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Lizardmen

2020-09-04T23:43:35Z

2601:647:CA01:2410:349C:D1E8:2DF7:5B30:

{{Age of Sigmar Faction|Faction=Seraphon|Logo=Lizardy.jpeg|Alliance=Order|Lore=Lizardmen|Motto=Aztec dinosaurs riding bigger dinosaurs that shoot lasers and fuck shit up. This is how Lizardmen do.}}

{{Topquote|Civilization must stand up and combat the current collapse of governance, the rise of violence, and the spread of chaos and fear in many parts of the world.|Rudy Giuliani, Slann}}
{{Topquote|A powerful AI system tasked with ensuring your safety might imprison you at home. If you asked for happiness, it might hook you up to a life support and ceaselessly stimulate your brain's pleasure centers. If you don't provide the AI with a very big library of preferred behaviors or an ironclad means for it to deduce what behavior you prefer, you'll be stuck with whatever it comes up with. And since it's a highly complex system, you may never understand it well enough to make sure you've got it right.|James Barrat}}
{{Topquote|What are you doing in my swamp?!|Shrek}}

The '''Lizardmen''' are a faction in [[Warhammer Fantasy Battles]]; with the coming of the [[Age of Sigmar]] they have been re-named "'''Seraphon'''". A variation on the [[Lizardfolk]] theme, they are a civilisation of [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mayincatec Mayaincatec], [[Chaos]]-hating, reptilian creatures. Prior to Age of Sigmar they were the isolationist survivors of an ancient empire that lived in [[Lustria]], the Warhammer World's analogue to South America. As Seraphon they were reborn as creatures of star magic who live above the Mortal Realms, descending to fight as per the inscrutable will of their masters.
Though as per the recent retcon, they’re back to being flesh and blood reptiles, though infused with Azyrite magic. They do not have a [[Warhammer 40000]] counterpart, only factions that take after various bits of them; like a caste system like Tau and having a core belief in some metaphysical movement, and being a wholly organic, genderless army with subspecies, like Tyranids.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_conspiracy_theory They also run the government (don't blame me, I voted for the Skaven)].

==History==
[[File:FUCK YOU CHAOS.jpg|400px|right]]
Way back when the [[Old Ones#Warhammer Fantasy|Old Ones]] entered the world, they decided they'd need some extra help in <s>messing this world up</s> guiding this world to its destiny. So, they created the first of the Lizardmen, the Slann. The Slann are obese but highly-magical frog-men that spend most of their days sitting around meditating. The Old Ones, realizing the Slann wouldn't be useful for much when it came to manual labor, then created the rest of the Lizardmen, including the Saurus, Skinks, and Kroxigor. They then left the Lizardmen to make some [[elf|elves]], [[dwarf|dwarfs]], and [[human]]s. In return, the Slann used their new servants to COMMIT MULTIPLE GENOCIDES on the native races of the World, with massive armies of Saurus hunting down and annihilating the races that the Old Ones told them to (notably, the only race that was a target of the Lizardmen's genocidal campaigns and survived are [[Orcs and Goblins|everyone's favorite fungus footballers]]).

However, the Fall of the [[Eldar]] then happe-- wait a minute, wrong universe. <s>Or is it?</s> The [[Webway|dimensional gate]] the Old Ones had come through collapsed, crashing into the north of the Warhammer World and opening a portal to the <s>[[Warp]]</s> [[Realm of Chaos]]. The Lizardmen and Elves had to team up to defeat the [[Daemon]]s that started pouring through the portal. Eventually the Elves managed to redirect the flow of magic into a portal at the center of the island home, [[Ulthuan]], but not before much awesomeness on the part of the Lizardmen. And by awesomeness we mean billions of Saurus' fighting for centuries continuously in battles that spanned continents against an enemy that could warp reality. Little did the elves know, the Slann actually did much of the work on the great vortex, and without them continuously sending magical aid it probably would have collapsed a long time ago. The Slann are also responsible for maintaining the great warding, but don't ever tell the elves that or they'll throw a hissy fit.

