To be an Aeldari in the 41st Millenium is to know with absolute certainty that it would have been better to have never been born at all, for the souls of the entire race have already been claimed by She Who Thirsts, the Prince of Pleasure, Slaanesh. From the moment of conception, they feel Her hooks within them, and, where the paltry souls of dead Mon-keigh snuff out like candles within the Warp, those of the Aeldari are given no such mercy. They endure eternally within Slaanesh, digested, undying, in exquisite agony, until the end of time. It is this horror that compels all Aeldari.

It had haunted Farseer Kelian-Varn for ten thousand years. The others told him to trust in his spiritstone, but the thought that a fragile shard of crystal was all that protected him from Her was unacceptable.

Then came the Doom of Malan'tai. A Tyranid had breached an Aeldari Craftworld and glutted on the stored spiritstones within, condemning a million souls to oblivion. It shocked the Aeldar. Nobody had ever known the beasts to care for anything but biomass. To most, the act was an abomination, but to Kelian-Varn, it was an opportunity.

It took centuries of negotiation, and the mon-keigh Trader demanded a ruinous price, but eventually, Kelian acquired the sample - a Tervigon Broodmother, suspended in a stasis field. Secluding himself on a lone planetoid in the path of the tyranid advance, Kelian set to work dismantling the creature harvesting her cartilaginous wombs and spore glands, and began fusing it all into his flesh.

Tyranid organs and gene-filaments burrowed through his body, warping flesh and wraithbone armor alike. He held the bone blades in his hands until they fused into his palms, while his sides ruptured and fresh limbs grew to compensate.

He stitched the writhing Tervigon womb within his gut. Only his spiritstone maintained his conscious mind, while the ravenous instincts to feed and spawn consumed his brain. He shuddered, for in that moment he felt the gaze of Slaanesh upon him, sensing first Her confused appreciation for his new form, turning swiftly to rage as She realized what he was attempting to do.

With a smile, he cracked the spiritstone beneath one claw, and opened his mind fully to the Hive, his mind dissolving within the beautiful, droning unity. Kelian-Varn ceased to exist. The last sound he heard was the scream of Slaanesh, as She was denied what She was due. A new Tervigon, a microscopic breeding node on the outer edge of a single, vast organism, came into being.

When the Hive Fleet arrived at the planetoid, decades later, they found it already conquered by the spawn of a productive Broodmother. Considered her an exceptional specimen of her kind, she was taken aboard, so that her wombs could share fully the genetic bounty the Hive had accrued.