 200k pool in my version. More if high elves raid them back.
Depending on where they go raid, they lose less or more. More against Ulthuan, less against others. Considering they dont give af about their own, and actively backstab each other, its likely more than they could get off with each time. I believe its also very generous every say 80 yo dark elf *only* killed 3-4 other dark elves to get there.
There's also the fact male magic users are constantly hunted down by Malekith due to that dumb prophecy. So thats actively throwing out fighting-abled mages, who probably kill scores of elves before they go down.
There's also Shades, living outside society, killing regular dark elves at every opportunity. There's Beastmasters actively hunting monsters, claiming much of their lives, and likely monsters just all around Naggaroth kill a bunch before they are hunted down/dominated to begin with. There's Malekith constantly killing his underlings, who are already the most successful of their society. Sometimes alongside big purges of their entire families.
Just one proper invasion of Ulthuan would wreck Dark elf society for centuries to come, if not doom it outright. And thats by High Elves never counterinvading for some reason. Nor Chaos using the situation to their advantage, for some reason. And even one kid every 10 years is generous, considering... its elves. And thats by saying that one kid will grow up to be an adult each time. Luckily we can say malnutrition, or childhood sicknesses would claim about no lives in a deeply magical society, and with elves having more resistances to begin with. Not as many as dwarfs, but still.
So yah. Its a constantly dwindling population by its very nature and literally every circumstance around it. It wouldnt survive a century, let alone 10k years. Even if we say about 2/3 or even 3/4 of them are combat ready in some way, whether as pirates, assassins, mages or proper soldiers.
At the very least, entire cities would rebel, knowing they are weaker than their neighbors, due to various geographical reasons or mere unluck, which in their society is like sharks smelling blood in the water. Like Ghrond warding off Chaos, and being primary mage city, it must have a large fighting population, but small overall. And Morathi is also there, who might or might not join a rebellion against her own son. A rival city could also easily take Har Ganeth right after its Blood Night. But this is just hypothetical now. Although I believe there have been cases of certain cities of Arks rebelling, but those were usually squashed... resulting in again, thousands of deaths, especially for the rebels, duh.
Due to its cool factor though, its high value upon individuality, ruled by a small, elite cast, and having large slave population, I would liken Naggarond to the Sith Empire from Star Wars. The proper one from EU Kotor times, that is. And its noteworthy to say Sith are also extremely self-defeating, and their empires fall apart every single time in EU lore. Not in small part due to their constant infighting. And their control of the galaxy is also usually 1/10th of the Galactic Republics'.
As for dark elves, although at this point Im sure most people checked out long ago due to 'tldr', I have a warhammer-esque fantasy world slowly built up myself. I noted the faults of warhammer dark elves, and tried to eliminate or lessen at least some of them.
In my version, elves live in the southwest corner of a continent (the only big continent). With Chaos living to the north. Dark elves are turned by Chaos to begin with, thus have constant backing of demons from north. They invaded, and took a huge coastal province, providing place to build their navy, and the 'bread basket' province of high elves, providing food forevermore.
When humans arrived to the world, they claimed eventually two of the eastern-most elven territories, thus high elves really got stuck in a corner. Trading also got less due to their eventual mistrust of other order races, largely thanks to human and dwarf sheningans.
Dark elves also have way less infighting, as their main 'Chaos Lord' and their Queen (A Morathi-esque character) focuses on desire and lust, which also comes with faster population growth. Thus they about equalized their numbers to high elves, whose empire got smaller and smaller as time went on.
They still fight between each other just about constantly, but its either a 1v1 of countries, or even dark elves having demonic support. Thus I tried to equalize them. High Elves also noting sometimes a full on invasion against dark elves, or demons prievously, would just cripple their country, so at this point they just refuse to sacrifice themselves for the 'greater good' of the world.
