Editing Nobledark Imperium Drafts (section)

=== Post-Age of Apostasy (M36-M40) ===

==== The Fall of Istvaan V ====

Editor's Note: Per writefag, dates can be shuffled around.

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Istvaan V was a world of very little interest to the wider Imperium. The only feature it had of note were a series of mountainous fortifications dating back hundreds of thousands of years before the first humans arrived in the area, believed to be of ancient kinebrach construction; but whatever those defenses had been built to protect was long since gone. All that was left was a barely breathable atmosphere maintained by a meager biosphere of bacterial mats.

Still, as Istvaan III began its expansion out into space, they saw promise in their near neighbor, and began the centuries- long process of terraforming it. Slow successions of introduced pioneer species and careful geoengineering transformed Istvaan V from a borderline uninhabitable globe into a fertile agri- world, feeding colonies across the Istvaan system and beyond. For thousands of years Istvaan V enjoyed this gentle, quiet prosperity.

Then in 343.M36, it ended.

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To this day nobody in the Imperium knows what led Nimina Demthring to take an interest in such an unassuming world. Some believe she heard of local legends claiming (inaccurately) that Isha herself had taken some level of interest in the terraforming of the world, and thought that the world would offer some opportunity to get closer to Isha in her sick and twisted way. Others think that the world held some deep secret beneath its fortresses, one the Imperial inhabitants remained ignorant of but that Nimina somehow discovered. Most people, however, assume that she simply saw a relatively soft target and went for it.

Whatever the cause, a fleet of ghastbone daemon-ships translated out of warp, trailing sprays of corrosive pus, glistening pipes bulging out of rents in the hull like entrails, and made an immediate beeline for Istvaan V.


Despite being outmatched, the System Defense Force rallied to its protection.

The opening engagement of the battle seemed to go astonishingly well for the defenders, with the attacking Crone fleet breaking off its attack after only a few volleys. Any celebration was short- lived, however, as the Nurglites' plan revealed itself. They had woven entropic curses into their weapons and ammunition, which were now going to work on the ships of the Istvaan SDF. Rust crept along the corridors like time- lapse photography of a growing fungus, causing vital systems to malfunction and decay. Meanwhile, the injuries inflicted in the brief struggle on the Croneworlders were slowly healing themselves, scabbing over with diseased growths of new ghastbone. It was obvious that they were simply going to wait for the defenders to be reduced to utter helplessness before they moved in for the kill.

It was obvious that the naval defense was no longer viable, and regretfully the decision was made to pull back. The still salvageable ships would withdraw behind the orbital defenses of Istvaan III. The hopelessly contaminated were left with skeleton crews to launch a final attack, to cover the retreat and try to do as much damage as possible. Charging into the teeth of the enemy gun- line in ships half broken down already, it could not be anything more than a suicide charge. When the dust cleared, although some damage had been done the way was clear for the ground attack to begin.

The people of Istvaan V withdrew into the ancient fortifications; although most of them had long since been repurposed for habitation or similar purposes, they were still formidable constructions, built with all the skill of kinebrach artisans from the height of their empire to stand up to almost any foe. They had sheltered the people of Istvaan V from everything from Ork Waaaghs to Dark Eldar raiders for millennia. They had endured before; they would endure again. Or so they hoped.


Nimina declined to launch a conventional invasion. Instead, she dropped a set of horrific protoplasmic creatures on the world, things cultivated within the depths of Nurgle's Gardens. The amorphous abominations rapidly began expanding, spreading their tendrils across hundreds of kilometers to consume the rich biosphere of the agri- world. The PDF launched their small stocks of atomic weapons, backed by waves of bombers filled with incendiaries, but for every tendril they burned away two more had already taken root. Empowered by sorcerous rituals enacted on the warships orbiting above, the creeping sludge simply grew too far and too fast to be contained. Despite every desperate effort, the tide of slime washed over the bastions, worming its way inside though even the tiniest gaps. 

Thousands of desperate battles erupted in the winding corridors of the antediluvian fortresses as the people inside desperately tried to fight back, but it was like trying to hold back the ocean; there was simply too much and it was too fluid. It overwhelmed strongpoints and seeped through cracks in sealed doors. At the end, a few hundred thousand people managed to save themselves in the deepest layers by collapsing the access ways entirely, hoping that an Imperial rescue force would find some way to dig them out. 

Then the Conservator fleet fired up its teleporters. An hour later, there were no survivors. Only the slime, coating the continents and filling the seas. The Nurglite force remained only a few more hours before departing, leaving behind only a single light cruiser which had been crippled by a suicidal ramming attack and was unable to make warp. And, of course, a murdered world. From start to finish the entire operation had taken just over 200 hours, and two billion souls were dead.

Just a day later an Imperial relief force translated in, too late. All that they could do was to exterminate the abominations that had been left behind, pounding the world until nothing was left but an airless desert of volcanic glass. 

The people of the Istvaan system have neither forgiven nor forgotten. 

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==== The Kryptmann Line ====

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Boaz_Kryptman|Inquisitor Kryptman]]

==== The Doom of Malan'tai ====

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The Doom of Malan’tai represents an important lesson in eldar history. The battle and subsequent loss of this Craftworld demonstrated to the eldar just how easy it is for them to lose the very things they are fighting for, and just how pernicious a foe the Great Devourer is. Malan’tai was once a proud Craftworld, located on the eastern fringe. Malan’tai had close connections to Idharae and Iyanden, and so was firmly in the “eldar supremacy” camp of Imperial politics. The Craftworld had suffered from repeated attacks by orks early in its history, which had fostered an impressive dislike of all non-Eldar lifeforms among the inhabitants of Malan’tai and some of the most impressive gun batteries on a Craftworld this side of Il-Kaithe.

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But that was all before Hive Fleet Behemoth. Through the visions of their seers, Malan’tai saw that the Exodite world of Tar-Etenil was going to come under attack by a splinter fleet of Hive Fleet Behemoth, and raced to the Exodites’ aid. However, when they arrived at the planet, they found that the tyranids had already managed to strip the planet clean, and that Malan’tai itself was now the next target of the Great Devourer. The hive ships blazed past the Malan’tai warships sent to defend Tar-Etenil, making a beeline for the Craftworld itself. Malan’tai barely managed to send out a distress call to Idharae and Iyanden before it was enveloped by the Shadow in the Warp.

For days, Malan’tai held out against the tyranid swarm, as mycetic spores pelted the surface of the Craftworld and gaunts and carnifexes stalked its halls. The elder struck back with all their strength, aspect warriors cutting through mobs of termagaunts and rippers while wraithguards grappled with larger bioforms. However, bit by bit, they gradually lost ground across the Craftworld, until they were eventually forced back into a small area surrounding the Craftworld’s Webway portal. However, it was at this point that a miraculous thing occurred. Reinforcements from Idharae and Iyanden came streaming through the Webway portal to the aid of Malan’tai, fresh troops who brought the tyranid advance to a halt and as they relieved the wearied defenders and then began to regain ground.

With reinforcements at their back, the eldar of Malan’tai began the arduous task of clearing the tyranids from their home, room by room and chamber by chamber. However, as the eldar began to push back against the tyranid invaders, the psychoactive power grid of the Craftworld slowly but surely began to dim and fail. It was at this point that the full scale of the tyranid infestation became clear. While the eldar had been fighting the tyranids on the surface, other tyranid bioforms had bored deep into the wraithbone structure of Malan’tai and tapped into the Craftworld’s infinity circuit, leeching energy from it like aphids on a plant. The eldar of Malan’tai had suffered the ultimate loss, the souls of their ancestors digested, turned into nothing more than nutriment to feed the hunger of the swarm.

The battle might not have been over, but the war had been lost. Even if the eldar did manage to take back the half-occupied Craftworld from the tyranids, the greatest thing of value on Malan’tai was gone. Despondent, the few survivors of Malan’tai gathered up every soul stone and any other item of importance they could find before jury-rigging a brief window to leave through the Craftworld’s Webway portal, but not before altering the course of Malan’tai to burn up in the nearest star. If their home was to burn, the tyranids would burn with it.

To add insult to injury, several unusual tyranid creatures were discovered during the Battle of Malan’tai. These creatures resembled a cross between a fetus and an electric eel, with grossly distended braincases extending behind their head plates. These creatures possessed devastating psyker powers, using them to float above the battlefield as if suspended in a field of unreality. Analysis of these creatures showed that eldar genetic code had gone into their construction. These creatures became known as zoanthropes.

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==== The Rogue Trader's War ====

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The Surat Incident, more popularly known as the Rogue Trader’s War, began when Leopold van Cortez, head of the van Cortez Rogue Trader dynasty “rediscovered” the Surat Subsector and claimed it as his own. The Surat Subsector was an area of the Segmentum Tempestus that was originally colonized by the Imperium in early M32, mostly consisting of typical human colonies but also several native species of Xenos Independens and even one of the first colony worlds of felinids outside of Carlos McConnell. However, the whole subsector was deemed lost when a Warp storm blew over the area and made navigation there untenable. The storm dissipated in M37, and Van Cortez was simply the first “modern” Imperial with a working starship to journey to and make a claim on the sector. However, he found that the Surat Subsector was not as uninhabited as the Imperium had thought, with most planets having reverting to Feral Worlds populated by the regressed descendants of the original colonists who had little if any knowledge of the Imperium.

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Rogue Traders claiming far-flung planets as their own personal fiefdoms was nothing new in Imperial history. In some cases, the planet profitted with the Rogue Trader dynasty, growing with them as a bureaucratic and administrative hub to the point that their standing in the business world rivalled the megacorps of Kiavahr. In other cases, the planets were kept in the muck and exploited for all they are worth as a colonial market and source of cheap labor. The central Imperial government is not happy about this type of arrangement but is often unable to do anything about it, partly because the affairs of a single backwater planet are typically not important enough to reach the ears of high-ranking members of the Administratum and partly even if they do hear about it finding said planet is a difficult feat in and of itself.A single planet acting as an extralegal hideaway off the official stellar charts tends to be rather hard to find, even if you know what you are looking for.

Exactly how a Rogue Trader dynasty made use of particular planets depended on the dynasty in question. The von Cortez Dynasty made their fortune as planet speculators, finding uninhabited planets of value and then auctioning their coordinates off to an interested buyer for a significant finder’s fee. The Adeptus Mechanicus were always interested in a new location for a Forge World, the Administratum is always interested in potential new Agri-Worlds or land to sell off to Guard regiments that had completed their tour of duty, member states are always looking for uninhabited worlds on their border. The von Cortez dynasty acted as middlemen for these various powers and got filthy rich doing it. However, under Imperial law one couldn’t simply sell a planet if it already had humans, eldar, or Xenos Independens living on it. It would simply be…easier if those people were to simply disappear. The decisions of what to do with these kinds of planets should not be made by people with the kind of money to buy high-end military grade weaponry, the kind that the more cynical sort often call “budget Exterminatuses”.