Lizardmen for the most part are fairly primitive by the standards of the Warhammer world. Even orcs can take iron and forge it into new choppas and make chariots. Lizardmen mostly use stone tools and weapons with some bronze bits here and there. Only the beastmen are more primitive and they have brains hardwired to despise all that is artificial. This might lead you to underestimate them in battle, but the fact that they use stone swords is a secondary consideration when you consider that the ones wielding them are three meter long semi-sapient therapod dinosaurs with really durable scales. One area where they do make a lot of use of metalworking is in gold plates, which they have a lot of. These they use to keep records and important bits of information on because they live in damp stone cities in the middle of rainforests where paper would fairly quickly rot away. Other species, for reasons the Lizardmen have a hard time understanding, have an odd obsession for this yellow metal beyond simply valuing its corrosion resistance and try to steal these plates to melt them down. This really gets under their scales.

Despite being fairly isolated, they deal with just about everyone. their main problems are [[Dark Elves|emo elves]] to the north and regular human pirates and colonists. They also have a long-standing feud against [[furry|Skavens]]. Recently, the Slann have been getting off their asses and realizing that the threat needs to be met head on, so apparently they have massive armies stationed fighting all over the world, from Brettonia to the southern chaos wastes. Why they never pop up in anyone else's fluff is a mystery, though not so much when you realize they barely have fluff to begin with. They are also similar to [[Tomb Kings|tomb kings]] and [[Grandpa Dreadnought]] with their "get the hell off my lawn" policies.

===The End Times===
With the release of ''The End Times: Thanquol'', the fourth book in [[The End Times]] series, the Slann forsee that The Great Plan of the Old Ones will fail. The apocalypse begins with the Lizardmen defending their lands from a Daemonic invasion that rivals the initial Chaos Incursion after the Great Catastrophe (somehow, despite the Polar Warpgates not changing and the Elven Vortex still happily sucking up all the Magic). Unfortunately, whilst the Lizardmen put on a smashing show in stemming the [[Daemon|Daemons]], warpstone meteors rain down upon Lustria; the [[Skaven]] Grey Seers had been taught by their Daemonic [[Verminlord|Verminlords]] how to circumvent the Slann's magic and try to bring the [[Morrslieb|chaos moon]] closer to the world. This knocks out all the Slann as they try to protect the continent, just in time for the ''entirety'' of the Skaven Clan Pestilens to invade Lustria. As the booby traps set by the Lizardmen are bespoke for Daemons they do nothing to stem the Skaven tide other than giving a few headaches. Cue rampant swarms of rat-men spreading plague, burning forests, and killing Lizardmen like it's going out of fashion.

Clan Skyre, not to be out done by those pesky Grey Seers, decide to go one further and actually blow up the chaos moon with a giant cannon. As continent-sized chunks of warpstone plummet towards the planet the Lizardmen decide that it's very likely their plan has failed and flee in their temple-pyramids-now--spaceships. The Slann use their mind-powers to disintegrate these fragments, however blowing up their brains under the magical strain. Even as the Slann die still more chunks head for the world, taking the mummified uber-Slann Lord Kroak to will himself back to life in order to contain the rest of the chunks to only fall on Lustria and the Southlands, whilst securing parts of Lustria in magical bubbles and lifting them off the world.

As such only a few Slann now exist, floating about in space.

===Age of Sigmar===
With the release of GW's re-packaged fantasy game [[Age of Sigmar]] the Lizardmen have been renamed into the IP-friendly 'Seraphon', and with it have been re-skinned as "Daemons of Order" whose bodies flow with Azyrite energy (i.e. the Lizardmen now have lightning for blood). A Battletome has been released and the army rebased. The Seraphon have no named characters in Age of Sigmar outside of Lord Kroak, with the other characters either being given new, generic units (such as Tetto-Ekko and Gor-Rok), or have been merged with already existing generic units (such as Oxyotl, Lord Mazdamundi, Kroq-Gar, and Tehenhauin).

The new fluff describes the post-[[The End Times|apocalypse]] Slann (now known as Slann Starmasters) as having been found drifting in space by Dracothion, the celestial dragon, and were thus brought to the Mortal Realms. They are described as having an empire in High [[Azyr]] (i.e. space) and travel across the Mortal Realms without the need for Realmgates. All the Seraphon bar the Slann are now memories, materialising when the Starmaster wants to beat down on Chaos. Just *how* physical the Seraphon are is vague - despite being described as materialising at the whim of the Slann they have blood of starlight which, in one story, was said to be soaking in the ground to purify it of Chaos' taint. The Battletome also details a Skink Starpriest to approach a Slann before they materialise on the Mortal Realms with the rest of the army, suggesting that the Seraphon may exist beyond the battlefield. To make matters more confusing, the Seraphon also physically manifest as star constellations, with various hosts forming around a central shiny Slann.