Plus, due to scarce, but massive Chaos invasions, its kinda better for the world for them to be around, as they still 'soak' a lot of damage from baddies. And in my story I also have a Lovecraftian evil faction invading in the 'present', much like Void in Warcraft. Which will see even the demons fighting the tentacle monsters, so I sort of 'needed' to not fully eliminate any big players across my world's history, as only a united front of good and bad factions can defeat this newest threat. Demons and other baddies want to rule the world, whilst the tentacle people want to destroy it outright, so there is all the reason baddies need to fight them.
Im sure there is room for improvement, and its not done by any means, and I mostly wrote this as a counterpoint and for my amusement. I dont really expect anyone to read it, but thank you if you did. I still love Sith as well as dark elves, so I tried to make them work... better, at least, outside the confines of copyrighted Warhammer.
I assume Dark Elves procreate more. Malus Darkblade had a bunch of half siblings in his book I forget them all. There’s also shade territory.
The impression I get with the Death Nights is that most of the victims tend to be slaves, because the Druchii themselves are either participants or they're mostly able to keep out of the way.
That said, I do find it hilarious when Dark Elf mains claim that it's the High Elves that have plot armour because they always manage to rally after initial defeats during an invasion. Thing is that's something that's happened multiple times historically - a smaller but more militaristic nation or alliance with good leadership takes a larger but more peaceful nation or alliance by surprise, sweeps all before them in the opening stages of the war, but doesn't quite manage to land a fatal blow and the war settles into one of attrition that the larger side eventually wins.
That's every one of the invasions up to the End Times. But it could just as easily be the world wars, the Napoleonic wars, and more stretching back into history.
Warhammer druchii and forgotten realms drows, same fundamental problem of a cool evil race that is way too backstabby and chaotic to be the functional superpower that it is supposed to be in universe.
Extinction? Dude haven't you seen how hot witch elves are? They should have been the most numerous race in the old world!
They live long, have Slannesh cults and a desire to be better than their kin. Not hard to think they bred vigorously as part of their desire to be powerful. I wanna know where the dark elf touched Human Boy YesYes.
Can we get a part 2 to this series talking about the Chaos Dwarfs? I think they rival the dark elves for sheer lunacy with their population numbers
If America is any valid real-life comparison, you can have a population start with a few hundred and balloon up to over 300 million in the span of just 500 years.
How do the Druchii keep their numbers up? Maybe magic or divine intervention. Even if we haven't seen it written down doesn't mean there couldn't be some in-universe explanation for it. Maybe Druchii fertility was an unmentioned part of Morathi's deal with Slaanesh.
The population numbers of the Empire have also been rewritten many times. One old source lists Altdorf as a city of around 15.000, but that sounds incredibly small considering the Warhammer world of Malus is supposed to be 5 times bigger than Earth.
Yeah, Altdorf with 15000 inhabitants (and other Imperial cities with such low pop) is ridicolously small even for 16th century standards.
I always give Altdorf, Nuln and Middenheim the populations that cities like Berlin, Koln or Prague had back in 16th century
@@andresr.viguera9791 Why aim for 16th century though? It would be one of largest cities in Europe at 15k just a few centuries back. Naturally we see empire with early guns, swords, nice hats, plate armor so we go there. But they mostly learnt this from drawfs. Bretonnia is clearly early medieval society. So it could basically be 11-12th century Europe just with guns and plate armor given to humans by dwarfs.
@@fridericusrex6289 It´s not just The Empire. Basically every human nation sans Bretonnia is in the Renaisance period, so pointing Warhammer as happening during those times is more fitting.
Edit: and also Albion, which are in the Iron Age period
@@andresr.viguera9791 Would not really say Norsca is renaissance either. Estalia etc. could be considered same case as empire though, contact with dwarves made them technologically advanced.
@@fridericusrex6289 By human nations I mean the order ones, naturally not counting those guys from the Chaos Wastes.
Well, so what the Dwarfs made them progress? Back in 16th century there were many civilizations that didn't know gunpowder yet but the core of Europe already knew it.
And btw, Bretonnia isn't a good example because while the land is in Medieval stasis its navy is the most gunpowder happy in the Old World
Lol ive thought about this myself. Chaos Dwarfs have a similar population problem but it is answered with the way they manage labour, and alliances with other races (ie hobgobos) plus they are not really that militarily aggressive, plus they do still have some gorms of alturism. Skaven too but they breed like crazy.
