Editing Story:Warhammer 60K: The Age of Dusk (section)

==Additional Background Section 9: Shadow Play: Espionage and Unknown Missions==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
The galaxy in The ''Age of Dusk'' was one of great bombastic light; the light granted by great wars, and the glow of towering civilizations rising to their very heights, moments before the precipice. Yet, a bright light casts long shadows. And just as light casts a shadow, so the vast battles and politics of the struggled for reality conceal lingering oceans of events, betrayals and schemes unseen and unrecorded by the histories of man and beast.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
Until this day, where I was able to breach this vault’s walls and-

I say too much. How this history has come to you, my surviving readers, shall be related in due time. But this section shall cover the hidden missions and events that guided events throughout this time.

The ''Heracles Cult'' continued a secret war against the agents of the Hydra-Lords and their infinite familiars and ciphers. But the Order of Assassins Heracles was not solely interested in thwarting the Hydra. They loaned their services as spies and killers to the highest bidders; moving discreetly through human and xenos societies alike in their desire to achieve their mercenary ambitions.

Other assassin cults worshiped the Murder God Khaine, and spoke forbidden words and performed rituals which they hoped would bring them closer to the eternal kill. These cults were not species-centric; if you could kill one of them, you were worthy of becoming one of them (''provided you survived the reprisals''). Dark Eldar sometimes sponsored such cults (''but invariably ended up hunting them for sport within Commorragh once they were bored with them'').

Yet, there was talk of a dark force; a shadow unseen, which was moving through the disparate fraternity of slayers, be they Heracles-bonded killers, freelancers, or even the ''Malicite Stalkers'' and semi-daemonic assassins employed by the ''Ordo Hydra'' and the Chaos Imperiums in general. The Grand Lords of the Orders became paranoid, desperate and ever more deadly; for there was naught more dangerous than a cornered assassin.

They gathered clues and snippets of information from across the galaxy on news of this killer and where it could be located and destroyed. From the sterile, drug-controlled ''‘lobotopias’'' of the Tau Empire’s capital septs, to the badlands and feral outlands of trading posts and warp-tainted drinking dens, the agents of the assassins exhorted information from contacts by force, murdered and stolen data-cores, or otherwise overheard conversations and conspiratorial whispers. All in the hope of finding their elusive predator. The rumors and whispers spoke of a cluster of grim worlds, in the shadow of the ancient star of Tovinas. The rain-racked world of Colobar was a world of miserable citizens leading pointless, short lives beneath the lash of bureaucracy for all eternity. In the year 883.M53, monsters descended upon Colobar. Some had arrived years earlier, disguised by chemicals or more paranormal techniques. Others slinked amongst the sewers and rooftop gutters of the grey cityscape, hungry for the blood of their foes. They each came of their own volition; each supreme killer had followed their own trail of clues and brutally-obtained truths. Swiftly and silently, they closed in upon their target.

It was known as the ''Collectioner’s Court''; the tax offices of Colobar city. This was where the dark force was hiding, and they attacked with fury born of selfishness. The carapace-armored Enforcers guarding the lobby were suddenly assailed by blood-drenched beasts with crazed Eversor-descendant strains. With a howl and a storm of blades, the assassins butchered the enemy even as they screamed in terror and unloaded magazine after magazine of shotgun and autogun shells into the blood-maddened killers. The place was a charnel house.

The windows of the offices high within the Taxman’s tower splintered as high-velocity rounds punched through them, pitching scribes and clerks from their feet in puffs of blood and vaporized bone. Some office workers turned on their own, blades shuddering into existence in place of their hands, before they slaughtered everyone they could find. Some, bearing serpentine tattoos, pulled handcannons and boltguns from their desk drawers, and gunned down their fellows at random. Though the assassins worked individually, the fact these individuals attacked at once meant the tower was swiftly depopulated. After ten minutes, the tower was full of nothing but corpses. 

The assassins coldly began to search the offices, for the chamber they all knew was hidden within the labyrinthine complex. They tore the place to shreds, keen eyes glowering as they scanned every document and schematic they could find. Eventually, they found it; a chamber which was not found upon the plans, or marked in any way by the former staff of the Collectioner’s Court. They converged upon this prize like a pack of jackals brought together temporarily for a great feast.

Melta bombs boiled away the heavy adamantine doors, and the assassins burst into the darkness eagerly. There was darkness there, and little more. Darkness and a series of heavy crates that is. The more prescient assassins instantly leapt from the room, as the bombardment cannon shells in the crates, rigged up to simple proximity fuses, detonated with the thunderclap of titans. The grey skyline of Colobar was illuminated for several long seconds, as the fusion fires boiled away the storm clouds above the tower for miles around.

Within the burning crater that was once a hab block, those surviving assassins pulled them-selves free of the flaming debris; skinless and screaming in fury. They noticed the ring of hulking shadows surrounding the crater far too late. Bolters rang out in the night, as the dark-armored Astartes murdered the assembly of assassins with thoughtless efficiency. Only two figures did not add their weight of fire to the fusillade; both were hooded, both were faceless. The first was a giant amongst giants, and bore a mantle of wilting midnight feathers about his vast shoulders; his identity remained a mystery to the wider galaxy until the War fought upon the armored skin of a god (''which shall be related to you in due course, once my surviving servitors can traverse this... realm... if I could truly call this place a realm''). The other figure remained a mystery; we have no information upon him. We only have the whispered intrigues of clerks and scriveners the galaxy over, who speak of a man without fear. A man who, they say, was like water; un-trappable, and unstoppable.