Rather nicely the Black Library has given them some attention in the recent short story "Under The Black Thumb"; nice in that the old Lizardmen were usually left in the shadows as the favourite races got all the attention.

Another Recent shortstory reveals that they actually live in Spaceships with the interiors tending to mimic the jungles of Lustria. Along with showing that they are still spawned the same way they were in Fantasy. The Slann can simply summon them from the ships.

Battletome: Cities of Sigmar also says the "mysterious lizard priests of the Seraphon maintain conclaves in several of the God-King's strongholds." Lizard might refer to Skinks rather than the amphibian Slann, meaning they are even further independent.

The battletome released in March 2020 retconned it so the Lizardmen are flesh and blood but infused with the magic of Azyr (in a manner similar to the Stormcast). After the End Times, the Slann put the Lizardmen into magical stasis so they'd survive the aeons without nourishment. Then Dracothion found them and revitalized their vessels. What happened next is shrouded in mystery, but the Lizardmen were infused with Azyrite magic and brought to High Azyr. They've expanded their Exodus Engines into a series of cities and jungles and Lizardmen are once again made from spawning pools. Some of them settle in the realms and work with the Forces of Order, albeit keeping them at arms length, so they've changed their foreign policy and will work with non-Lizardmen as long as they're Order-aligned. While the Azyrite magic dilutes in these Lizardmen, these Coalesced make up for it with savagery.

====Constellations====
Each Seraphon belongs to a host of warriors named after a constellation from High Azyr.
*'''Dracothion’s Tail''': The posterboy subfaction with the best magic and Slann Starmasters around. They are the most attuned to Azyr and very much employ the standard Slann tactic of slowly planning things out and waiting for the Great Plan to line up exactly before acting.
*'''Fangs of Sotek''': Not the second coming of [[Tehenhauin]] sadly, but rather the more proactive cousin of the Dracothion’s Tail. They primarily use skinks and are the most direct in their involvement with the forces of Order. They even have groups of skink priests and chiefs set up in the [[Cities of Sigmar]] to weed out any potential chaos influence.
*'''Koatl’s Claw''': Remember those feral Lizardmen from the Dragon Isles that GW refused to talk about? Well now you got rules and lore for their AoS counterparts! This army of Saurus was royally screwed by the Clans Pestilens and forced to land their flying temple in Ghur after their Slann was mortally wounded and the Skinks went insane. Within the Realm of Beasts, they quickly devolved into savage predators, tearing into any and all who dare set foot in their jungles. This extends even to those who revered the reptiles, such as a Wanderers enclave who wished to thank the Seraphon for unwittingly saving them.
*'''Thunder Lizard''': A Coalesced host originally from Chamon, they specialize in massive war beasts and are tasked with safeguarding the various weapons bunkers of Old One technology. They’ve been dispatched across the edges of realms to reign in the more uncontrollable points of magic and recently this has led to them clashing with [[Ossiarch Bonereapers|Nagash's anti-magic bone boys]].

==Mating Habits==
Yes, there's an entire section dedicated to their mating habits. However, while this will certainly disappoint the scalies out there, oddly enough Lizardmen don't have any. No joking. Despite being called Lizard''men'', the entire species (or whatever it's called given that speciation is determined by a lack of reliable inter-fertility between two populations) is composed of genderless individuals to whom sexual reproduction is as alien as a 360-degree field of view is to a human.

But this begs a question. If they don't have any functional reproductive organs then how do new Lizardmen come about?

Well, there are big, bubbling pools of murky liquid at the heart of each temple-city. These were created by the Old Ones at the dawn of time and scheduled to produce new Lizardmen on a timetable unknowable to any but the long-gone Old Ones. The rate at which the Lizardmen spawn is assumed to be quite high, as they are constantly being worn down in battles of attrition. One source has the pools thrashing non-stop to keep up with a never ending tide of daemons. The new Lizardmen walk as fully formed adults out of the pools and are instinctively able to understand their role in society. They're then toweled off, logged in the records and sent to where they are needed. Each new batch (or Spawning) is usually composed of one specific type of Lizardman and has traits which are distinctly of that batch. Needless to say, as they are the foundation of their civilization, the Lizardmen are very protective of these pools, especially since they can't build more and don't really know how to repair the ones that get broken (usually due to Skaven involvement). If you get close to one (''if'' you get close to one), you will almost certainly get your face eaten. [[Tyranids|Hey, that sounds familiar...]]