To be fair though I feel when you look into the deeper logistical analysis of many fantasy stuff it becomes pretty obvious how little sense it makes. Even Tolkien and Song of Ice and Fire have similar issues like these.
Also worth saying that there was a real life society that did function like the Dark Elves. That is the spartans. It was largely a part of why Sparta collapsed. After Sparta would fight a war, a massive quantity of their Spartan population would die, and in response Helot lower classes would rebel. Spartan history is riddled with constant Helot rebellions, and eventually it was too much
What is an obvious flaw in tolklien?
I feel like the little lore chaos dwarves have take their small population into consideration. Their slave population outnumbers themselves something like 10 to 1 and they don't really venture out of the Dark Lands since they don't really have the population to expand into new settlements.
Few points to make here
Not all dark elves are from Nagarythe that was just the place that Morathi and Malekith had the largest base of support because its the Kingdom they ruled / originated from - the sundering was a conflict across all of Ulthuan not just in Nagarythe
The Druchii likely have a much higher birthrate than the Asur just based on their culture, behaviours and dangerous lifestyles
Yes Elves were slaughtered en masse during the sundering and lots of them left Nagarythe to escape Malekith but plenty of them would also have went to Nagarythe to join him and support his claim which you dont account for in your math
The Black Arks are cities not citadels even if thats the term that is used to describe them - they are large enough to house entire fleets by themselves each one houses tens of thousands of warriors alone, not counting the beasts, slaves etc
Lastly GW has never focused on numbers for WH Fantasy, in some stories Altdorf is only a few thousand people and only important because of the colleges of magic and the cult of sigmar - in other stories there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people there and the city is gigantic
You also barely account for the shattering of Ulthuan itself which would have killed far more Asur than the war itself probably tens of millions if not more using your math
Theres no definitive answer on any nations in WH Fantasy
Few points to make here
Not all dark elves are from Nagarythe that was just the place that Morathi and Malekith had the largest base of support because its the Kingdom they ruled / originated from - the Sundering was a conflict across all of Ulthuan not just in Nagarythe also to that point the Sundering lasted CENTURIES it wasnt just a few months of war, plenty of time for Malekith’s supporters to concentrate themselves in areas
The Druchii likely have a much higher birthrate than the Asur just based on their culture, behaviours and dangerous lifestyles
Yes Elves were slaughtered en masse during the sundering and lots of them left Nagarythe to escape Malekith but plenty of them would also have went to Nagarythe to join him and support his claim which you dont account for in your math
The Black Arks are cities not citadels even if thats the term that is used to describe them - they are large enough to house entire fleets by themselves each one houses tens of thousands of basic warriors alone, not counting the beasts, slaves, sorceresses etc
Lastly GW has never focused on numbers for WH Fantasy, in some stories Altdorf is only a few thousand people and only important because of the colleges of magic and the cult of sigmar - in other stories there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people there and the city is gigantic
Theres no definitive answer on any nations in WH Fantasy trying to invent them is just an exercise in futility
I wish I could remember where I heard this, though I simply can not, but I do know it was explicitly stated that "there are enough elves for whatever is needed" and GW explicitly did not actually keep numbers consistent.
They could just make it that dark elves use dark magic to have kids at a faster pace and kids grow faster but the magic also takes away their souls.
Could be a nice dark way to explain how they can muster forces so often and attack so many people
I thought it was mentioned in a book or a brief lore snippet that the Great Vortex does harm elves due to some sort of sensitivity to magic more than most mortal races?? Which mostly affect the high elves due to their close proximity to it? So in an elven book where "And the Dark elves massed an army to threaten the High Elves" it isn't absurd because like, Dark Elves don't have the leg weight that they have to keep on to keep the world spinning.
