[Eldar] The Fall

A while ago Destecado and I had some interesting discussions regarding the Fall of the Eldar.
One of the things we discussed was the possibility that the Fall was related to the Eldar reaching a crossroads at a point of ascension (that is transition to non-physical entities), with the different Eldar 'factions' representing different choices at the crossroads. The Exodites turned back the way they came, the Craftworlders went right, the Dark Eldar left and the devil (Slaanesh) collected those who dallied too long at the crossroads. Something that this brought up was the similarities with the position of humanity in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End.

In Childhood's End humanity reaches a point of ascension at which it leaves behind the requirements of the physical realm and joins an over-arching universal consciousness (the Overmind). Only the younger generation (up to the age of about 12 if I remember correctly) ascend with the older generations being left behind. After the start of the ascension process the older generations of humanity group together in somewhat utopian colonies, all of these eventually collapse with most committing mass suicide, unable to cope with the knowledge that there will be no further generations of humans like them (any further children born also ascend). We hear that this is a common occurence among ascending species and that this ascension process has been observed many times (by a technologically advanced race known as the Overlords who never reached the point of ascension) among different species and identified general trends among its progression. The situation of humanity was the most common with the younger generations ascending and leaving behind the older generations. It was also mentioned that sometimes a species reaches the cusp of ascension and then, for reasons the Overlords could not fathom, doesn't progress over the cusp but goes back the way they came, becoming blissful utopias. The possibility of the ascension process going awry in some way with the entire species self-destructing might also have been mentioned but I can't remember.

In this case the Exodites would be the ones who went back the way they came, the Craftworlders would be like the colonies of older humans and the Dark Eldar would perhaps be those form whom the process went awry. There could well have also been Eldar who really did ascend with the destruction of the Eldar Empire being partly due to this as well as Slaanesh acting as the devil taking those who daly too long at the cross-roads, but from the point of view of the remaining Eldar it would be impossible to tell. Indeed we were thinking that the Eldar probably didn't understand what was happening regarding the possible ascension, with the ceasing of Eldar souls reincarnating possibly being because they were ascending instead and the trapping of souls in soul stones actually disrupting the ascension process (which could be what de-railed it).

Anyway, I thought this might provoke some interesting discussion.