Leopold’s grand plan backfired enormously when several of the Xenos Independens and human colonies, specifically those with enough a tech base to achieve space flight and Warp travel, survived the initial bombardment. Deciding to unite against a common foe, they retaliated against the Imperium by striking at major population centers, beginning what became known as the Rogue Trader’s War. Two Imperial guard regiments, six Howling Banshees and a brief visit by a company of Astartes later, the war ended with the near-complete eradication of the Surat Subsector’s native population. Having already been attacked without provocation, the inhabitants of the Surat Subsector refused to believe any offer of peace by the Imperium and in the end even turned to the Ruinous Powers for support, leading to their annihilation.

Unfortunately, while the Imperial military was very good at wiping out life on a planet, it was somewhat less good at figuring out what to do with them next. The Administratum, who usually handled such matters, were too far away to easily figure out what to do with the worlds of such a backwater region as the Surat Subsector, requiring some sort of planet broker in order to make things move along efficiently. On top of that, the Rogue Trader’s War left the Surat Subsector nice and uninhabited, just as Leopold had wanted it in the first place. It seemed as though Leopold would profit, at the Imperium’s expense no less.

Seven months after the end of the Rogue Trader’s War, Leopold was found dead at the hands of an Eversor assassin. The van Cortez family’s Writ of Trade was revoked and the majority of their assets were liquidated and distributed to the survivors and veterans of the Surat Subsector Incident. The surviving members of the family were left with almost nothing to their name but what they had with them, the notice informing them of such encouraging to find a “more ethical” line of work. The Administratum extended the possibility that one of the junior family members, upon demonstrating good character, could come forward and name themselves as the heir to the von Cortez dynasty’s remaining assets and seized heirlooms, though it would require making their identity publicly known as Leopold’s heir. Even though there were entire star-systems of people with scores to settle over what happened in Surat, there was no surer way to draw the remains of the house van Cortez out of their refuges, and many were served unexpected justice when they arrogantly tried the Imperium's scrutiny.

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====The War for Gollopo====
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The Imperium and the Tau did not often clash directly, prior to integration. A few flare-ups in the centuries after first contact, before the borders were finalized and diplomatic channels became well-established. Such clashes are not well remembered; both sides were usually half-hearted about the fighting, and after Integration the busy propagandists of the Administratum made sure such conflicts were consigned to the dustbin of history. 

A few battles refused to be erased quietly. One such was the battle of Gollopo. 
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The world Gollopo itself was a human world, settled in the Dark Age of Technology and forgotten in the Age of Strife. It was re-discovered almost simultaneously by both Tau and Imperium explorers. It was in the grey zone between the Tau and Imperium zones of control and near a strategic warp lane, meaning it was highly desirable to both sides. And- this is where the trouble really began- it was divided into nearly a hundred independent states, all of which had long and often nasty histories with each other. 

Both sides sent diplomatic teams. The debate over which superpower to join immediately polarized Gollopo's politics. Everyone believed that a nation without a protector would be carved apart by the ones that did, resulting in a mad rush for advantage. Long-standing alliance blocks broke up over the question; ancient enemies uneasily found themselves on the same side. When Prunzik started leaning towards the Tau, its long-time enemy Francha immediately started soliciting the Imperium, only to switch positions towards the Tau when Prunzik started leaning towards the Imperium. When the Inland Empire declared for the Imperium, its subject colonies along the North Shore immediately invited in the Tau in a bid for independence. The Sokhmar and Lankhmar immediately launched genocidal campaigns against each other in a desperate bid to settle their thousand-year grudge before either could secure the assistance of a galactic military. 

As the situation deteriorated, both diplomatic teams summoned military reinforcements. And then more. And then more. 

Things finally boiled over in the Saarland. A near-impotent buffer state between Prunzik and Francha, both its parliament and its population were almost evenly divided between pro-Tau and pro-Imperial factions... which also corresponded with long-standing pro-Francha and pro-Prunzik factions. Street fighting broke out, which soon descended into guerrilla war, with both Prunzik and Francha supporting their chosen sides. First with money, then with guns, then with 'observers' and 'advisors'... Finally, Francha declared that the Saarland was a failed state and sent an expeditionary force across the border to restore order. Lord General Six Serpent ordered the Imperial Guard to secure the pro-Imperial sections of the Saarland three days later, and Shas'O Vaina moved his cadres to intercept.
The war was on. 

The first clashes in the Saarland were dramatic, but ultimately inconclusive; the Imperial Guard was driven out of the Saarland by fast-moving Tau armor threatening to slice their columns into pieces, but Tau follow-up offensives were blocked by combined Prunzikan/Guard fortifications and careful deployment of the few Baneblades available. 

These would be the largest direct clashes of Tau and Imperial forces; any hope that the fighting could be confined to the Saarland died within days, as every nation on Gollopo plunged into war, every ancient grievance and modern ambition subsumed into the clash of galactic powers. (Although a few were not quite sure what side they were fighting on; the Federated Oskarrian States switched sides four times over the course of the war.) Guard and Fire Caste forces were divided among multiple theaters, fighting closely alongside the native armies. 

At the beginning, the Imperium held the advantage. Although less advanced than the off-worlders, the Golloponi armies could not simply be ignored. The Imperium had proven more effective at recruiting the local nations; their status as fellow humans, greater degree of local autonomy, and art-deco meshed better with Golloponi pride and aesthetic sense than the Tau's alien-ness, more invasive policies, and smoothly curving ceramics.

However, this advantage of numbers proved hard to leverage. The Tau could simply move and concentrate faster, and seized the operational initiative early. They kept the Imperium reacting to rapid-fire series of feints, diversions, raids, and genuine offensives, too off-balance to launch their own offensives. Morale began to decline, especially among the Imperium's local allies. To Golloponi sensibilities, the Tau war machines were frighteningly alien and incomprehensible, and local regiments were often routed by even a single Tau skimmer unless backed up by the Guard, while Tau-aligned forces were inspired to greater heights of courage by the alien powers of their allies. 

As the war dragged on, the momentum began to swing in the other direction. The Imperial-aligned armies grew accustomed to facing down the Tau, and attrition began to take its toll. The Tau required spare parts and ammunition from a supply chain stretching all the way from the Tau Empire itself; with the low speed and relatively smaller size of Tau ships, they were simply unable to sustain the operational tempo they had set early on once their stockpiles were exhausted. On the other hand, the Golloponi early-industrial tech base required only minor upgrading to start supplying spares and ammunition for the Guard. And the Tech-priests accompanying the expedition were well-versed in the procedures for such upgrades. 

While the Tau attempted to launch their own upgrade program, the Earth Caste engineers were less skilled in using limited resources; they knew how to make microchips, they knew how to train someone to make microchips, but they didn't know how to get to microchips starting from a coal-fired steel mill. The Mechanicus did. 

By the middle of the second year, the Imperium was able to launch a grand offensive, rolling back previous Tau gains. Committing their remaining reserves, the Tau fought a series of holding actions, buying time to consolidate a series of defensive lines. It worked, and the offensive ground to a halt outside the core territories of the Tau alliance block. 

With all room for subtlety gone, the war entered its bloodiest phase. The Tau did not have the reserves to launch any major offensives, especially once the Imperial block entrenched themselves in turn, but were able to shatter the spearheads of any offensive. Most of the dying was done by the Golloponi, as the Guard and Fire Caste husbanded their strength and looked for some decisive opportunity.

It never came. After three years and about twenty million deaths, the war was ended by a negotiated settlement. The nations that aligned themselves with the Imperium would become part of the Imperium; the nations that sided with the Tau would become part of the Tau Empire. Nations that had been split would either become neutral, their independence guaranteed by both sides, or be split into multiple nations, as determined by the locals themselves. 

Most Tau-Imperium conflicts were prosecuted halfheartedly, neither side really wanting to fight one of the few other true civilizations among the stars. Gollopo was not. There has been some debate as to why, but ultimately it has been ascribed to the influence of the Golloponi themselves. They regarded the war as 'the End of History'; although things would certainly keep happening, the history of Gollopo and its nations would be subsumed without a trace into the history of the Imperium and/or the tau Empire. A footnote, remembered only as a place where these two giants once fought. Thus they fought with incredible fervor, as their last chance to make a mark on history as independent nations. That fervor came to 'infect' the off-world forces they were allied with, the two working increasingly close together as the war dragged on. They fought together, bled together, died together, and came to regard the war in the same light. 
Or so the thinking goes.
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====The Damocles Crusade====
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The Damocles Crusade occurred near the tail end of the Second Sphere of Expansion. At this point, neither the Tau nor the Imperium had much contact with each other; there had been some vague diplomatic contact, but distance had prevented the establishment of any sort of permanent embassy. As the Second Sphere began to run up against the Imperial borders, this began to change. Due to the Tau's lack of rapid interstellar communications, no central policy for contact could be imposed; each point of contact proceeded independently, according to the whims and instincts of the local commander. In most cases, this lead to a reasonably peaceful opening of relations. Things were different in the Damocles Gulf. 

The Damocles Gulf was only lightly settled by the Imperium when the Tau started pushing into the region. However, many mercantile concerns had long-term plans for the colonization of the region, and were not happy to see the Tau butting in. The Tau pursued a highly aggressive colonization policy, settling colonies down in systems already claimed by the Imperium. This lead to a series of skirmishes with Rogue Traders, corporate paramilitaries, and colonial militias. These battles escalated over the course of about twenty years, until finally local authorities called to the wider Imperium for aid. A Crusade was declared, organized, and launched two years later, and the war was on.
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There has been much speculation over why the Tau acted so aggressively within the Damocles Gulf. The Tau did not have a proper appreciation for the size of the Imperium at the time, but this did not prevent other commanders in other regions from pursuing peaceful relations. Part of it may have been simple time discrepancy; the lead-up to the Crusade took half a Tau lifetime. They may have simply perceived the provocations as coming further apart than the centuries-old human high command did. 

It has also been thought that the Tau's policy in the Gulf was, indeed, deliberate central policy; the Ethereals on T'au deciding to test the Imperium in a region far removed from anywhere else. Such theories have never been firmly confirmed or denied; Tau records from the period are silent on their motivations, and further speculation has been discouraged since Integration. 

The Tau had forewarning. There was also significant trade and diplomatic contact within Damocles Gulf, and a Crusade is hard to hide. They built fortifications, supply depots, surveillance networks. Laid in parts and munitions for long sieges. Prepared for the storm. 

The Imperium began the war with a crucial advantage in communications and mobility. The Tau had no equivalent to astropathic communication and had to rely on courier ships for interstellar coordination- couriers that were slower than Imperial ships. The Tau were intellectually aware of this, but did not fully appreciate it; it would cost them. Likewise, the Imperium also underappreciated Tau abilities in several areas. The first phase of the war would reveal all these shortcomings. 