The issue with the civil war was that it wasn't just Nagaryth against everyone else. Malekith was the son,\ (and in the opinion of many the rightful heir) of the late god-king and hero of Ulthuan, and until he poisoned the Pheonix king, if was the presumptive successor, to the extent that the phoenix king was about to resign and nominate him as his successor.
The Sundering split the population in many parts of Ulthuan. In addition to that, Malekith was a hero in the colonies, and some people in them, such as Hellabrond ended up following him.
The constant murderous backstabbing, war, raiding, and inherently low elvish birth rate points are totally sensible though. There's no way to make that sustainable without ludicrous plot-armor, or skaven birthrates.
Took a bit to come up with this but. I completely agree the the dark elves would be doomed in a real numbers test vs the high elves however a perspective.
1. This murder festival of khaine, perhaps it’s inspired and therefore more like a real like event that occurred like this. The Spartan’s regularly declared war on their slaves called helots, this was to cull the weak population and instill fear into the slaves. Perhaps the murder festival of khaine isn’t done with the idea of killing dark elves but murdering slaves.
2. What are the genetic differences between a dark elf and a high elf? Perhaps like races like the Beastmen, they increase their numbers of children in Naggaroth, with captured high elves women.
This doesn’t fix the dark elves numbers however it does slightly alleviate the negative numbers a tiny bit.
Maybe Slaanesh and Nurgle said “let there be life” and gave the Druchii weird plant pods to fuck and grow their kids in. Love me some Warhammer Lore, it really stretches suspension if disbelief
Plot armor from CA??? My sibling in misery, that is GW you're thinking of.
As some others have said, Malekith didn't only have elves from Nagarythe. It was full on civil war across Ulthuan. Now, Civil Wars rarely involve 100% of the population. Usually between 1/3 and 1/2 of a population will not actively participate in the war and just keep their heads down, becoming civilian casualties and such as things happen.
Nagarythe was the main power base of Malekith, but he would have had fairly large chunks from the other places too. And these elves naturally joined him and became Dark Elves as well. And did they all leave aboard the Black Arks? Of course not, they have normal ships too.
As for keeping up their numbers. Elves have very long lives, so under normal circumstances they have little incentive to populate quickly. Especially in Ulthuan where it is relatively safe. However, Elves in Warhammer seem to be capable of reproducing as fast as humans if they wish. So in a harsh environment like Naggaroth the Dark Elves could easily go into reproductive overdrive(relatively speaking) and keep their numbers up. Its really just a case of cultural shift to focus on that. Ulthuan still maintains the older Elvish culture, which would naturally limit reproduction as with many thousand year lifespans you don't want everybody having children, even 1 child every few decades would quite rapidly get out of hand if you live for 3-5 thousand years.
But that would be a purely cultural stopper on Elven population growth. Perhaps that was actually one of the main objections to the cult of pleasure, the danger of overpopulation. Even a slight increase in birthrates could be a problem over the course of thousands of years for the Elves. But since the Dark Elves have changed their culture so radically, they have something keeping it in balance with the higher casualty rates they naturally have.
Regarding the holiday of murder, I suspect that actual participation in that is very low. Its tradition, and you CAN do it. But then again just because you can do something doesn't mean everybody will do it. I imagine that the bulk of the Dark Elf population, while certainly warlike and cruel, are a little less stereotypically bloodthirsty than you might expect. The over the top crazy murder orgies, that's for the Dark Elf nobility in the castles and temples. The average joes are far less so.
Not to say that the numbers given by GW aren't garbage. They certainly are, but you can at least kinda find some way to make it work if you squint your eyes a bit.
This would actually lead to an interesting thing where the Dark Elf population as a whole is a lot younger than the normal Elf population, sure there are still a lot of Dark Elves who are thousands of years old, but the bulk of the population is a lot younger. Maybe only a few hundred years old typically, and they all tend to have a lot of kids. And when you live for hundreds or thousands of years, the time it takes to raise a child becomes relatively less and less. What is 9 months of pregnancy and 15ish years of child rearing when you have centuries and millenia?
Is this some kind of knife-ear speak that I’m too Dawi to understand?
I can easily imagine 90% of Druchi being born from slaves who are basically treated like broodmothers.
