Editing Nobledark Imperium Xenos (section)

=== Tindalosi ===

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> '''''The Horror from Out of Time:'''''

Few mysteries are as vexing as those surrounding the Ordo Chronos. According to what little is known, the Ordo Chronos is an Ordo of the Inquisition that was founded, or would have been founded, or will be founded, to investigate chronological disturbances and protect against temporal threats to the Imperium. The Arch-Enemy would love nothing more than to win a pre-emptive victory by changing history and erasing the nascent Imperium from existence, and given the Ruinous Powers’ near total control of the Warp and the Immaterium's decidedly loose relationship with time such a prospect is not an idle threat.

According to what little records remain, an Administratum budget report here, an offhand mention in a tome in the Black Library there, the Ordo Chronos was one of the earliest orders of the Inquisition, and was active until at least early M33, with the last known records being around the date of the Harrowing and the creation of the Hadex Anomaly. However, the Inquisition itself has no records of an “Ordo Chronos” ever being founded. Even people who have been around since the beginning of the Imperium, and therefore should know of the Ordo Chronos’ existence, including the Emperor and the Empress, profess no knowledge as to having ever created an “Ordo Chronos”. If the upper echelons of the Imperium know anything about the fate of the Ordo Chronos, they certainly are not talking.

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The only solid evidence of the Ordo Chronos on record since then is when an Inquisitor of the order turned up in a blue crate in the cargo hold of [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Prince_Yriel|Rogue Trader (then Prince) Yriel’s]] ship ''Hoec’s Grace'' in M38. He lasted long enough to answer a few questions from other Inquisitors but disappeared as quickly as he came. Unfortunately, his answers were as vague as a [[Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Society_and_Culture#The_Starchild_Prophecies|Star Child prophecy]] and about as helpful. According to what can be discerned from his testimony, the Ordo Chronos was destroyed when its members were sucked into the newly formed Hadex Anomaly, of which as far as he knew he was the only survivor. He survived because he was lucky enough to have “merely” become stuck in a pocket dimension where he experience the last 24 hours of his life on repeat for several centuries. When asked how he escaped from such a prison he merely answered “a bloody lot of hard work”. However, given the nature of the Ordo Chronos, it is possible that this an event that from their perspective had happened, has yet to happen, or may never happen due to having occurred in an alternate timeline that was averted in “our” time.

Even the nature of how the subject of the Ordo, time, works is itself uncertain. Some schools of thought argue that time is deterministic. If time did not interact in some orderly fashion with realspace and the Immaterium, it should not be possible to view galactic history through fossilized light, or for ships to arrive at a destination via warp travel before they even left. Others, however, take a different view. If fate is pre-ordained, then prophecy and eldar farsight, which work by viewing potential alternate timelines, should not even be possible. Some postulate a unified theory of time, in which the quantum observer effect prevents time from being observed non-deterministically, but these theories are difficult to test (not to mention dangerous). Such experimentation is made even more dangerous by the presence of the Tindalosi.

One of the few of which any detail is known are the Tindalosi. However, this is not saying much, given that the Tindalosi are only known about by virtue of being too noticeable to ignore. In truth, about as much is known about the Tindalosi is as known about [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Wyverns|Wyverns]], or the Arch-Leprechauns of Hippocampos IV. Even their name, “Tindalosi”, is probably not their actual moniker. They get their name from a written account from the Dark Age of Technology by an eyewitness of a Tindalosi attack in late M23, in which the writer compares them to fictional creatures in an ancient Terran story.

The Tindalosi are silvery, biomechanical constructs, approximately two to two and a half meters long or about the size of a large hunting hound. However, despite the mechanical nature, the Tindalosi appear to breed and reproduce much as organic beings do. They have six legs, somewhere between a canine and an insect appearance, allowing them to bound after their prey with frightening speed. The front and bottom of the Tindalosi’s triangular head is a curved sickle, someone resembling that of a biting insect or bird of prey. The optics are large, red, and appear segmented, though whether they are compound eyes or something else is unknown. The head is at the end of a long, jointed, arm like neck, which can snap out with a hunting heron and slice into its victims, sucking out their bio-electrical energy. The Tindalosi are best known for their ability to phase through space and time, allowing them to track their prey wherever they may go.