Tau strategy centered around a series of border systems that had both human and Tau settlements. In preparation for the oncoming crusade, most civilians were evacuated from these settlements and preparations for a protracted guerilla war laid in. Meanwhile, mobile fleet assets were withdrawn to secret bases in central locations. The goal was to bog down the Crusade in protracted ground wars across multiple theaters, leaving it open to concentrated strikes by the fleet. Since the Tau forces in these systems were in immediate proximity to human colonies, they could not simply be ignored; the Crusade would have to split up and commit forces to each world. 

The first part of this plan worked excellently. The Crusade was indeed badly bogged down on the border worlds. The Tau had seeded these regions with cloaked surveillance satellites and sensor networks, to give them comprehensive real-time intelligence of Imperial movements. Concealed supply depots and bases provided places for the Tau to rest and resupply in comfort; when they were discovered, extensive minefields, AA batteries, and drone screens provided enough time to evacuate men and equipment before the Imperium could destroy the location. Pathfinders and spotter drones called down devastatingly precise artillery barrages, while stealth-suit teams assassinated officers and destroyed ammo dumps. 

The Imperial response to these tactics was... underwhelming. Long accustomed to enemies like Orks and chaos cultists, adaptation to Tau tactics was slow and confused. Even the Titans not immune, the Tau having developed several means of dealing with Titan-scale opponents in their long battles with the Orks. None were destroyed or even severely damaged, but the Mechanicus became increasingly cautious with them after several close calls. Only the Astartes and the few Biel-Tan Eldar forces consistently out-fought the Tau, and spread across half a dozen worlds, there were too few of them to turn the tide on their own. 

The second part of the plan did not go nearly so well. The first Tau strike, on the world of Kindashar, drove off the outnumbered Imperial fleet with severe damage. Reinforcements, combined with precision orbital bombardment, forced the Guard regiments on the ground into an exclusively defensive posture. The Tau fleet then withdrew before an Imperial counter-attack could be mustered. Unfortunately for them, Eldar divinations and psychic interrogation of a handful of captured Tau spacers revealed the location of their hidden base. When the Tau fleet arrived, to their shock, they found the Crusade fleet already waiting for them. 

The battle was short and decisive. Caught by surprise and out of combat formation, they were unable to maintain their range advantage and forced into a close-quarters fight. Coming right off the heels of a previous engagement with no chance to repair and resupply, the Tau fleet began to crack; once a trio of Eldar destroyers identified and destroyed the command ship, disorder became a near-rout, as the Tau fought to get back to the safety of FTL. Maybe half the Tau fleet survived, all heavily damaged. Many would not live to see a friendly port, as Imperial wolfpacks used their superior FTL speed to hunt down the scattered survivors. 

With the Tau fleet destroyed or driven out of the Gulf, any hope of relief was gone. They continued to fight on, but it was a lost cause. The Crusade was reinforced by regiments more experienced in counter-guerilla tactics, and their experience quickly diffused among the rest of the force. With control of space assured, air superiority was quickly established by orbiting carriers. The hidden bases were hunted down and destroyed one by one. As the lack of resupply began to bite increasingly deeply, one by one the different cadres surrendered. The last to give in was Kindashar, which lasted five months after the annihilation of the Tau fleet. 

Various other minor Tau colonies fell quickly, in most cases surrendering without a fight. It was at this point that the Crusade began to slowly fall apart. The Crusade had been launched fast enough that its strategic objectives had not been fully decided, and now that the immediate goal had been achieved the arguments resumed in full force. Some interests viewed what had already been accomplished as sufficient, particularly the Rogue Traders and parts of the military. Others, mainly the nobility and merchant houses, wanted to seize control of the entire Damocles Gulf, while a third faction wanted a punitive expedition deep into Tau space. 

While it first appeared that the factions in favor of further offensives would win out, the intervention of water caste diplomats prevented that. Dispatched from the core septs of the Tau, they skillfully navigated the factional politics of Imperial high society, playing the differing groups off against each other with the judicious use of flattery and bribes. The process of peace was not instant, and there were several naval skirmishes as more aggressive Imperial captains scouted out Tau defenses, but- after nearly a year- a settlement was reached and the Crusade disbanded. 

The immediate outcome of the war was a final settlement on who owned what in the Damocles Gulf. The Imperium got the better end of the deal, ending up with all of the border worlds and several of the colonies captured in the aftermath of the Imperium's naval victory. Tau in the transferred areas were resettled in Tau space, and the Tau retained a lessened presence in the Gulf. 

In the long term, both sides gained valuable information about the other. In addition to the obvious military knowledge, the Tau learned a great deal about the inner workings of the Imperial apparatus, which would serve them well in future negotiation. Oddly enough, the Damocles Gulf would become a calm spot and major trade route in future Imperium-Tau relations; small numbers of Tau refused to leave colonies that had been traded to the Imperium, eventually forming a Tau/Imperial creole culture with disproportionate cultural influence, serving as a bridge between the two empires. 
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==== The Destruction of Lilarsus ====

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For years, the Tau Empire has had problems with Dark Eldar. Every time the Tau Empire have had a problem, whether A.I. rebellion or tyranid invasion, the Dark Eldar are always there like the vultures they are ready to prey on the vulnerable and the helpless. The primary source of these problems is Archon Andross Klax of the Kabal of the Hand of Deft Spite. The Tau Empire is effectively “his” space, at least by the standards of Commorragh, and other Kabals had to treat with him if they wanted to privilege of raiding there.

The Tau were fed up with Klax. The bounty on his head was staggering. The Tau usually don’t believe in bounty hunting, feeling that if you do kill it should be for duty or defense or something a little more noble than simply selfish greed. With Klax they’ve just stopped caring, the Empire want him dead. Especially Aun’Va, who had to put up with Klax’s shit more than anyone else. Klax was enough to make Aun’Va wistful for the old days of the Mont’au, back when you wanted someone dead you raised an army to do it and told the troops to put the offender’s head on a stick to make sure they were gone.

In M39, after an invasion by a tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan resulted in a series of pyrrhic victories that only ended with Imperial assistance, the Tau Empire was once again considering closer relations with the Imperium. This would have been a disaster for Klax, for whom Imperial support and resources would have meant an end to the easy raiding he had been enjoying for the last one and a half millennia. And so to preserve his hunting grounds Archon Klax hatched a cunning scheme.

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In 876.M39, Klax created a false flag operation, making it seem like the Maiden World of Lilarsus was really a Dark Eldar world and Klax’s base of operations. The Kabal of the Hand of Deft Spite planted chemical evidence in the atmosphere, making it seem like the planet was experiencing substantial industrialization and spaceship traffic despite its primordial veneer. Surface observations would have shown the planet’s population was mostly Eldar, which would hopefully damn Lilarsus further in the eyes of the Tau. To someone who wasn’t familiar with how the Exodites worked, it looked like a textbook pirate hideout. The hope was that the Tau would attack Lilarsus and provoke a Tau-Imperium skirmish, souring relationships between the Imperium and the Tau. At best, it was hoped the act would spark the Tau-Imperium war both the Dark Eldar and their more debauched Crone World kin had always desired.

The Tau, already incensed with the Kabal of the Hand of Deft Spite for their raid on the Sept of Kel’Shan shortly after the tyranid invasion, took the bait. The Ethereals ordered Lilarsus burned to the ground in order to wipe out the space pirate and his cronies once and for all. The Tau attack took the form of nuking the population centers from orbit and letting the fallout from the airburst kill the rest. It was cheap, quick, and effective, especially since this was back in the days when the Tau were only just developing more extensive and expensive methods of Exterminatus for scouring tyranid-infested worlds to the bedrock. Thousands died. Fortunately, because the bombardment was focused on population centers not every Exodite died in the bombardment and the World Tree wasn’t compromised in the attack. This one of the few things that kept the situation from escalating faster than it already did.

It was only after the bombardment that the Tau realized that Lilarsus wasn’t a Dark Eldar world. The Tau tried to apologized to Lilarsus’ patron Craftworld of Iyanden and offered to help repair the damage they had done, but found their offers icily ignored. However, for Iyanden it wasn’t enough. Klax would pay in time, but the Tau had offered them an insult that couldn’t go unanswered. In the months following the bombardment of Lilarsus several Ethereals were subject to assassination attempts by Iyanden rangers, and the commander of the ill-fated expedition was found impaled on a wraithbone spear along with his command staff.

These assassinations in spite of the Tau’s offers of weregild enraged the Ethereal council, and the Tau Empire mobilized to go to war. The response of Craftworld Iyanden, who had the largest space navy of any Craftworld, was in effect “bring it”, and the eldar began to assemble their own retaliatory fleet. The two fleets intercepted each other in a dead star system to the galactic west of the Damocles Gulf. However, as the Eldar and Tau fleets squared off, suddenly an unknown fleet translated into the system and the Eldar and Tau’s ships stalled. The Tau didn’t know what to make of this. It wasn’t like their ships had been hit by an EMP, as life support systems and artificial gravity were still on and they didn’t even know what an EMP would do to Eldar ships, it was like their ships were being…physically restrained.


Up until this point, the Tau had comforted themselves by believing that the border skirmishes they had fought with the Imperium in the past were evidence that their great and mighty fleets were capable of holding off the aggressive and might of the "whole Imperial war machine". The more knowledgeable among the Ethereals and Fire Caste knew that it was merely the navy of the Segmentum Ultima, but they still figured that was a sizeable portion of the Imperium’s military might, and liked their odds in the event of a confrontation.

That was until the Tau got a good look at the ''Bucephalus'' and its hangers-on translating into the system. Those weren’t any Segmentum Ultima navy ships they had ever seen before. Hell, they hadn’t seen most of those ship classes before. And perhaps more importantly, this new fleet not only outnumbered but outgunned both the Tau fleet and Eldar fleet put together. If people started shooting this new fleet would annihilate both of them, only stopping to wipe the ship debris off its metaphorical boot.
And then the face of Oscar, Last of the Golden Men, Emperor of the Throne, Servus Servorum Imperium, Emperor-Consort of the All-Mother and Defender of the Realms Uncounted appeared on the Tau’s communication array to request the presence of their leader at his next earliest convenience to discuss "recent events". The Tau were just as surprised at the appearance of the Emperor’s face on their screens as they were at the arrival of the Bucephalus, this being was clearly different from any gue’la they had ever seen. He told them they wouldn’t have to worry about Iyanden striking while they were distracted as his wife just told the other side to go home and tend their wounds and sure enough Iyanden, who seemed previously out for blood, was doing so without hesitation or complaint to the surprise of the Tau commanders.

It was be at that moment, that exact moment, that every Fire Caste present realized just how deep the pit they are standing over really is, and the Tau Empire realized that the “tall tales” of Por’O M’arc visiting the Imperial capital were more than just tall tales.