But there is really no justification for why the Asur struggled so much, trying to get rid of them.
You should a rework video, such as how to make the dark elf lore work
I literally remember one of the writers, possibly Gav, who said that a society like the Dark Elves will just tear by the seams if you look too closely into it. It doesn't work. But that's not really the point of the setting.
This is now cannon in my head
I always imagined slaanesh gave them better reproduction
Population sparsity relates to density, Naggarythe might have cities full of elves equal to it's neighbours but wide tracts of uninhabited land.
turns out basing your entire society on the principle of "be as edgy and sadistic as possible" is not a viable long-term strategy for success
Numbers? What numbers! There's like 1000 space marines for an ENTIRE FUCKING SECTOR. And when an author wants a bunch of space marines they just go "And like 5 chapters just came from my ass to assist in this battle"(Third war of Armageddon had 50000 marines, THAT'S 50 CHAPTERS), in fact just in tabletop you wield a big part of a chapter.
Wouldn't they citadel people suffer mass starvation if it got packed with bodies during the journey?
A lot of this in Warhammer Astarte's need a retcon in regard to numbers currently active.
Darkelf populus:
Chorf enters the room: What is a "growth building"?
I think this is one of those cases in writing where the logistics themselves are your most interesting plot device AND it practically writes itself. To be fair, this kind of writing mindset wasn't nearly as common back when WHFB was originally conceived as it is today.
First if all, youre right it doesnt make sense. Now, one fundamental mistake, Nagaryrhe before the subdering was not sparsely populated, pretty sure it was one if the most populous and largest kingdoms. The sundering fd it. So assume 20-30 % of all elves lived there before the sundering.
Fun video!
Guys how does America make sense if the Mayflower had 100 passengers?
I’ll be honest I thought this was about Elder Scrolls and I got so confused when you started painting the kingdoms
Wow, 19.50 min nonstop "achually, achually, achually"
Well maybe we all underestimate the impact of the cult of pleasure in the dark elf population
Great video really fun thought experiment!
I wounder if perhaps on the holiday they kill majority slaves and less of themselves? But that would be a huge stretch.
Also if they took enough wifes from the high elfs that could help with some numbers. Not enough though.
Idk i never realized that they didn't make sense till now 😂
If you do a "Why this fantasy race/nation/entity doesn't add up, in numbers" I promise you I will start throwing bills your way
Nagarythe is sparsely populated specifically because of the devastation caused during the civil war. It was not really hte case before that. Also remember that elves were actively moving there during Aenarion's reign, because he was attracting elves who were most hurt by the war (having their family murdered etc.) and during the civil war, they mostly sided with Malekith. During the civil war. And those dark elves fled to the cities that were turned into black arks, those cities were not just magically spearated on a whim one afternoon, it was the direct result of losing the war. Also Dark elves are not nearly as treacherous as Dark Eldar (and I mean between themselves, they will absolutely betray anyone else). Also the vast majority of Dark Elf economy s based on slavery, which means they have a lot of warriors and other specialised people, instead of menials, like High Elves.
death night becomes more plausible if we make some additional assumptions about it:
it's supposed to be the witch elves doing it mostly.
the dark elves have a class society with numerous slaves.
the slaves are the most likely targets of death night.
it seems unlikely that death night is claiming significant numbers of people that are capable of defending themselves; it's about murder, not combat. the witch elves are supposed to rove around in bands, so it's not clear that they each need to personally kill someone at a 1:1 ratio. it could be many witch elves all participating in the ritual murder of fewer people than the number of witch elves. it is not clear just how much blood the witch elves need to rejuvenate themselves. and many of those killed might be abducted high elves or other slaves. since the main target of death night would be the powerless, and the powerless are largely property of more powerful dark elves, those more powerful dark elves have a good reason to try to at least limit the numbers taken from their own holdings if not prevent it altogether. just because murder is legal does not mean that there aren't situations of successful deterrence. so we might assume that death night mostly targets weaker households and that its terror outstrips its material impact: even just a small amount of annual ritual murder is pretty scary, after all. it could even be the case that dark elf households could use death night as a way to discipline their slaves and servants, choosing to protect some and let others be taken.
