ВЕРНУТЬСЯ К СПИСКУ РАССКАЗОВ

Reference: Cleansing Flame

Clearance Level: Prime

“Praise the Emperor.

Brothers, whilst cataloguing the records in our Xenogen section pursuant to Edict Cleansing Flame, I have recovered On Farseers, by Inquisitor Paulo Kramer, presented to us under Inquisitorial seal and dealing with previous contacts with the race known as the Eldar. It contained assertions that, although quite frankly blasphemous, do not contradict any of the known facts and which suggest some new lines of enquiry. Having requested and been granted clearance to study these works, I proceeded with their decrypting and translation. What follows is a précis of my preliminary findings that I hope will prove useful in our future dealings with these deviant alien scum.

According to Kramer, one of the ruling cadres of the Eldar are the so-called Farseers. They appear to be a priestly caste that claim powers of prophesy and magic and the ability to predict the future. Current orthodoxy among our brethren at the Academy of Xenology is that the superstitious Eldar revere Farseers as if they did possess such prophetic powers. Inquisitor Kramer, an apparently reliable source, claims that not only do Farseers actually have psychic foresight, they use it to guide the destiny of the Eldar people.

It is worth noting that no matter how superficially bizarre this claim might appear, Kramer was apparently a loyal and true servant of the Emperor whose devotion to his duty was unquestioned. He was several times decorated for gallantry and met his death in heroic combat with heretics during the Taurus Uprisings. Kramer spent some time among the Eldar during his investigation of the Pan-Stellar narcotic syndicates (for more on this I refer you to his collected journals in particular Volume 4: Ulthwe and Beyond).

Naturally, my first response to discovering that xenogens allow themselves to be guided by unbonded psykers was one of horror and shock, but, after I considered the implications of Kramer’s statements, I gave some thought to what they might mean for our relations with the aliens. If true - were they not proof positive that the Eldar are subject to daemonic influence as several of our brethren have claimed? Or did this suggest some potentially exploitable weakness in the Eldar social structure. Hoping to learn more I returned to my perusal of Kramer’s volume, glad that I had not burned it forthwith as had been my original intention upon realising its contents. After all, ‘Know Your Enemy’ is one of the most profound, if also most profoundly abused, dictates of the Codex Tacticus.

It is a well-documented fact that Farseers have led the Eldar on the field of battle, and certainly Eldar forces often display a daunting level of intelligence concerning the dispositions, strengths and plans of their foes. Some commentators have ascribed this to the infiltration of loyalist forces by deviant heretics, but it might also be the result of some form of foresight by Eldar psykers. Moreover, it would appear that battlefield leadership is but one role Farseers perform in Eldar society.

According to Kramer, the Farseer’s gift of prophesy is not a simple ability to predict the future. What they see are visions that might possibly come to pass but which are not certain. The Eldar believe that there are billions of potential futures waiting to unfold and, since the actions of a Farseer or those he directs can affect the outcomes of various probability lines, their prophets have some say in what futures are born.

If true, this immediately implies something about the nature of political struggle among the Eldar and the Farseers themselves. A Farseer’s predictions are not just impersonal, cold viewings of the future, they are actually affected by the nature of the Farseer. Farseers choose the kinds of future that they wish to come to pass, and that surely must be as much a function of their personality and desires as it is of their gifts. Adding to the complexity of it all, according to Kramer, different Farseers may choose to try and birth different futures, and the interaction of several Farseers trying to shape events can cancel each other out or help bring about something completely unforeseen by any of them. This is one of the many factors that make the future so unpredictable even to these so-called prophets.

According to our informant, different Farseers have different attitudes towards their gifts. Many are convinced in the rightness of their personal vision - after all they have every reason to be -they can convince themselves that their scryings have proven right more often than not in the past. Some Farseers try and present themselves as detached and above it all, claiming a disinterestedness that is far from true. Some present themselves as wizards who can shape events. And some of them, by their very nature, warp the future around them, by sheer force of will influencing little things which will have a cascade effect, like the small stones that start avalanches.

Complicating matters still further Kramer claims that not all Farseers appear to have the same gifts. All of them are prophets to a greater or lesser degree but some of them are better at divining things close in time, and a long way off in space. Some get glimpses of the far future but have difficulty visualising things in the present. Some are better at tracing probability lines into the past, allowing them an insight into the causes of things. And of course, all of them have a view on what the optimal future would be for themselves, their worlds and their people. When these views coincide, all is well and good, but when they don’t friction can occur. Conflicts can come to pass among the Farseers themselves as they try to ensure the outcome favours their visions.

According to Kramer, who claims to have had first-hand experience of certain aspects of this, these things lead Farseers into all manner of devious attempts to sway and influence their peers and their people. Farseers are religious and political leaders as much as visionaries, and often a Farseer’s influence comes less from psychic power and the truth of his visions than his persuasiveness and political nous. After all, how is the average Eldar citizen, lacking any gift in this field, to tell the difference in abilities between Farseers or, indeed, who is right? Farseers have a natural tendency to phrase their prophesies ambiguously - it adds to their air of omniscience and gives them a margin for error. This may not be purely cynical manipulation either.

It appears to be that the more gifted a Farseer is, the less comprehensible he is to his fellow Eldar. After all this is someone who spends his life amid mystical visions and the Infinity Circuit of the Craftworld. For a Farseer, the future and the past blend into the present. They talk with the dead, and they see the actions of the unborn (sometimes) just as concretely as they perceive the deeds of those around them. Communicating what they see to others is in many ways like the eternal problem of describing the colour red to a blind man. In many ways, it is the less gifted Farseers who find it easiest to communicate with their fellow Eldar. This leads to a caste of Farseer interpreters-lesser Farseers who are disciples of the greater ones, and spend most of their time interpreting their words. This may also be a function of a Farseer’s Warlock bodyguards.

It also appears that the Eldar are not unaware of the evil influence of Chaos or, the fact that, as the philosopher Frederick Zarathustra observed: if you stare too long into the Warp, the Warp will stare back into you. The Eldar fear that Farseers can be seduced to the path of Chaos by their visions, often without knowing it. This makes them cautious, although not cautious enough to my way of thinking. They also admit that it is possible that sometimes the Great Enemy lets Farseers see only what it wants them to. Perhaps this is another reason their visions of the future are so cloudy and provisional. They appear to take many precautions to prevent being influenced by evil psychic forces, including the uses of wards, purity seals, amulets, talismans, and protective rituals. Exactly how efficacious these may be should be subject to further investigation.

This is a huge area that I believe warrants deeper study. Kramer’s work obscures many things behind a cloud of mysticism but it also suggests some interesting lines of attack against the Eldar. If, for instance, Imperial psykers could influence the Farseers telepathically all manner of disinformation campaigns might become possible. Alternatively, surgical strikes aimed at the Farseer cabals might leave Eldar forces leaderless at crucial points in combat. I recommend the acquisition of further data on the subject, and, if possible, the capture and interrogation of Eldar prisoners, using ultimate force if necessary.

Here ends this report.

All glory to the Emperor.“