After three days of intense debating, a ceasefire was eventually reached and war was narrowly averted. Lilarsus ended up being garrisoned with Aspect Warrior and wraithguards from Iyanden to protect the world tree until the radioactive fallout subsided, along with several unarmed Crisis battlesuits from the Tau empire scrubbing radiation. Surprisingly enough, the presence of the latter was actually a request of the Tau Empire, Iyanden said the Tau didn't have to be there and quite frankly didn’t want the Tau anywhere near the planet, but the Tau insisted. Crisis battlesuits and other suits of their size class doubled as really good environmental hazard suits. Projections and farseer visions foresaw that most of Lilarsus would be uninhabitable for nearly 450 years, but with active cleanup of the radioactive fallout it could be cut down to nearly a third of that time. Maybe even quicker for major population centers. The faster it was cleaned up, the faster the Exodites could return to their home. In the minds of the Tau, it was their misjudgment that led to the bombing of Lilarsus, and therefore it was their duty to make amends. It was a matter of personal honor for them.

After the stand-off, Spiritseer-Admiral Iyanna Arienal, essentially the "face" of Iyanden's seer council, disappeared from the public eye for a few months. When asked where she had been after return her only answer was "with Yriel". Perhaps not coincidentally, Archon Klax was never heard from again.

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==== The Second Damocles Gulf Campaign ====

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The Second Damocles Gulf campaign is an important marker in Tau history, representing one of the largest battles in Tau history before the Tau joined the Imperium and one of the few instances in which Tau fought against Tau. After the rebuilding of the Tau Empire following the A.I. rebellion and the Fourth Sphere of Expansion, the political winds had shifted once again and the Ethereal council was once more considering the possibility of developing closer ties with the Imperium. Imperial culture had become well-known to the Tau in the millennium since the two empires had first met, and some Ethereals recognized the resonance between Imperial ideals and the Tau’va, as well as the potential of using inclusion into the Imperium as a vehicle to spread the Greater Good. However, these ideas created a political backlash and a series of counter-proposals across the Tau Empire. These proposals ranged from the reasonable, such as seeking to ally with the Imperium without fully joining, to the insane, such as a mass migration of pro- and anti-Imperium Tau across the empire to form separate pro- and anti-Imperial states.

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Eventually things came to a head, with a contingent of traditionalists coming to believe that the ideologies of the Tau’va had already become too compromised by outside influence. Riots and violence erupted across the Tau Empire, eventually resulting in a sizeable minority of the Tau Empire including several Ethereals and high-ranking commanders including Commander Farsight leaving to form their own empire. The remaining Ethereals were outraged by this breach of Tau honor. Perhaps more importantly, the schism had led to the spilling of Tau blood by Tau hands, something that had not happened in history since the age of Mont’au and the days before the Tau as a whole had come to accept the Greater Good. This was something that could simply not go unpunished.

In response to the violence and aftereffects of the Schism, the Tau Empire raised a massive retaliatory strike force, headed by several Shas’O and at least three Ethereals. However, Farsight’s counterpart among the reformers, Commander Shadowsun, was not among their number. Although Shadowsun had fought against the reformers in the initial days of the schism, including with Farsight himself in the riots of T’au, she was not part of the retaliatory fleet, having been called away to the eastern front of the empire to defend against a splinter fleet of Hive Fleet Kraken. This may have been one of the reasons why the Damocles Gulf campaign went as badly as it did. Although the commanders were well-trained and their forces outnumbered the traditionalists by nearly six to one, they were still going up against the Tau Empire’s greatest living military strategist, and without a general of Farsight’s caliber on the side of the reformers the retaliatory strike may have been doomed to fail.

Perhaps the biggest mistake was following the traditionalists into the northwestern frontier of the Tau Empire, the area where Farsight had spent most of his military career. As a result, Commander Farsight and the traditionalists had a much better idea of the terrain than the reformers did, including the best places to defend or set ambushes. During the Damocles Gulf campaign, Farsight once again proved how he had earned his name, only fighting in areas where he could nullify the numerical advantage of the reformers, or flanking around the main body of the fleet to strike at supply lines and attempt to cut them off from the empire. When forced to fight in the open, he would often employ unorthodox tactics that caught the more conservative commanders of the reformers off guard, such as jumping his ships into “knife-fight” range so that enemy ships could not fire at them without firing on their own soldiers at the same time. Although victories by the traditionalists seemed to be randomly distributed across the Gulf, they would prove very important for future political events, for these victories were often concentrated around easily defensible points that would serve as the effective borders of the Farsight Enclaves.

The Second Damocles campaign was ultimately declared a failure by the Tau Empire. The Empire had the forces needed to wipe the separatists from the stars, but Farsight’s forces were too heavily entrenched beyond the Damocles Gulf and it would cost them at least ten reformers for every traditionalist, a proposition the Ethereals were not willing to entertain. Not to mention, repaying the traditionalists’ violence with more blood would only strengthen the separatists’ claims of being in the right. Instead, the Ethereals decided to play the long game, considering that after a few generations the majority of the traditionalists, including most importantly Farsight, would be long gone. Unfortunately, this has not been the case, as the traditionalists have somehow managed to create their own functioning system within the Farsight enclaves, but Farsight has somehow managed to stay alive for far longer than any Tau would be reasonably expected to live.

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==== Sha'Galudd and the Nagi ====

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Sometime near the end of the latest Sphere of Expansion, a Tau expeditionary force came across a world known as Sha’Galudd. This world had been known for some time, but it was only now that the Ethereal council decided the world was to be surveyed and settled. It was a lush world, not to the Tau’s climatic preferences but more than capable of supporting a colony. However, when the first settlers set foot on Sha’Galudd, they found the world was already home to another xenos species, the worm-like Nagi.

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First contact between the Nagi and the Tau was surprisingly violent, even when compared to other races like the Kroot. However, before long the Nagi leaders came before the Ethereals of the expeditionary force in the interests of peace. They said that they had been unjustly persecuted by other xenos races into hiding on Sha’Galudd, and all they wanted to do was live in peace. They thought the Tau were these same invaders but had only just realized they were not, and now wanted to live in harmony with them. The xenos were even willing to cede most of the planet to the Tau, as they themselves needed little space to live. Within a few decades the world of Sha’Galudd was thriving, with many Nagi serving as advisors to the planet’s Ethereals. With the colony flourishing, the Ethereals of Sha’Galudd sent a message to the Ethereal Council of T’au, telling the homeworld of the good news.

At this time, the Tau had been formally inducted into the Imperium, and the Ethereal Council were taking full advantage of the Imperium’s records to try and learn as much as they could about the galaxy beyond. When they heard the news from Sha’Galudd, as well as a description of the xenos the expeditionary fleet had encountered, they immediately recognized what they were dealing with and dispatched a military fleet in response.

The aliens of the planet had introduced themselves to the as the Nagi. The rest of the galaxy knew them as the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Rangdan_Xenocides_and_the_Slaugth|Slaugth]].

The Tau acted quickly, deploying an entire contingent (Tio’ve) of Hunter Cadres to Sha’Galudd. The Ethereal Council privately hoped the situation could be solved without bloodshed, but when the contingent arrived they found themselves being fired upon by their own people. The Ethereals and much of the military of Sha’Galudd had been infested and subverted by the Slaugth, turning them into a veritable revenant army. The fighting was savage and brutal, much of it being room-to-room urban combat interspersed with attacks from Slaugth constructs created from Tau biomass. Nevertheless, despite the brutality of the fighting it was fortunate the contingent arrived when they did, for if they had arrived later it is likely that the entire planet would have been infected and turned into yet another infestation for the Slaugth.

The results of this battle, specifically how quickly and decisively the Ethereals dealt with the Slaugth, showed that although the Tau were still a young and ambitious race, they were quickly shedding their naivete and were more than willing to adapt to their surroundings.

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==== The Happalachian Hill Race ====

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When the Tau finally joined the Imperium proper, many of their Fire caste officers looked forward to the opportunity to show what they saw as the backward, stagnant forces of the Imperium the obvious superiority of the Tau's way of doing things. To their abject horror, the reintegration campaign of Happalachia gave them exactly what they'd been asking for.

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Happalachia is a planet composed almost entirely of mountain ranges and thick forests, with oceans which could be more aptly described as valleys that have filled with water, or places where the mountains dip below sea-level, rather than deep,empty expanses most associate with the phrase.  Despite being prone to seizmic activity, it is not a Death World, being almost tame by Imperial standards.  If anything, the seizmic activity is a boon, responsible for the large deposits of metals and other natural resources that made the planet worth reclaiming.  The real challenge of the planet, and perhaps the reason the humans inhabiting the world had not re-achieved spaceflight by the time the Imperium rediscovered them, is the terrain, which ranges from fortyfive-degree slopes to sheer cliffs to trees so thick they form a natural wall.  It is perhaps for this reason that the Tau, with their flight-capable vehicles and battlesuits which could handle such treacherous land, were selected to assist in reclaiming the world and assisting the newly-formed PDF regiments with clearing out the Orks which had taken root. The locals proved more of a shock to the Tau than anything the Orks could possibly have thrown at them.


The humans living on Happalachia were fairly close to the standard human form, if a bit more variable in height and size than would be expected.  They were prone to growing long, unkempt beards, with thick, black body hair and tanned leathery skin, and have been described as having a strong, bitter smell, though this may be a product of the alcoholic brews they are so fond of making.  Even the Tau could label them as 'human' with but a single glance.  The more glaring issues were regarding their society and organization- or seeming lack thereof.

The regiments the Tau liasoned with behaved more like animals than a proper fighting force, with half the troops simply not being present at any given day, either off working with their families, hunting, sleeping, or just gone without anyone knowing or seeming to care where they'd went.  Their command structure was informal in the extreme, with command of a squad seeming to change hands regularly between whichever member was deemed "gud fer gittin'" the task at hand, with arguments and disputes of orders being so common that those who could be in charge and go unquestioned were rare and regarded as masterful leaders.  Speaking of arguments, the Tau simply could not wrap their heads around the way these primitives handled disputes.  Two of them would disagree on something, tempers would flare and yelling would grow in volume, then they would set upon each other like wild animals, biting and clawing and punching in a big ball of violence that more than once caused the Tau to assume they were trying to kill each other.  And then suddenly it would stop, the first to get up would help pull the other to his feet, and moments later they'd be smiling through their missing teeth, joking and laughing with one arm around the man they'd just been fighting, the other holding a drink that would only halfway make it to their mouth because of the black eye they'd gotten.  For those who grew up being taught that Tau-on-Tau violence was a grave sin, such flippant disregard for the fact that a buddy had just left teeth-marks in your arm was something they simply could not process.

Their gear was not much better; before the Imperium arrived, the majority of the firearms on the planet had been powder-based kinetic weapons, not even the kind with explosive rounds or mono-edged blades, but simple hunks of pointed metal fired at slow enough speeds that even the Guard's flak jackets could provide reliable protection against them.  What vehicles they did have were lightly-armored civilian-grade cargo haulers, most of which were rusted and bearing oversized wheels and a shocking lack of even the most basic safety equipment, looking more like something the Orks would make than a reliable source of transport.  Though proper lasguns had been distributed as part of the effort to bring them up to speed, many of them had taken to... 'modifying' their weapons, usually by attaching telescopic hunting scopes through a combination of screws and duct tape in a ramshackle and irreverent manner that would have any cogboy who saw their desecrations seize up and sputter, their cognizator implants overloading as they utterly fail to process the sheer volume of RRRREEEEEEEEE being demanded.