we might further assume that witch elves have some inclination of who it is more damaging to dark elf society to kill, and choose their targets accordingly (if for no other reason than that they will want the stock available to be murdered to grow rather than decline). they might even prefer killing men just as a matter of taste. either or both being the case, there would be less impact on the reproductive capacity of their society than we might otherwise expect. similarly, low status free dark elves would have a reason to become corsairs if only to avoid being present during these death nights, instead raiding far off shores from a black ark, and thereby bringing more slaves home to eventually be murdered. or as breeding stock to produce more (among other things) murder victims.
Still makes more sense then literally any number in 40k 😂
I tried to follow along but then it was all "pretend, pretend" and "probably probably" etc etc lol.
GW writers have actively stated something along the lines of "There are exactly the right amount of elves to make the story interesting." When referring to populations. It would also pretty much extend to all other races I would guess but there are so many schlock reasons that people can come up with.
I mean these are the same guys that write about 40k planetary battles with numbers of soldiers lower than in our own historical wars, so...
I think anyone who has scrutinized the Dark Elves of WHF has come to the same conclusion. Their murderous ladder climbing in their society is the real problem. Without it, there's no issue.
I do know they have a higher rate of reproduction than the other elves. Death Night isn't as chaotic as you describe either. The murders aren't random slaughter(it is in some places) but rather it's targeted and many victims are slaves anyway.
Ok yes. But counter point - how cool would it be to have a Video game with the premise of trying to build Naggarond ?
with all the shit you described going on - and Shadow of war style gameplay.
wouldnt that be something :)
CEASE YOUR PROVOCATIONS
Dude, if you want to pull out the geography card, explain Portugal first
Hahah! I remember having this exact same rant a little while ago...considering their murderous habits, the attrition from constant warfare, raiding and so on, it makes no sense!
The only bone of contention I have to this is that the Sundering actually had a lot of the other kingdoms nobility defect to Malekith, turned by his promises etc, something like a third of every other kingdom except Caledor defected and turned on the others, causing all kinds of chaos.
Still though, they are poorly thought out, but I have never really liked ridiculous "evil" versions of the races and so on.
Dark elves would work if they used guns and auxiliary troops like chaos dwarves.
I like the idea that the Dark Elves are brainwashing (through torture) the elves they capture (sea elves/colonists, high elves, wood elves, etc) to fight in their rank and file.
overall agree with your perspective. does the dark elf population get supplemented from cults in high elves? i can't see it as the known hatred of dark elves towards high elves would suggest that the majority of high elf defectors would end up as slaves if they encountered dark elves unless they ascertained dominance by killing some dark elves.
Colonies again are left forgotten. And also it is important to understand that Nagarythe army during the Sundering ≠ shitshow of current druchii warhost. During the Sundering it was basically the biggest and most trained army group of elves, possibly being the height of their military power, with Nagarythe, not Naggaront military traditions and without all that edgy backstabbing. Nagarythe + colonies was centralized militarized society which practiced war for centuries, while other kingdoms were just existing on buble. If you want history example - look for Ceaser in the Gallia, where despite them having big edge in populace they crumbled before his politicking and military might of legions.
There weren't 1 billion elves? I always try to be also very generous with populations and sizes (Ulthuan is the size of a continent and the kingdoms are nations) thus having the possibility of having 1 billion elves back in their prime (again, I am generous as well. But that is the only way you can have so much war and still room for development and recovery)
I love Dark Elves but GW has never been actually concerned with how their logistics work
Ananke nation in my lore had to be nerf really hard because they used steam punk railguns… they be 2 op. In my universe.
Also reminds me of Norsca somehow continuing to exist after how many times a army walked all over them and randsacked everything they can find. But those guys are actual savages wich nobody cares about neither in the videogame, tabletop or lore itself either. Atleast the dark elves do not have this problem in 40k by simply adding cloning into the mix.