Within the Tau Empire’s tightly controlled society, the Psyker-Caste of the M’yen were used to locate and eliminate subversive elements within their great worlds; using their gifts to probe the minds of all who fell beneath their gaze. They also helped run the re-education centers, and used telepathy to perfect the correct drug cocktails required to crush any un-unified thoughts within the tau and their closest vassals. The M’yen were also essential in combating the Deceiver’s infiltrator units of modified Necrons, who constantly sought to undermine the war effort of the Tau and their allies, who were still engaged in a vast, desperate war to contain the Nightbringer and his Legions of silver destroyers. Ammunition factories that supplied specialized Necron-slaying rounds to the front-line military units were often singled out for destruction by Necron doppelgangers. Only a psyker’s second sight could reveal the cold stunted souls that writhed beneath the stolen facades worn by the nightmarish creatures.

Unbeknownst to the Thexian Alliance, members of their own race began to parlay with Necron envoys; each desiring to gain economic or social dominance against their rivals. In particular, a rogue group of Thexian Elite that called themselves the ''Prospectors of Cythor'', made a terrible pact with the smiling silver fiend known only as Ralei; in exchange for Necron immunity, the vile shape-shifting fiends would let Necrons build Tomb complexes beneath the surface of almost a hundred of their worlds, and would provide the souls necessary to pilot the Necron constructs that would rise from these tombs and bolster the swelling Legions of the Deceiver (''who had always had the least Necrons under his control, compared to his more powerful brothers''). This betrayal was only revealed when the Thexian Alliance began to collapse in M55, after their heartlands were ripped out by Necrons phasing into battle from nearby turncoat worlds. It is thought the Cythor Fiends helped prolong the war for millennia, counteracting the sudden appearance of elite Ork War-Hulks in Tau space, who had aided in pushing the Nightbringer’s forces back slightly on multiple fronts.

During the first half of the Age of Dusk, worlds, at random, were often attacked by bands of towering, howling mutants of twisted flesh and gnarled claws; sometimes two factions of monsters descended upon them, and proceeded to tear themselves apart alongside the helpless natives. There was no order to these incursions, and no pattern. Random Imperiums and Empires across the galaxy suffered these bizarre terrorist assaults. As it transpired, what was happening was at once horrifying and surprisingly mundane; it was a competition. This was a contest between artists; each as twisted and unthinkably horrifying as each other. One was a perversion of human science and daemonic cunning, the other the pinnacle of xenos perversion. 

Urien Rakarth and the Coven of the Flesh Tower of Commorragh had built monsters and living flesh-sculptures since the fall, and they had become supremely inventive in their creations over these long millennia. Yet, they had a rival who had learned at their withered feet in the Age of Imperium. '''Fabius Bile''' and his cabal of degenerates were also makers of monsters and animators of unclean beasts. The two factions developed an obsession to prove they were the most original of flesh-smith. Thus, over the years, they unleashed their grotesques and their ''‘new men’'' out into reality to test them. Wherever Bile traveled, he was pursued by slavering beasts that sought to protect him, and others to kill him. In turn, he would allow his own creations to be captured in Dark Eldar slave raids, and into the hands of the haemonculi, who were often temporarily slain by cunning chaos-abominations. Each time an attack failed, the creators would send polite notes to their opposites, explaining why their monsters had failed, and pointers on how to improve their art. This was the correspondence of scholars, delivered by monstrous couriers, who tore apart thousands of innocents over the years.

Yet, not every covert action in the Age of Dusk was born of spite and menace. The Councils of the Vulkan Imperium created ''‘The Brethren of the Willing’''. This was a group of adventurers and investigators, founded in M55, to uncover the dark secrets of the galaxy, and figure out a way to defeat them, or to prevent their terrible prophecies coming to pass. Their leader was ''Imogen Kaltrane'', a female scholar of stupendous intelligence and matchless bravery. The group she gathered was recruited from many diverse sources across the Imperium; outcasts and heroes, mercenaries and ideological prodigies. At one time or another, several Mk I and Mk II Astartes were known to have joined the brethren at one point. It was never a big group, and its membership altered several times over the course of history. However, they were clever and brilliant to a man; they worked to save and protect Vulkan’s people. They had unofficial sanction from Vulkan, which often meant they had to avoid censure by unwitting local authorities, but this was how Imogen preferred to work; ''‘on the seat of my britches mostly!’'' she was quoted as once explaining to a bewildered scribe who attempted to collate her history.

They discovered much during their time; they helped decipher the various prophecies of the old races, they discovered and fully realized the dark potential of the Necrons and proved the existence of their Gods once and for all, they who helped gather the various artefacts scattered across the galaxy. This account can only give a few examples of their many missions, but there were far more, all hidden from the eyes of history by centuries of secrecy and the gulf carved into history by this war which still threatens to engulf us all. But they were as heroic in deed as any of the expeditionary leaders of Vulkan’s many armies.
</div>
</div>