So great was the Tau's utter bafflement at the state of these troops that they recommended the entire force be either disbanded or left behind to obsensibly guard the population centers.  The request was denied, for the Imperium needed the Orks culled, and so the Tau set out with their new wards, confident that they would all be dead within a week and the Tau would have to clean up.  (Un)fortunately for them, they had only scratched the iceberg regarding these "good old boys."


The terrain lent itself well to the Tau's preference for engaging at range; Orks would shake their axes and blades futilely at the Fire Warriors picking them off from the other side of the gorge, and the charges they would make when in massed numbers would bog down as they slogged their way uphill into a storm of plasma fire.  Despite the prior expectations, the natives proved equally effective against the Orks, in their own ways.  For one thing, they were everywhere; no matter where the battlefield went, several of the PDF would show up with a dozen or more "cousins" to help out.  They were also uncanny trackers, always being able to point out with fairly good accuracy where a pocket of Orks was hiding, likely to go, or had been, though it took the Tau several ambushes to stop dismissing the pointed  "Dat way's gon' getcha busted up right good, ah tell yew what."  More mind-bogglingly, to Tau and Ork alike, was their skill at laying ambushes themselves; more than one Ork attack had only just registered on the Tau before the forest exploded with gunfire, and often several screaming bearded men falling onto the Orks with knives and hatchets drawn.  This is not to say that the natives could beat the Orks in Melee combat, and more that you do not need to beat the ork when you can simply unbalance him until he falls off the cliff.  Usually the natives attempting this wore parachutes or stitched wing-gliders, cackling loudly as they drifted off out of view of the dumbstruck Tau, while the more daring took the riskier route of trying to jump back off the ork onto solid ground. It was when the Tau started stumbling into ork ambushes, only to be saved from their imminent death by highly accurate las-fire, that the brunt of the situation dawned on them.

The natives of Happalachia loved their guns; they were a means of gathering food, a protector of your family, and symbols of your personal worth all in one.  From a young age they would learn marksmanship as a means of putting meat on the table, using the primitive powder-firearms that their forefathers had used for generations, learning to shoot reliably despite bullet drop, wind interference, and other factors.  Now that they had access to lasguns, which negate most of these factors, they proved themselves to be uncannily accurate shots at ranges far beyond that expected of a lasgun.  What this meant in practice was that the backwards, unshaven, uncouth, smelly backwoods hooligans on this backwater world were putting out a similar long-range performance to that of the Tau, which combined with their knowledge of the terrain meant they were killing Orks before the Tau realized they were there. They were being better marksmen than the Tau.

The thought was too much for the Tau to stomach.   Desperate to prove that the Tau forces were undeniably superior to these hillbillys and preserve some semblance of dignity, the Tau leadership began enacting aggressive, almost-suicidal battle plans and strategies, determined to outperform the PDF by securing and holding more of the planet's surface and moving faster than the natives could, deploying forces they had previously held in reserve as "unnecessary," and generally taking it as a personal mission to prove that all their technology meant something.


The locals caught wind, and thought it sounded like fun, and what came next is now known as the Happalachian Hill Race.


The idea was simple; there were already a series of checkpoints, target areas, and objectives in place as a guideline for the reclamation.  The Tau decided that if they could take, hold, and secure more of the objectives on their own, they would prove themselves the more effective fighting force, regardless of the individual performance of the natives.  Unfortunately, those checkpoints and objectives had also been distributed to the PDF, so the Happalachians were also privy to the "rules" of the race.

What followed was several months of escalating competion, with the natives bringing in all their friends and neighbors, while the Tau brought in all their latest toys.  Tweaking their targeting systems to better deal with the forest helped the Tau regain their edge in accuracy at range, but now the natives had numbers to even the scores.  Warsuits flew over ravines and jumped over the treetops, while bolted-together technicals tore along cliff-faces, their passengers whooping and hollering as they shot at anything orkish-green that flew by.  Eventually it escalated to the point that both sides were just short of open conflict.

The event is best preserved in a holopic captured by one of the Tau battlesuits.  It depicts a gorge with a native Technical on one side, and a group of battlesuits in mid-flight on the other.  The technical has one wheel over the edge, the others frantically digging for traction, as passengers shoot at unseen Orks while yelling at the Tau, with one individual hanging his bare buttocks out the window.  The Tau are likewise firing at Orks on their side of the ravine, while one battlesuit has opened his helmet, apparently in order to yell back at the humans while making an extremely obscene gesture at them, a gesture also being displayed by two other battlesuits, though their users appear more focused on the Orks.


In the end, there was no clear winner of the race; the Tau covered more ground and ended up taking more objectives, but had trouble securing those objectives, as the increased speed had been paid for with less-thorough sweeps, while the natives proved skilled at eliminating all the Orks from an area and arriving in places quickly, they had trouble keeping up with the airborne elements of the Tau, especially when they started deploying from orbit to reach checkpoints faster.  Though the "finish line" was reached, several areas fell and had to be retaken or secured, and things only seemed to get more complicated as a group of Biel-tan warriors warped in, too late to have a chance at winning but still looking to participate- and in the end had a very good showing.  Most historians will say that the Tau won the race, as their technology once adapted greatly outpaced what the Happalachians could do, but for the Tau it was a bitter victory; though they had emerged on top, it had not been a decisive win, and many of their troops had lost some of their discipline and begun using the same uncouth, offensive mannerisms as they had been trying to prove themselves above.  The Tau from the aforementioned holopic was identified and severely punished for such a public display of disrespectful behavior, but the truth is that several Tau had begun having similar exchanges towards the end of the race. 

Shas'ui Sli'ker, the Tau fire warrior from the aforementioned Holopic, was reassigned to what amounted to a desk job in an attempt to make a public example of how crass behavior was unacceptable within the Tau military.  He would later go on to write a short book intended to advise other Tau how best to prepare for different cultures, the importance of not underestimating your allies or foes, and the importance of listening to the councel of natives more familiar with the land than you, regardless of percieved ignorance.  While the Ethereals deemed his work too dangerous to condone distributing it (his ideas on being willing to adopt aspects of local culture to build trust sounded too much like giving up what made the Tau the Tau), he was able to get published by human distributors, who found his work either comedically entertaining or useful for non-Tau who would interact with other cultures too.  The work eventually became public knowledge among the Tau soldiery, who while they mostly found it a bit too radical, found it contained useful knowledge that has soothed relations more than once.  The author himself eventually returned to Happalachia, living out his final days in what he called "the most beautiful land ever infested with hicks;" he was well-loved within the local community, and his passing was mourned greatly, with several statues being erected in his honor; one depicting him relaxing, set to look out over his favorite view, the other showing his more famous pose, placed in front of the Capitol, forever indicating exactly what he thinks of the locals, the planet, and the universe in general to the horizon.


Historians and military analysts alike have examined the events of the Happalachian Hill Race in search of explanations as to how a bunch of newly-discovered Men of Stone with inferior technology managed to challenge one of the most technologically-advanced races in the galaxy, much less challenge them in their field of expertise.   Upon closer examination, several things became apparent. Firstly, the Happalachians, while marksmen of far higher caliber than the average guardsmen (though their unsactioned scope attachments may aid in that), are not, in fact, anywhere near as good as the average Tau.  Tests performed in firing ranges and field excercises found that the Tau's accuracy and response time were far greater than that of the Happalachians, and effective at much further ranges than Happalachian lasguns could even reach, much less reliably hit.  This, of course, raised the question of how these hillbillies were getting the drop on the Orks before the Tau.  The answer lies in perhaps the two biggest contributing factors to the outcome; Terrain and Tactics.

While the Tau had come equipped with jumpsuits and drones and the means to easily cover the planet's mountainous terrain, on the planning level there had been a major failure to account for how advancing across a planet of mountains is different from advancing across a mountain range on a planet.  A gorge easily crossed in a battlesuit could contain miles of tunnels, outcroppings, overhangs, and other places where Orks could hide within the trees or shrubbery.  This meant that the intial Tau advance was very prone to accidentally overjumping patches of Orks, who would then attempt to ambush the Tau, and instead get bisected by the lasfire of the Natives.  

This was the second failing in the Tau's campaign, their Tactics.  Both Natives and Orks on Happalachia had adopted an inclination towards Ambush tactics, as massed engagements and charges were simply unfeasible on a fortyfive-degree slope.  Some Orks would even bury themselves in the ground and wait for hours or days in order to jump an enemy, which meant that on the Tau's heat-sensors they would appear as little more than slightly warmer than usual plants.  The local tactic for clearing Orks would generally involve one group acting as the "bait," driving around in one of their loud technicals, whooping and hollering and making as much noise as they could, with the rest of the locals aimed and waiting for the Orks to take the bait.  

The Tau, by contrast, were not sneaky in the least about their approach, their roaring jumpjets, clanking battlesuits, and vehicle support making their advance very loud and very noticeable.  To the Happalachians, this looked like the aliens volunteering for the most dangerous role in the hunt, and thus moved to do the obvious thing and be ready to intercept the inevitable ambush.  In practical terms, this meant that engagements with the Orks happened with the Natives already prepared to fire, and the Orks at close ranges to the Tau, who are notoriously ill-suited for close quarters.  The Tau, having failed to take the locals seriously enough to have learned or paid attention to the Happalachian's explanations on how to properly hunt Orks, mistook the native's well-intentioned support as intentional showboating, fraying tempers and leading to rash decisions and even more stubborn resistance to any sort of advice from the locals.


There were, of course, other factors; scouts who would go ahead and track groups of Orks, relaying their position through birdcalls and markings on trees; the spread-out nature of the native population, which lead to there usually being someone in the area who could point out pitfalls or add more firearms to the mix; the constant tree-cover making the Tau's vertical advantages significantly reduced; even flaws in the Tau targeting system in regards to such extreme slopes, which while not enough to render them helpless or ineffective, could slow their response time against Orks from multiple sharp angles just enough for the natives to fire first.  However, the majority of these factors tend to stem from the Tau's third and perhaps biggest blunder; their attitude towards the natives.

The intention to prove themselves better had already colored the intitial interactions with Happalachians, and once the Tau saw the way the natives behaved, they almost immediately dismissed them as hopeless fools.  This, of course, flies in the face of the fact that a population on a planet infested with Orks cannot survive without developing ways to effectively deal with their green neighbors, and that a population that thrives is likely very good at it.  The miscommunication about the standard tactics against the Orks and subsequent losses of composure at percieved slights could well have been avoided had the Tau actually listened and not dismissed the (admittedly impolitely presented) guidance of the Happalachian advisors regarding the flaws in the Tau's plan of advance.  In short, idealism and self-assumed superiority blinded the Tau, both on the Command and individual level, to their easily-corrected mistakes; a mistake that they would later take great pains to avoid making again, if only to avoid another such humiliation.


