Editing Nobledark Imperium Writing (section)

=Historical Battles=

==Meminihn's Folly==
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The great majority of the time, the Adeptus Biologis are a vast boon to the Imperium. From the mundane tasks of interstellar empire, like public health and agricultural output, to the creation of the Astartes and a dozen lesser types of augmented soldier, to great feats like devising poisons to cripple splinter fleets or making harsh worlds bloom.
 
That said, when they fuck up, they can really fuck up.
 
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The agri- world of Patreunov was having a feral ork problem. Although they had managed to beat off the Waaagh, fully a third of the planet was overrun with the hyper-invasive fungus, and slowly spreading. Aside from the constant effort of culling the orks and squigs, every acre of land consumed by the fungus was unavailable for agriculture. The usual methods, of massive fungicide use or intense irradiation, would poison the land for decades and likely have additional knock- on effects. Still, other options were slim to none, and the world's governors were about to start the spraying programs when Magos Memnihn, of the Biologis, presented herself and offered an alternative.
 
The Magos had been working for over a century on an alternative, biological, method of culling ork spore fields. Not a disease- too close to Nurgle, and anyway the Waaagh-infused flesh of orkoids was unnaturally resilient- but a predator. Genetic sequences from dozens of deathworlds (and maybe just a little bit of tyranid here or there) across the galaxy combined into a single voracious killer. Individually small, but with a ferocious pack hunting instinct that would see even nobs swarmed under by hundreds. Explosively breeding, to the point that they were born with the next generation already gestating within their infant forms. Capable of consuming ork, grot, squig, and the fungal networks from which they sprang alike.
 
She assured the skeptical nobles that every precaution had been taken. The creatures had been engineered to consume only ork flesh, and found all other possible food sources so revolting they would ignore them even as they starved to death. Multiple genetic time bombs had been inserted into their sequences, to ensure that they could only reproduce for a limited number of generations before hereditary malformation overtook them. They were vulnerable to a number of toxins that humans were completely immune to, so if all else failed they could just be gassed en masse. And, of course, there had been a number of small- scale tests demonstrating that all of these precautions worked. This test was merely the last step before general deployment, and it would never have gotten this far if the concept was not sound.
 
Reassured, and enticed by the prospect of getting rid of the feral orks without having to re- terraform half his planet afterwards, the governor gave his assent. A few thousand vat-grown breeding pairs were released within the area infested by the orks. Within a few years there were millions, busy consuming their way through the creeping green fungoids. The orks, and the ecosystem supporting them, fought back. Of course. They were orks and thus could do no different. But they could only slow the spread of the hyper- specialized predators, not with the simple weapons still left available to them. And as the predators began to die off as programmed, assent was eagerly given for new and larger waves to be released. It looked as though the world would be cleared in mere decades, and without much in the way of lingering environmental damage.
 
But life... finds a way.
 
Across the accelerated generations, mutation set in. One by one, unnoticed, the genetic time bombs failed, and the faulty genes were spread to newly released waves by natural crossbreeding. The DNA sequences rendering all non- orkoid flesh revolting failed in a single specimen, and with new food sources opened up to it it outcompeted its rivals, spreading the failure far and wide.
 
By themselves, these would still have not been catastrophic. But then the unnatural vulnerability to those highly specific poisons was lost, and catastrophe became inevitable.
 
When the deviations were first detected, Magos Memnihn attempted a targeted culling program, trying to expunge the faulty genomes without having to destroy the rest of the organisms. However, the artificial creature's reproduction rate rendered such a course impossible; the traits simply diffused too fast across the population. Finally, the Magos unleashed her prepared stockpiles of tailored toxins, slaughtering millions of her creation. But not enough. The stockpiles were insufficient to saturate the entire range they had spread to, and tens of thousands survived even in areas that had been sprayed thoroughly, having never inherited the genes of vulnerability.
 
When the last holdouts of the feral orks were confirmed to be wiped out, there was no celebration. They were too busy trying to contain the things which killed them.
 
Every attempt to wipe out the manufactured beasts, or contain their spread, met with failure. They were slowed by fences, by poisons, by PDF kill sweeps, but not stopped. They simply spread too fast, recovered from losses too fast, to be so easily expunged. Worse, a creature designed to prey on orks naturally had no fear of doing the same to humans; thousands died, and increasingly large segments of the planet had to be abandoned.
 
Eventually, a desperate strategy of scorched earth had to be enacted. Vast swathes of land were burned and poisoned. Immense irrigation projects were destroyed to return land to desert. Natural geological barriers were rendered impassible.
 
With further expansion blocked by these created deserts for lack of food, the monsters soon turned on each other. Their rapid expansion and insatiable hunger had resulted in them eating everything down to the bedrock. There was nothing left to eat but each other, an obviously unsustainable state of affairs. A couple of years later, and the last of the monsters was gone.
 
The battle had been brutal and the effects long lasting. Tens of thousands had died, nearly half the planet had been scoured, and it would take centuries for the world's output to return to what it once was. Memnihn was stripped of her rank and honors, and devoted the remainder of her life to repairing the damage.
 