Though much about the Tindalosi is unknown, they seem to have originally been created by another race as some sort of temporal assassins, though they have since gone feral. Nevertheless, even though the Tindalosi may have gone feral, some vestige of their original programming still remains. Anyone who discovers too much of something will find themselves tracked and hunted by these creatures, though exactly what that something is unknown. Entire mechanic is workshops have been found slaughtered overnight, all because somebody found some inconvenient fact. 

There are three possible hypotheses as to the origins of the Tindalosi. The first is that they are Necron constructs, gone rogue in the millions of years since the War in Heaven. There is some support to this hypothesis. In contrast to their lack of technological knowledge regarding the Warp, the Necrons are well-versed in the usage of time and the “side paths” created by higher dimensions to their advantage, as indicated by the existence of Deathmarks, Chronomancers, and their ability to “phase out”. This was one of the main advantages the Necrons had over the Old Ones and their servants during the War in Heaven. The Necrons would have known well to monopolize this advantage and prevent the Old Ones from using against them, as they had done the very same to the Old Ones with the Dolmen Gates. Creating a race of mechanical constructs to seal off the higher dimensions from everyone but them seems exactly like what the Necrons would do. This is supported by the fact that for all the observations of Tindalosi across the galaxy, these beings actively ignore Necrons, whereas they think nothing else of killing any other being in their way.

Alternatively, the Tindalosi could be human creations, created by the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion before or during the Iron War. Passive mental contact from psykers have shown the Tindalosi have souls, which is not a typical trait of Necron technology. Whether or not the Men of Iron had any souls is a hotly debated topic among modern Imperial scholars. The Adeptus Mechanicus vehemently state that the Men of Iron and Iron Minds had no souls, and the very idea of such is blasphemy, but Emperor Oscar clearly has a soul, and if the Men of Gold had souls the idea that the Men of Iron and Iron Minds had souls is not that out of the question. Esoteric reports from the Old Eldar Empire located in the Black Library may support the latter hypothesis. There’s also some evidence that Tindalosi do not self-repair or self-destruct in the way that necrodermis does, but this could be due to poor eyewitness reporting. Ancient humanity also had at least some rudimentary knowledge of chronological and higher dimensional weaponry, given such evidence as the Mechanicus reports of first contact with the Dark Age of Technology being known as Castigator (see Inquisitorial Report: WHITE TITANIUM HEDGEHOG for more details) and the incident with the Speranza (see Inquisitorial Report: RED IRON PHOENIX for more details). Even the reports of Tindalosi before mankind even stood upright can be explained, given their association of time the Tindalosi could travel to whenever they wished, plaguing the galaxy long before they were ever created.

Finally, it is possible that the Tindalosi were created by another xenos race, neither necron nor human. Necrodermis and humans were probably not the only races to experiment with time or self-replicating, self-destructing machinery. Any of the races that existed in the millions of years between the War in Heaven up in the Fall of the Eldar could have done the same {Ed. Note: Possible link with the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Apep|K’nib]] or [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Hrud|Hrud]]? Must investigate further}. Others have suggested connections with the Harrowing and the events of that era. It is even possible that several of these origins are true, the Necrons modifying “naturally occurring” machines to their purposes. How we lament how the late Eldar Empire turned their back on what was happening in the universe outside of their demesnes, and what few records they did amass mostly lie within the Eye of Terror. All we know for certain of the Tindalosi is what they are now, rather than what they were.

Reports of an abnormally large, aggressive Tindalosi, known as Vodanus, have been substantiated but not fully validated. Testaments of psyker survivors speak of a Tindalosi whose mind has evolved beyond that of a simple animal to full sapience, and full of a hateful cruelty beyond what any simple animal is capable of. This has not stopped numerous void superstitions from springing up in its wake. Some say that any who see Vodanus are doomed to die shortly thereafter, though this may be seen as self-evident given the nature of the Tindalosi rather than anything unusual.

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