The aftermath of the Happalachian Hill Race was messy, both beauracratically and conventionally.  The Orks had been heavily culled and contained to a few manageable areas, but the Tau had lost much more of their hardware in the process than had previously been anticipated due to their more aggressive tactics, though there were also several crate's worth of pulse rifles that had mysteriously gone missing from their supply headquarters, with rumors that they had been "scavenged" by the locals going unconfirmed, as any Happalachian with a Pulse rifle would claim to have scavenged it off of a dead Tau. 

Of greater concern was the cultural impact; the Tau's self-assurance of superiority was badly shaken, as were their preconcieved notions on Humanity and the Eldar.  Tau Supremacists would use the Happalachians as caricatures of Humanity as a whole, and proof that joining these delusional primitives was a mistake that would cost the Tau dearly.  Their detractors would point out that the "primitives" had shown themselves capable of keeping up with and challenging the Tau, even with technology inferior by their own standards, and that if their forces had been more advanced the Tau may actually have lost.  A more concrete effect was had in that broad, sweeping changes to their policies regarding cooperation with other forces, mostly aimed at staying professional and not having their troops lose their cool and start a competition, but also including steps to try and prepare and acclimate the average Tau to the inevitable Culture Shock that had hit them so hard in Happalachia.  The regiments deployed to Happalachia went on to prove themselves more skilled at working with other forces than other Tau regiments, though whether this was due to having learned humility or simple relief at the relative normalcy of most other forces is a matter of debate.


For their part, the Happalachians seem to consider the Tau to be friends, if oddly stuck-up buddies who try to stay cool but can scrap with the best if pushed enough.  This may be part of their odd form of conflict-resolution, where fighting or competing with another is a way of growing closer with them, as long as you aren't trying to kill them.  Considering their abilities with firearms, blades, and hatchets, perhaps the distinction between fighting and killing is simply more well-defined than it is for others.  The race itself is remembered fondly, and has become immortalized through an actual, proper race every five years, where contestants must cross the same objectives that were the original goals, with several alternate paths and a scoring system, that is open to all comers.

There are now several Happalachian scout regiments; while their skills have proved to be mostly localized (most of the universe is not mountain ranges), they are still an asset to the Imperium, if one who's equipment is so unstandardized as to make their logistics a nightmare; this has something to do with the fact that the Admech, upon seeing their unique approach to technology, tried to declare them all tech-heretics, and while this merely led to less-conventional tech-convents setting up shop instead due to the local resource deposits, it is still very difficult to legitimately sell Admech goods to the locals. Not that this stops people from doing so, just that they do so sneakily, and in small quantities at a time.  This has the result of the Happalachian regiments being a bit of a wild card; no other scout regiment is quite as prevalent in their ability to pull out a plasma weapon or high-yield explosive they really shouldn't have at a time when it is most needed, though the opposite is also true of them failing to have some of the most basic resources an Imperial Guard regiment is expected to field.


One side-effect of the campaign was the Tau's later collaborations with Ultramar; the disciplined, regimented and well-equipped Ultramar Guard were a much more palatable and familiar face for the Tau, and while there were still initial issues with posturing and rivalry, there was also respect and appreciation of Ultramar's professionalism.  For their part, the forces of Ultramar was more than willing to provide advice and guidelines for interacting with the less "conventional" forces of the Imperium, which likely influenced the reforms the Tau would implement regarding cooperation and acclimitization with Imperial forces. It is politely disregarded that much of this advice had been given before the campaign on Happalachia, with the only difference being that the Tau were now willing to listen.


In all, the campaign was a success for the Tau- however ungraceful it may have been.  Their objective was completed far ahead of the initial projections, and the lessons were learned with a relatively forgiving people who would not hold grudges or resentment against the Tau for their behavior, unlike how worlds like Vostroya or Catachan may have developed centuries-long grudges against xenos who looked down on them.  Instead, they now have eager and willing allies, whose Regiments have often been deployed to assist the Tau in times of need (In spite of frequent requests from the Tau to "please send anyone else;" the Imperium's armies are not unlimited, so you take whatever is available.  This is most definitely not the clerks of the Administratum having a laugh at the Tau's expense.).  The Tau have ultimately improved as a result of the lessons learned on that backwater planet, and despite the jokes made at their expense, it was a learning experience that ultimately helped them better integrate into the Imperium- if mostly by showing them how maddening the universe can be.
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==== The Siege of Lusitan ====

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The members of the Hubworld League have always been a proud and stubborn people, who would rather die than admit defeat. Despite being a brash, salt-of-the-earth type of people, they are brilliant innovators and engineers and can be single-minded when it comes to retribution. These traits are well-displayed by the events of the Siege of Lusitan.

Lusitan was once a prominent mining colony located in the galactic south of Hubworld territory. The planet was covered by large fissures and volcanic activity as a result of tidal flexing due to its proximity to its parent star, with some openings reaching all the way down to the deep mantle. As a result, it was rich in rare and valuable minerals that were normally only found deep beneath a planet's core. Therefore, the high gravity and mineral wealth of Lusitan made it a perfect colony for the Hubworld League.

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When Leviathan, the third of the three great tyranid scouting fleets, emerged on the galactic scene, most people would have predicted that the hive fleet would have made galaxyfall in the galactic east, as Behemoth and Kraken did before it. However, this was not the case. Instead, Leviathan made a sudden swerve in its trajectory, seemingly to avoid a passing through a particular region of space, and made galaxyfall at a slight angle to the galactic plane in the Segmentum Tempestus. As a result, many planets that had been far away from the front lines of the first two Tyranic Wars were now under threat by the tyranid menace, including many worlds of the Hubworld League. This included Lusitan, as a small tendril of Leviathan broke off from the main hive fleet to directly besiege the small colony.

Lusitan was not a major Hubworlder settlement, but the planet was an important component in the Hubworld League’s economy, and so although the planet was not as well protected as a major world of the Hubworld League it was better defended than the majority of its colonies. As a result, the defenders of Lusitan were able to hold out against the initial waves of hormagaunts and termagaunts but began to lose ground when higher tyranid lifeforms such as carnifexes and tervigons started appearing. About the only good news was that the tyranids seemed unable to make use of organisms such as mawlocs and trygons, Lusitan’s crust being too thin and volatile for them to work efficiently. The Hubworlders fought like madmen, making the tyranids pay in blood for every inch they took, but unfortunately for the Hubworlders the tyranids always seemed to have blood to spare. 

After three weeks of heavy fighting, the people of Lusitan received some unexpected good news. A relief fleet had arrived, travelling via sub-light speeds after warping in as close as they could get to Lusitan’s star system. The relief fleet was comprised of Hubworlders and Imperials from nearly a dozen different Imperial member states, spearheaded by a small force of Salamanders from nearby Nocturne led by Second Captain Hal’shan. However, the rescuers were surprised when they received a message from the Lusitanians telling them not to land on the planet’s surface. At first the rescue fleet just thought this was merely Hubworlder stubborness at work, and tried to force their way to the planet's surface, even after the Hubworlders began physically blockading their ships from landing. This only stopped after the leader of Lusitan, Governor Vardun, opened a private channel of communication to the flagship of the rescue effort and Hal’shan.

The exact words of that conversation remain unknown, but after it was over Hal’shan’s behavior changed completely, ordering all ships to cease attempts at landing and instead focus all efforts in helping the Hubworlders evacuate. Over the next several hours thousands of ships launched off from Lusitan’s surface, protected from the hive ships by the rescue fleet, and before long most of Lusitan’s population was in orbit. Following that, Hal’shan immediately ordered all ships to escort the Hubworlder vessels to the edges of the system, leaving what few people remained on Lusitan’s surface. At the time, this order was not popular, and several protested this decision, but Hal’shan responded that the Hubworlder ships were in danger and it was their duty to help the civilians evacuate first.

The only reason we know of what happened next was due to a few Salamanders who refused to leave the few Hubworlders left on Lusitan to die. Geological mapping of Lusitan's surface had indicated that compared to most planets the crust was unusually thin, and essentially held above the mantle by a series of caverns supported by a few key structural weak points. Destroying these points would cause the crust to collapse into the mantle, which in turn would cause the magma to rise and swamp the planet's entire land surface. This was Governor Vardun’s entire plan. Over the last few days, he had converted several mining charges into makeshift explosives scattered around the planet as Lusitan’s defenders had bought time with their lives. And now, with the majority of Lusitan’s people in orbit, he could execute this plan with a clear conscience.

The tyranids were simply too numerous to be removed through conventional means. The size of the tyranid thread on Lusitan had been severely underestimated, so even with the arrival of reinforcements the tyranids could only be discouraged, not defeated in a fair fight. At the same time, the tendril of Leviathan had to be stopped here, or else the entire Hubworld League would be under threat. Vardun had struggled with this dilemma for days, either sacrifice Lusitan for the sake of the greater good or hold out for the possibility of reinforcements and hope that his decision to preserve Lusitan hadn't been for nothing.

The rescue fleet had changed that. Now, no one had to die to remove the tyranids from Lusitan’s surface. Well, no one other than himself and his advisors, at any rate. If someone had to die, might as well be the ones who had come up with the plan in the first place. Vardun transmitted his last words of vengeance against the tyranids and then, without hesitation, threw the switch.

''"Fry, you overgrown space roaches"''
- Last known words of Governor Vardun

The move, although militarily unorthodox, was a stunning success. Tyranids usually recouped their losses by consuming the biomass of their dead, but this time the bodies of their troops were buried under several stories of molten lava. The sudden simultaneous death of so many synapse creatures caused a brief disruption in the Shadow in the Warp, which allowed Imperial reinforcements to come in and slaughter the Hive Ships in orbit.

However, the victory had not come without terrible costs. For one, Governor Vardun and all the leaders of the Lusitan colony were dead. On top of that, the entire topology of the planet had been disturbed and its surface was covered in lava. It would be centuries, if not millennia, before the lava cooled and the planet stabilized enough for resettlement. The tyranids were gone, but the people of Lusitan now had no home to return to.

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==== The Battle of Phora ====

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When a tyranid splinter fleet from Leviathan came to the world of Phora I, it was a vicious and brutal fight. For months, battles raged in orbit and on the surface of the world, and the outcome hung in the balance. The scales began to tip against the Imperium as the war dragged on, and eventually they were forced into full retreat, with extermination surely to follow. Ultimately, however, the tyranids would not conquer the world, nor the Imperium pull some last minute miracle. 

Instead, victory would go to the Necrons. 