The long term effects of the disaster, besides the devastation of Patreunov, was to spur on the creation of the Ordo Mutatio. Previously overseeing the Biologis had been the responsibility of the Ordo Machina, since the Biologis was technically a subdivision of the Mechanicus. This incident, along with several others happening in roughly the same century, made it clear that this arrangement was badly flawed. Thus, the Mutatio was split off from the Machina, and soon grew into a truly independent organization.

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==The Defence of Sansaayam==

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The attack on the minor craftworld Sansaayam was, in typical Dark Eldar fashion, sudden and overwhelming, ripping out of the webway gate with incredible brutality and speed. However, the Dark Eldar, lead by Archon Karragast and his Kabal of the Razor Sky, had grown arrogant from centuries fighting foes slower than than they were, and were unprepared for the speed with which the Aspect Warriors leapt to the defense of their home. Fatally, they allowed themselves to be bogged down by the ferocious defence of Sansaayam long enough for reinforcements to arrive, cutting off their path back to Commorragh. 

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In response, the Dark Eldar fled deeper into the alleyways and back passages of the Webway, hoping to lose their pursuers. This began a series of cat-and-mouse chases through the corridors of the webway, as Eldar and Dark Eldar hunted each other down in tangled spaces unfamiliar to both of them. This lasted for days, until the Dark Eldar regrouped and tried to break out of the trap in a fast-moving spearhead.

And ran right into incoming Tau and Legio Cybernetica reinforcements. Possessing the psychic acumen of a potato battery and a half-brick in a sock, respectively, the Tau and Cybernetica could both move through the Webway without damaging it- and both specialized in laying down heavy firepower at range. In the cramped passages of the Webway that offered no room to maneuver or dodge, it was very nearly the worst tactical matchup possible for the speed-is-armor Dark Eldar. 

Unfortunately, in that last stage of the battle- something broke. The general, reflexive presumption is that Archon Karragast triggered some warhead on a dead-man switch, but with so few surviving eyewitnesses nearly anything could be true.

The end result was that the webway broke and daemons spilled in. The Imperial force, ravaged and reeling, fled back to Sansaayam to make their stand as the Webway dissolved around them. For months, the mixed force slaughtered demons at the chokepoints of the Webway gates. The weapons of the dead were taken up by civilian volunteers, bonesingers turned the plazas into killzones and deathtraps, broken war-bots repaired with wraithbone substitutions once the supply of spare parts ran dry. 

Incredibly, they held out until relieved, a company of Grey Knights arriving via conventional warp travel. Charging into the shattered webway, they somehow contrived to temporarily stem the flow of daemons, and followed up by severing the craftworlds' connection with the Webway in conjunction with Eldar warlocks. Sansaayam lost its connection to the Webway, and had suffered immensely... but the siege was over, and it had survived. 

There were several long-term effects as a result of this battle. First, the general Imperial policy of trying to avoid combat within the webway was reinforced. Second, whatever fellow-feeling the craftworld Eldar had for the Dark Eldar was badly reduced by such a brutal attack and its consequences. Finally, the estimation of the Tau's value as a fighting force was raised. The Tau's inclusion within the Imperium was still young at this point, and their usefulness in combat was often questioned. Their long refusal to join the Imperium made many question their ability to fit into the larger Imperial Army, and their distaste for Glorious Melee Combat made many question their courage and valor. The ferocity of their attack and the staunchness of their defence in this battle silenced such doubts; and Imperial planners rejoiced at having another force able to move through the Webway. 

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==The Phinean Massacre==
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The [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Shrikes|Raptor Cults]] have always been extremely protective of the trees that produce their symbiotes. Although they treat these trees with nearly quasi-religious reverence, they know other groups are unlikely to do the same and if the ability to make shrikes became widely available then the Raptor Cults themselves would become obsolete. The amount of damage that could be done if shrike symbiotes were available to less scrupulous hands is easily shown by the events of the Phinean Massacre.

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In M37, the planet Phineus II was subjected to a prolonged assault by a group of Crone Eldar, who had hired a large Raptor Cult to raid and sow terror upon its people. Phineus II had few defenses that could deal with fast-moving aerial targets like shrikes, and so the shrikes wreaked havoc upon the defending forces for several weeks. It got to the point that many guardsmen were afraid to sleep at night for fear that the shrikes would come wailing out of the darkness, and the shrikes themselves had begun competing amongst themselves for the most spectacular kills.

Entering into this scene were a group of Tzeentchian Crone researchers, who were not aligned with the invading force yet. The Tzeenchians had at their disposal several hundred shrike symbiotes, a rare prize which had been by stolen from a Raptor Cult by one particularly enterprising researcher. In the dead of night, the Tzeentchians kidnapped hundreds of human and eldar guardsmen from their tents and experimented on them by exposing them to the symbionts, wanting to see if non-Raptor Cult devotees were compatible with the gift of the Raptor God.

Once they were satisfied with their experiments, they released the pseudo-shrikes onto the battlefield, who confused and horrified by their warped condition sought out their fellow Guardsmen for help. The Guardsmen, having been driven to their wits end by the constant attacks and lack of sleep, reflexively fired at the incoming fliers, killing them to a man.

The Imperium was horrified when they realized they had slaughtered their own people. The invading Crone Eldar were furious that another group would interfere with their operations. The Raptor Cults were outraged at the theft and subsequent waste of so many good shrike symbiotes.

The Tzeenchian Crone Eldar thought it was funny.
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