Aeldari - Harlequins: The Harlequins are the strangest and most enigmatic of all the Aeldari factions. They are warrior acrobats -- battlefield performers who make no distinction between war and art, and whose breathtaking feats of agility and violence make them the terror of all those they face.Using the hidden paths of the Webway, the masques of the Harlequins strike without warning and kill without mercy. The Harlequins are superlative battlefield artists, yet they are more than just warriors.Every Harlequin is a devoted servant of Cegorach, the Laughing God, the only Aeldari deity said to have survived the birth of Slaanesh fully intact. While depicted as an enigmatic and sinister trickster whose deeds are far from altruistic, Cegorach is also the sworn enemy of the Dark Gods of Chaos, and of Slaanesh in particular. The Harlequins have fought to exact Cegorach's vengeance upon She Who Thirsts for the destruction of the ancient Aeldari civilisation for Terran millennia.After the birth of Slaanesh, each Aeldari faction found different ways to stave off the soul thirst of the Dark Prince. The Asuryani make use of Sprit Stones and the Infinity Circuit of their craftworlds, while the Drukhari are psychic vampires, ghoulishly preserving their own immortality by basking in the psychic emanations of torture and suffering.The Harlequins by contrast require no such spiritual defences. When a Harlequin falls, Cegorach instantly snatches their souls away, thus denying Slaanesh its feast. How this can be, and what fate awaits those souls within the grasp of the Laughing God, are secrets that the Harlequins have never deigned to share with the rest of their race.The Harlequins strike without warning, wreaking devastation before vanishing as suddenly as they came. The Harlequins have slaughtered zealous cults, assassinated mighty Chaos champions, and undone countless foul plans before they could manifest.Sometimes these actions have saved the worlds of other races -- most commonly of Humanity -- but there is no kindness in the Harlequins' deeds. They are every bit as ineffable and enigmatic as the deity they worship, and if they are concerned with the survival of any species in the galaxy, ultimately it is their own.The duties of the masques of the Harlequins extend beyond warfare. Every Harlequin is a performer, versed in the mythic cycles of the Aeldari and the countless allegorical tales that stem from them. The masques travel endlessly through the interstitial dimension know as the Webway, moving between craftworlds,Exodite worlds and the Dark City of Commorragh freely.Wherever they go, the Harlequins ply their performing arts, combining music, dance, ritual combat, nuanced oration, and a breathtaking suite of illusory and psychoactive effects to captivate Aeldari audiences. The Harlequins perform for more than mere entertainment. Every show they put on is a lesson and a cautionary tale, a fragment of the culture of the ancient Aeldari presented as a reminder and a warning to their modern descendants.The most important dance that the Harlequins perform is the tale of the Fall, the monstrous spiritual apocalypse during which Slaanesh was birthed and the Aeldari all but annihilated. Their vivid performances ensure that the horrors of that time will never be forgotten, and its mistakes never repeated.The Harlequins have other duties in service to their god. They stalk the Webway, seeking to excise the taint of Chaos and alien invasion wherever it is found. They guard the vast repository of forbidden Chaos lore kept within the secret craftworld known as the Black Library, preventing its dangerous secrets from falling into the hands of those who would do great harm with them.The Harlequins also act as ambassadors, for they alone can travel freely through all the demesnes of the Aeldari factions; when needs must, the Harlequins have brokered uneasy deals between the Asuryani of the craftworlds and the Drukhari of Commorragh, bidding their kin put aside their differences in order to fight for their peoples' future.Now, though, the Harlequins face a new peril. The Webway, always a fractured and hazardous realm, has been sorely damaged by the opening of the Great Rift. Alien invaders and Chaos-worshipping interlopers spill through its sundered gates in numbers never before seen, endangering all that the Harlequins are and all they strive to achieve. As the danger grows greater, so the masques become ever more vicious and manipulative, calling in favours long owed and committing whatever atrocities they must in the name of the Laughing God.The Harlequins have a higher purpose, a Final Act they mean to see performed in full to the eternal detriment of She Who Thirsts, and they will pay whatever blood price they must in order to see their work complete.