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Completely unknown to the inhabitants of Phora, they had made their homes upon a necron tomb world. The battles raging above triggered the awakening protocols, and after spending a couple of months mustering their forces, the necrons sallied forth. The tyranids were the first to feel the force of the newly reawakened dynasty. As ever, the Necrons proved almost perfectly suited to do battle with the Great Devourer; their Gauss Flayers prevented the tyranids from reclaiming the biomass of their own dead, and resurrection protocols meant the Necrons would win the war of attrition. Soon enough, the tyranid footholds on Phora had been exterminated, leaving lifeless desert behind. The bioships remaining in orbit, emaciated from the effort of trying to reinforce their beachhead, fared no better once the Necrons reactivated their warfleet. 

One threat destroyed, the Overlord turned his attention to the other. He was not inclined to totally exterminate the population, but tolerating an industrial civilization literally on his front lawn, posing a potential military threat, was simply out of the question. The ragged remnants of the PDF and Guard garrisons were smashed in swift and decisive battles, and the Necrons turned their attention to destroying any technology that could potentially be turned to war. Tens of thousands of humans were abducted over the course of this de-industrialization, for interrogation and experimentation. 

Then the relief fleet arrived.

A tense standoff ensued. The Overlord had a good idea of the size and power of the Imperium from interrogation of captured humans, and had little desire to get in a fight with them. Especially not with an Imperial fleet potentially armed with cyclonic torpedoes already in the system. The Imperial commanders, for their part, had nothing like the forces needed to fight a tomb world, and the relief fleet did not in fact have cyclonic torpedoes. More Imperial reinforcements arrived, and more Necron warships were activated. 

Thanks to some quick thinking, and with Nemesor Zandrekh acting as a go-between (much to the bemusement of the local Overlord), a deal was hashed out. The population of the world would be evacuated and resettled, and the Imperium would recognize Phora as a necron holding. 

The deal done, the Imperium evacuated around a billion survivors from Phora. Just a year earlier there had been five billion inhabitants. It was not quite a victory, but also not quite a defeat.

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==== The Octarius War ====

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There are worlds that believe they have known war. Cadia, last bastion before the Eye. Krieg, named better than its discoverers knew. Armageddon, world of steel and flame. Mordia, stubborn and resolute.

Octarius laughs at them all. The capital of that relatively ancient Ork empire lies in ruin, the Overfiend astride the Waaaagh! laughs at them.  Ever since Kryptmann unleashed his grand plan, Tyranid and Ork have fought relentlessly, unceasingly, across its surface. For over a thousand years. There is almost nowhere you can touch the original surface without digging; mounds of charred corpses, Tyranid growths, and ruined Ork war machines cover the surface too thickly. Strata after strata of fossilized war. To walk on the surface of Octarius is to walk on dead flesh. The sky is perpetually black, an ashen shroud composed of Tyranid spores, oily smoke from Ork engines and guns, dust kicked up by ceaseless orbital bombardment, and the vaporized particles of uncounted trillions of dead. The blackness is broken by a perpetual meteor shower, as broken fragments of millions of shattered ships and shredded naval organisms rain down on the surface from the unending war in orbit. Despite the fact that there is no sun and no stars, there is more than enough light; the eternal thunder of Ork guns lights up the horizon with a false dawn, reflecting off the clouds until it seems the sky is on fire. The ice caps have melted from the ambient heat of trillions of guns and trillions of bodies.

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The seas are dyed with Ork blood and Tyranid ichor, and filled with ork warships and submarines so densely packed you could almost walk from one coast to another in battle with tyranid swimmers no less numerous. The skies are clogged with millions of flyers. The earth is honeycombed with endless tunnels, begun for shelter from orbital bombardment or in attempts to outflank a stubborn defense but long since turned into a theater of war on their own, grots and squigs and tyranid burrowers hunting each other through the darkness. Sometimes the diggings get too vast, too unstable, too convoluted, and vast sections of front drop into sudden sinkholes.

In orbit above, ships merge together and battle in the orbitals, amid a vast ring system created by the wreckage of a hundred thousand previous battles. Ork ships and tyranid bioforms clashing at point-blank range and closer, an endless maelstrom of boarding action and bombardments. Destroyed or damaged vessels frequently fall out of orbit to cataclysmic ends on the surface below- or, as both ork and tyranid know it, 'delivering reinforcements'.

Both sides deploy weapons and creations seen nowhere else, ork Meks pressed hard to keep pace with tyranid hyper-evolution. Vast armies of Mega-Gargants, in numbers not seen since the whole of the War of the Beast, clash with Bio-Titans of unprecedented size and ferocity. Tyranids sprout flame weapons in vast quantity, while Doks devise poisons that scythe down even tyranid biologies- for a time, until they adapt again. Unique squig breeds hunt down lictors with incredible ferocity, and fields of razor-worms devour entire ork columns in seconds.

The war extends to stranger battlefields as well. It is a war of ecologies, as ork and tyranid spores attempt to out-compete and strangle each other, a microscopic war of poisons over nutrient-rich corpse-strata.

It is a war of ontologies, a clash of welt-systems, as Ork WAAAGGHH and the Shadow In The Warp strain to overcome each other. It is a war on every possible level.

The war extends throughout the Octarius sector, and beyond; Octarius is simply where it is at its most intense. Vast fleets thrust and parry across light-years, vital systems changing hands dozens upon dozens of times. The sectors surrounding the Octarius sector are slowly ground down to nothing, as ork and tyranid raiding fleets venture further and further outward to fuel their respective war machines. The war expands, and expands, and expands.

Black Crusades split apart to avoid Octarius. Imperial seers try to divine its depths, to control it, to contain it, but are foiled by the psychic maelstrom formed by the clashing of WAAAGHH and Shadow. Khornate warbands and Deathwatch kill-teams vanish without trace.

The Octarius War has become a perpetual motion machine. The orks feed off the war, and the tyranids feed off the orks. Neither can accept defeat or countenance retreat. To withdraw for either combatant would be to forever mark them as something lesser, something inferior, and extermination would surely follow. 

This has been going on for a thousand years. It cannot last forever; sooner or later, something will give. And it is uncertain what, if anything, will survive the conflagration when it does.

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====The Badab War====

EDITOR'S NOTE: Needs to be added to with the changes discussed in thread 27.

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Near the center of the Milky Way galaxy is the Maelstrom, a lightyears-wide patch of incrossable space and the biggest Warp Storm outside of the Eye of Terror. For obvious reasons, the Administratum recognized the potential threat the Maelstrom represented and stationed five Astartes chapters to guard it, as the Maelstrom Warders: the Brothers of the Anvil, the Wind Riders, the Charnel Guards, the Crystal Wyverns, and the Astral Claws. On paper, the five chapters were all equals amongst one another. In practice, however, the Astral Claws were the oldest and most experienced of the five chapters, and so the other chapters tended to defer to the Astral Claws for leadership.
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At the turn of the 41st millennium, the Chapter Master of the Astral Claws was a man named Lugft Huron. Despite the presence of five Space Marine chapters, Huron felt the High Lords of Terra were not taking the Maelstrom as seriously as they should have. In contrast to the Eye of Terror, which was located on the edges of Imperial territory, the Maelstrom was located near the very heart of the Imperium, and so any Chaos incursions there would be much more unpredictable and much more likely to strike at something vital. And unlike the Eye of Terror, there were no equivalent to the Cadian Gates to funnel the movement of Chaos forces in and out of the Maelstrom. The Eye of Terror had the Black Legion, numerous Guard regiments, and all the forces Cadia and Ulthwé could bring to bear guarding its gates. And what did the Maelstrom have? Five chapters of Space Marines. Huron made these concerns known in a message to the Administratum and the High Lords of Terra.

Unfortunately, this request was made during the 12th Black Crusade, when the Imperium was understandably focused on more important things. The High Lords reportedly did send a message back to Huron saying they would consider his request when they had the opportunity, but it is unknown if Huron ever received it. Whatever the case, Huron took the apparent lack of concern about the Maelstrom and his situation personally. He claimed to the Astral Claws and the other Maelstrom Warders that the Imperium had abandoned them, and that it was their duty to secure the Maelstrom and the Badab Sector by any means necessary. To this end they carved out their own little petty empire in the Badab Sector, seizing control of the inhabited worlds for supplies and aspirants.

At first, the Imperium did not notice anything was wrong, being too busy taking stock of the losses from the 12th Black Crusade. However the Imperium quickly did notice the situation in Badab when ships from the Badab Sector started raiding Imperial Worlds in other sectors for materiel and aspirants. The Emperor in particular was outraged at the system Huron had set up, wherein the Astartes acted as a military aristocracy over the baseline citizens. In his mind the Astartes, like himself, were duty-bound to serve mankind, not lord over them.

The Badab War was a particularly bloody one. Numerous Imperial regiments were still on active duty due to the 12th Black Crusade, so Imperial forces simply poured into the Badab Sector. However, it was not that easy. Huron had rebuilt many of the buildings of the Badab Sector, including the infamous “Palace of Thorns” on Badab Primaris, in the expectation of facing a Chaos attack from the Maelstrom, only now he was facing a siege from the other direction. Nevertheless, the Imperium continued to steadily gain ground, and it was clear that the Imperium would not be merciful to the traitors. As a result, Huron found himself accepting the aid of an ally he never thought he’d side with: the Chaos Gods.

Accepting the aid of Chaos caused a brief resurgence by the Empire of Badab, making it even harder for the Imperium to proceed, but the Imperium still managed to press on. Eventually, the Imperium reached the heart of the Empire of Badab, but the five traitor chapters fled into the Maelstrom at the behest of the Chaos Gods. Imperial Forces tried to follow the traitor chapters into the Maelstrom, attempting to kill them before they could escape and join with Chaos forces, but the Ruinous Powers threw up a Warp Storm that prevented all efforts at pursuit. Once in the Warp, each of the Maelstrom Warders fell to a different Chaos Gods, the Brothers of the Anvil (now Deathmongers) to Khorne, the Wind Riders to Slaanesh, the Charnel Guards to Nurgle, and the Crystal Wyverns to Tzeentch, with Lugft Huron and his Astral Claws, now rechristened the Red Corsairs, following Chaos Undivided.

Today, the Red Corsairs and their following chapters act more like mercenaries than cultists, willing to support any major Chaos warband as long as the pay is good. Surprisingly, the five chapters still cooperate with one another as well as they did when they were loyal to the Imperium, despite worshipping different gods. To Huron's warband, ties of brotherhood between soldiers outweigh any loyalty to emperor or god. On the battlefield, this translates to each of the five chapters having their own tactical niche: the Khornate Deathmongers are the hard-hitting shock troops, the Slaaneshi Wind Riders act as fast attack scouts and mechanized cavalry, the Tzeenchian Crystal Wyverns provide intel and psyker support, the Nurglite Charnel Guards are sappers and siege specialists, and the Red Corsairs are the all rounders that act as the glue holding them all together. In essence, they are a little bit of each of the variable aspects of Chaos bound together in a single package, and their strengths tend to balance out each others weaknesses. Of course, despite working well together, they are not very numerous (only about five thousand strong) and they almost never commit their full force in any one area at any given time. Indeed, if there were more of them, they probably would not be as well-coordinated as they are in the first place. Additionally, their strength in combined arms is balanced out by the fact that they aren't well-liked or patronized by their respective gods due to not cultivating an active hatred of their brothers-in-arms who worship different (or even rival) gods.