If there's one thing I learned from Warhammer (Fantasy and 40k) and later from DND, it's that all 'Species of Evil' are spoiled trust-fund babies, with their god/goddess (Khaine/Lolth) being their bankroller. Hell, even Venture Bros. had a similar idea with the Calamitous Guild, because of its mysterious (maybe alien maybe supernatural) 'Investors' that keep giving them money for stupid villain plots!
Okay, sure, you 'can' make excuses for some like Orcs/Orks and Skaven 'because biology' or something, but their biology is basically magic. Your plot armor requires a lot of stupid-proofing for these guys. Or, a tyrannical god of evil that kicks in their teeth whenever they're going really off the deep end. Tolkien had the same problem with Sauron and his minions, but his letters show he understood the horrifying implications of all this and thought it better left unspoken.
What can I say? Dark elves are just too good at killing their Ulthuani kin
Didnt he have followers in other kingdoms?
You forgot dark elves fuck like rabbits! They probably have 1 kid a year, instead of every ten years.
Yeah, I mean, all that Slaaneshi influence has to be going somewhere
people like dark elves don’t breed like Skevan
Carl Frances empire are described as super bread baskets of the world. it’s used to help them gain Allie’s since food dweafs can’t grow large amounts of food underground and end of mountains ain’t best corp Fields unless there entire empire is built around terraces and rice Fields.
so nah elves should have a population close to humanity, since they can often field massive armies. Like Roman.
you don't get it. Malekith's huge and innovative secret is that Naggaroth is full of his inventions: photocopiers. whenever he needs a huge army, he just copies a lot of his kin. And because of the use of toner, is that they get their name: dark elves
Plor armor from CA...yes definitely
The Games Workshop "As many elves as the plot demands" quote already proves you right, but honestly most of the races are nonsensical
However, I do think it's likely that Dark Elves (and Wood Elves to an extent) have more children than High Elves given all the orgies
I am not going to make the case it makes sense. It probably doesn't and GW never really bothered to think if it did.
But a lot of what you said is not correct. Not even just in terms of the maths.
But just as an example, how you're describing Nagarythe is how it is now. Not at the time of the Sundering. We also know that a big part of the issue with the time of the Sundering, was that Morathi had spread her cult all through Ulthuan. And it's part of why Slaanesh is a particular concern for Elves.
It was a big civil war. And the Elves at the time were the ascendant species with a much larger landmass.
Your answer is probably correct in principle. GW just wrote it to sound cool. But the working you did to get there is mostly wrong.
Interesting video, but it kinda feels like you had an angle, then tried to justify it. Even if you divide your numbers by 10 it still works.
This assumes that the only dark elves to ever exist came on the arks from Nagarythe.
Maybe being an Island culture most coastal settlents had boats? Just not mentioned in the tales because they focus on the flashy stuff just like real life the plebs don't get a mention.
It is also implied that the cult of pleasure was widely spread so not just Nagarythe.
BTW the population of Denmark at the start of the viking age was only around 500,000 and they developed a raiding and sailing culture that became feared across Europe.
Couldn't it also be assumed that most of the deaths on the night of blood are slaves? Seems fine to me, and it is fantasy after all, who knows how many elf babies a Narsasistic cult pops out 😂
Skaven *DO NOT* make sense. What do they eat sir? I've seen this question asked, and people always say. "Skaven will eat anything." "Skaven eat anything." I didn't ask what are they willing to eat? I asked, what do they eat? *How can you feed that many rats?!* *SAY HOW HUMAN BOY!* *SAY HOW!!*
Listen if you want to talk about the skaven's green skin mushroom farms and rampant cannibalism we can.
Mostly roots, mushrooms, and other Skaven, not necessarily in that order. And probably a bunch of bugs
Gota love this kind of content.
I didnt think spore GS was a thing in fantasy, just 40k, huh.
We don’t ever see or hear female Orcs or Goblins so where do they come from then?
Dark Elves make no sense, it doesnt have to do anything with Warhammet Total War, CA, but with GW writing, since forever