The Red Corsairs’ mercenarial nature is one of the ways people like Malys and Be'lakor get their hands on Chaos Space Marines without having to deal with Luther and his ilk. As of 999.M41, Huron and the Red Corsairs have thrown in their lot with Lady Malys and her forces, having seen the writing on the wall.
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====The Bloodtide====

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For unknown reasons, Khorne has always had a strange fascination with nanotech. Perhaps it is because a nanite swarm is a weapon that flows like blood, or perhaps it is because the nanobots attack by entering the body and attacking the very flesh and blood itself. Regardless, Khornates often seem drawn to ancient nanotechnology, whether human or non-human in origin.

Nanotech weaponry was also popular with the corrupted Men of Iron during the Age of Strife, which formed the basis of abominations as omniphages. In 476.M41, a kill-team of about thirty Grey Knights led by Brother Ordan were on the trail of a Khornate cult looking for a nanotech weapon the cultists rather unimaginatively called the Bloodtide. After chasing the Khornates across several worlds via the Webway as the cultists pieced together the clues as to where the Bloodtide was hidden, the Grey Knights finally cornered the cultists on the on the world of Van Horne, the planet on which the Bloodtide had been buried.

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When they emerged from the Webway Gate, the Grey Knights had initially hoped to join forces with Imperial military assets on the planet with and organize an impromptu quarantine and defense against the Bloodtide. However, the only Imperial forces present on the planet besides the Grey Knights were the PDF and a Commandery of about 250 Sisters of Battle, who were on the planet investigating reports of a separatist cell, necessitating a change of plans. Making contact with the Sisters, led by Preceptor Mariel, and the PDF, the Grey Knights explained (at least as much as they could) they were hunting a Chaotic weapon of mass destruction that they believed was going to be activated under one of the largest cities on the planet.

They told the Sisters and the PDF that they needed them to sound the evacuation order and work with the planet’s government to make preparations for the evacuation of the planet in the event of the worst case scenario. Meanwhile, the Grey Knights would enter the city and try and hunt down the cultists before they could activate the weapon. Preceptor Mariel wasn’t happy with the idea of being relegated to evacuation duty. She argued that it would make more sense for the PDF and Sisters to join the Grey Knights in hunting down the cult, and stop the disaster before it even began. Ordan responded it was either put out the call to evacuate and potentially only lose one city, or risk it and lose all the cities.


As the Grey Knights entered the outer districts of the city, they heard a horrific scream and were buffeted by what seemed like a wind of metallic dust. They were too late. The Bloodtide had been activated. The Grey Knights, being clad in fully sealed power armor were immune to the Bloodtide effects, but the people around them were not. The civilians did not die cleanly, screaming in agony and clawing at their bodies as blood oozed from every pore, bleeding far more blood than any human should be able to produce as their internal organs were turned to liquid by what amounted to synthetic ebola. As opposed to the omniphages, which were intended as a form of nanotech Exterminatus, an intentional “grey goo” scenario, the Bloodtide was meant to kill people in the most horrific way possible. It was a nanotech terror weapon.

It wasn’t until the Grey Knights had reached the inner parts of the city that Ordan had realized he had made a mistake. He had only expected to have to fight the warlord and his hangers on, thinking their activation of the Bloodtide and the subsequent carnage was meant to be an end in and of itself. However, he hadn’t expected the warlord to use that blood for something else. The warlord had offered the blood of the dead as a sacrifice to Khorne, and given that quite a lot of people had died in one of the most Khorne-pleasing manners possible the warlord had managed to summon a literal army of Khornate daemons, which could travel the planet much faster than the Bloodtide ever could. The timetable for the total devastation of the planet had just moved up.

The Bloodletters and Bloodthirsters arose from the blood as if crawling out of their own reflection. Normally most people would be cursing their decisions and their fate in this situation, but not Ordan and the members of the Brotherhood. They were Grey Knights. If they had to die, so be it, they would take as many of the daemons as they could with them. However, for all their bravery and defiance, they numbered little more than thirty, and did not have the numbers to take on the Khornate daemons, who simply dogpiled them. Ordan believed he was to meet his end when he was pinned by a Bloodmaster, when a melta blast from behind Ordan hit the daemon and melted its face to slag.


Looking up, Ordan saw the form of Preceptor Mariel and her Sisters firing into the horde of Khornate daemons. Ordan demanded to know why the Preceptor was there, and why they weren’t helping sound the order to evacuate the planet. Mariel responded with a cheeky response about how they had already handled it. Regardless of their disregard to stay back, the Sisters provided exactly what the Grey Knights needed right now, which was numbers. The best way to fix the situation right now was to charge forward to the Bloodtide as fast as possible, which the Grey Knights did, the Sisters following close behind to provide supporting fire and even the Grey Knights’ odds against the daemons. As their melta guns ran out of power, they switched to their flamers, and then those ran out of fuel, their bolters.

However, the Sisters were not immune to the Bloodtide’s effects. As the Grey Knights and Sisters pushed forward towards the center of the destruction, increasing numbers of Sisters fell, blood bursting from their pores as the nanotech breached the seals of their less advanced power armor and entered their bodies. The Sisters were more resistant to the Bloodtide than any unaugmented human, with some of their enhancements having been designed by Isha herself, and still they fell. Mariel herself managed to hold on until the Grey Knights made it to the Bloodtide itself before she collapsed. When the Grey Knights reached the center they found the Bloodthirster Ka’jagga’nath, who had been pleased by the slaughter wreaked by the now-dead cultists, and sought dominion over the Bloodtide itself. The Grey Knights protested this decision with warp fire and power swords, and after great sacrifice managed to banish the Bloodthirster. The Bloodtide, which had been bound to Ka’jagga’nath’s will when it had been activated, was disrupted by its banishment and returned to an inert form, waiting for a new master.


After the remaining Khornate daemons were purged and the city placed in quarantine, Ordan met with the planetary governor to briefly inform him of a heavily redacted version of the situation. In essence, a Chaotic weapon had been detonated in the city, the city was quarantined, and no one should be allowed to go near it. An experienced Inquisition team should arrive shortly to take the weapon to [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Ganymede|Ganymede]], but the city was probably corrupted to the core and should be razed. The governor congratulated Ordan on their victory, only to receive an unexpected reply.

''“You call this victory? Millions of Imperial citizens are dead. An entire Commandery of Securitas, some of the bravest and most selfless warriors I have ever had the privilege to fight alongside, are no longer with us. [[Grimdark|There are no victories in this universe, governor. Only scales of defeat.]]”''

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====The Battle of Montlúcon====

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''Star Gods and Daemons'''''

In 847 M41, the Nightbringer was rampaging through the backwater Imperial sector of Montlúcon, effectively unopposed; the PDF and Imperial Army forces stationed in the volume could do nothing in the face of such terrible might except flee or die. Worlds burned. Billions died, either beneath the Nightbringers' scythe or at the hands of its motley retinue; fresh- spawned Nosferatu, mad Maynarkhs, twitching Flayers, all devoid of any directive except to kill. It would take months to muster and dispatch a force capable of opposing the Nightbringer; months the worlds of Montlúcon did not have. But salvation would come from a most unlikely source.
 
The Bloodthirster Gharragroth decided that the Nightbringer's skull would make a truly great addition to the Skull Throne, and led his legion of thousands of lesser daemons into battle. The two monstrosities met on the world of New Cuarilia, the daemons rising from the blood and gore left behind by the Nightbringer's passage through the cities.
 
Perhaps they knew of the C'tan's vulnerability to the Warp, and expected a relatively easy battle. But the Nightbringer had become a very different creature than any of its peers, and the agony of the trillions it had killed had made its reflection in the warp sharp and deep. It wrapped all the fear and suffering it caused about itself like a cloak, striking supernatural terror even into the immortal. When the daemons faced it, for the first time in their millennial existences, they knew fear as a mortal was. Briefly they hesitated at the unfamiliar and unwelcome sensation; then they shook it off and charged.
 
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When they closed, they found a foe that could not merely best them but destroy them. With every strike the Nightbringer not only tore at their material shells but devoured them, consuming their essences to fuel itself. With every daemon slain it grew a tiny bit faster, a tiny bit stronger, a tiny bit tougher; and all the while its cloak of terror wormed into their minds.
 
To be sure, the daemons did damage in turn, tearing great rents in its necrodermis body that spilled flaring starstuff and sealed over wrongly in gnarled lumps of tissue as the self- repair routines were corrupted by exposure to the stuff of the warp. But still the Nightbringer was winning.
 
Seeing the attack on the Nightbringer falter, Gharragroth commanded his legion to step aside so that he could engage the weakened C'Tan in single combat, and take all the glory for himself. For an hour the two titans were locked in battle, trading blows which would shatter superheavy tanks, tearing up the earth around them like an artillery barrage. In the end the Nightbringer proved the superior, tearing off Gharragroth's head and devouring the daemon, utterly unmaking a being which had existed for millions of years.  The Bloodthirster had been an officer of Khorne's legions since their mutual birth in the Maelstrom, among the self-styled victors of the War in Heaven, and after millions of years meting it out with the blessing of King Khorne finally he tasted not mere defeat, but death upon the battlefield.
 
This proved too much for the survivors of the daemonic legion, and with the Nightbringer's mantle of fear still clawing at their minds, they broke and ran for the safety of the warp. Or rather, they tried to; Khorne was displeased by this display of cowardice, possibly the first time ever his daemons had fled before an opponent, and one he remembered to have triumphed over, striking down and maiming all the daemons which tried to escape as they returned to his realm. Turn and fight or die by my axe, he commanded. Your lives are all forfeit for this shameful display, but perhaps the one who brings me the head of the Nightbringer shall be spared my wrath.
 
So they turned, and fought, and died. And at the end of it that great daemonic legion lay dead upon the field and the Nightbringer was victorious. But only barely- the Corpus Magnum was close to falling again, covered in open wounds and twisted scars, the stuff of Chaos still contaminating its body in a hundred places slowly corroding it away. It was forced to flee into deep interstellar space, spending decades healing and purging the stuff of Chaos from its necrodermis flesh through the simple expedient of cutting it out. Thus was the remainder of the Montlúcon sector saved.
 
Since then, the Nightbringer has avoided further large battles with the daemonic, fearing that perhaps this time they might manage to fell and bind it once more. But at the same time its appetite has been whetted; it has found that as delicious as the souls of mortal beings are, daemons are a greater delicacy still. And it wonders; what would a god taste like?
 
The Chaos gods believe themselves immortal, but the Nightbringer knows that all things die. So it waits, and it plots, as its hunger and ambition grow.

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