It should also be noted that all Lizardmen, with the exception of the Skinks, are biologically immortal. They don't age, they simply get stronger and more skilled at what they do. So their attrition rates are lower than humans. It also means that the greatest Lizardmen warriors are centuries, if not [[Swarmlord|millenia old and are veterans of thousands of battles.]] [[Orks|Hey, that also]] [[Space Marine|sounds familiar...]]

So to sum up while Lizardmen look, walk and talk like Aztec dinosaurs, they are little more than biological variant of robots: mass-produced, pre-programmed and single-minded. They have little to no free will, no goal in life besides those implanted into them upon spawning, and much like robots they often do stupid things due to logical errors in their programming.

==Subspecies==
Like Orcs and beastmen, Lizardmen are divided into a number of distinct subspecies, each fulfilling a distinct role in society and in battle.

===Slann===
The '''Slann''' are the THICCCCC, magic frogs we were talking about above. They're among the most powerful wizards in the entirety of the Warhammer World. In previous Lizardmen army books, they had a more active role in leading the species, but apparently they are now more sleepy. Also, there are no longer any more Slann being spawned, so the ones a alive are part of a dying species... welp, [[grimdark]]. ([[The End Times|End Times]] spoiler: All the Slanns are dead or gone. Many were killed by Skaven after being rendered unconscious from stopping the moon from falling, and the rest either left in their pyramid ships or died blowing up continent sized pieces of the chaos moon that the Skaven blew up. Even Lord Kroak joined the party. In Age of Sigmar it's revealed some Slann survived, but their numbers dwindled until only five were left. [[Lord Kroak]] is back too. It's uncertain whether he is one of the original five or whether it's Kroak and five other Slann. Honestly not that surprising for Lord Kroak, death is probably just a mildly irritating inconvenience to him.)

===Saurus===
[[File:AwesomeLizardmen.png|400px|right|thumb|SURAS ITZ]]
'''Saurus''' are the main footsoldiers of the Lizardmen and, by and large, the "face" of the army. A "face" that could rip a man in half. The average Saurus is a semi humanoid scaled therapod 2.5 meters tall with a bite that can take off a grown man's arm, a tail strong enough to smash their ribcage and scales as hard as chainmail. On top of that, they carry at least a huge Macuahuitl and a bladed shield. They may seem slow and dimwitted, but don't let that fool you, it's not that they're dumb, they just only care about warfare.

Saurus themselves have a few variations, depending on their spawnings. Most of them are regular warriors with colour variations (some of which are taken as signs of greatness, like albinism for Gor-Rok). The two main variations of Saurus are:
* '''Temple Guard''': An elite group of Saurus, spawned to instinctively guard the temples and Slann, their spawning has ingrained this purpose so much they've been know to kill a Skink helper just because he looked at a Slann funny.
* '''Cold One Riders''': Saurus with the ability to get near, control and ride Cold Ones into battle. They produce the same smell as their mounts and have adapted for their feet's claws to grip Cold One' scales more efficiently,[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd9D_7f7zCM you know you want them].

Additionally, during sixth edition the Saurus could be spawned under the blessing of one, and sometimes two or even three for oldbloods, of the Old Ones (which were also named and detailed as having certain portfolios). This granted these Sacred Spawning with some benefits as well as recognizable visual clues:

*'''Tzunki''': Saurus blessed by Tzunki, Old One of water, have green colored scales and show quicker reactions than the regular model, while also being adapted to a semi acquatic lifestyle like skinks.
*'''Itzl''': this blessing somewhat survived in fluff, as newer editions state that cold one riders are a specialized breed with a dinosaur-like smell and hooks for grabbing on scales and that some lizardmen like Kroq-gar are instinctively able to attune to Carnosaurs. All Saurus characters who wanted a mount had to pick this.
*'''Quetzl''': this blessing from the divine Old One warrior manifests as additional bone spurs and hardened scales, which grants added protection. Kroq-gar had this as well.
*'''Huanchi''': no canon look for the Saurus chosen by the jaguar-god Old One of earth and night, but we can assume they are supposed to be more drab or camouflaged as it makes them more stealthy and able to get through harsh terrain without breaking a sweat.
*'''Sotek''': blood for the serpent god! Unsurprisingly, this is for Skinks as well as Saurus, cause Sotek cares not whence the blood flows, and it makes lizardmen even more aggressive, as well as red-crested.
*'''Tlazcotl''': Saurus are already near unflinching, but the yellow-scaled chosen of Tlazcotl took a page of 40K and ran with it as they Know No Fear- as well as no Terror and no other psychology effect.
*'''Chotec''': the Old One of the Sun also makes his orange-scaled Saurus less sluggish, filling them with the power of the sun, except it tranlsates to sprinting speed more than fighting reactions.
*'''Tepok''': the lizardmen apparently had a Coatl themed Old One, and their color was purple and they made Saurus highly resistant to magic.
*'''Xhotl''': only Kroq-gar had this, and he kept it throughout the editions as it is the blessing that provides him and his mount with a magical forcefield and zaps with magic anyone who manages to get through. As this blessing only showed up in Saurus from the lost city of Xhotl (named after the Old One Xhotl, which clearly was not the god of creativity), Kroq-gar is the last recipient of it.
*'''Blessed Mark of the Old Ones''': this was the only one who could not manifest together with any other spawning, as it meant that the Saurus (or Skink!) character bearing it was marked for greatness by all the old ones. It made the chosen lizard albino, a concept that got folded into the character of Gor Rok.

And the two commander ranks of Saurus are:
* '''Oldbloods''': The oldest, strongest, and cunning of the Saurus caste. They are the Generals of the Lizardmen, and got the rank by being the meanest kids on the block through millennia of fighting just about everyone.
* '''Scar-Veterans''': Saurus Champions who are exactly what it says on the tin: veterans who got through their fair share of battles and are on their way to Oldblood status. They either travel the world alone, seeking lost relics or battle, or lead their fellow lizardmen as secondary commanders.

===Skinks===
'''Skinks''' are the smallest type of Lizardmen and the smartest save for Slanns. They act as the farmers, administrators and artisans of Lizardmen society. They are the most versatile and flexible of Lizardmen and probably the one which would be best suited to have a friendly conversation with a Human. Despite their small size (roughly the same as a [[Goblin]]), they can be a formidable military force, as they have highly-accurate poisoned blowpipes (<strike>they used to have bows and arrows which got retconned for some reason</strike>). They are also the caretakers for most of the dinosaurs used by the Lizardmen, and thus are [[Awesome]]. Awesome enough to get their own [[meme]] (that didn't really survive through the newer editions): "remove X, replace with Skinks."

*'''Skink Priests''': Born to manipulate the winds of magic and attend to the prophecies of events yet to occur, Priests are the highest-ranking members of the skink caste and can lead entire armies as well as they can cast spells with devastating precision. Unsurprisingly, they are the most vulnerable in close combat.
*'''Skink Chiefs''': Born to lead with exceptional cunning and tenacity, Chiefs are responsible for overseeing patrols, construction, message delivery, and commanding armies in battle. Skink Chiefs usually fight atop a dinosaur and with blowpipes but when the situation boils down to close combat, they can run circles around the enemy with their speed and agility in a dance of death.
*'''Skink Braves''': Veterans who have survived several battles and display more combat aptitude than regular skinks. Braves will fight alongside each other in their own cohorts or command regular skink cohorts.

*'''Chameleon Skinks''': An extraordinarily rare subspecies that is dedicated to scouting, infiltration, ambush, and hunting. They have the unique ability to manipulate the color and texture of their skin which is the biological equivalent of an integral cloaking device, allowing them to blend in flawlessly with the surrounding area.
*'''Red Crested Skinks''': The alpha variation of the Skink species is blessed with being faster, stronger, sharper and brighter than their peers. The Temple-City of Chaqua was known for a spawning of Red Crested Skinks before being depopulated and ruined by a terrible plague.

===Kroxigor===
'''Kroxigor''' are to Skinks what Ogres are to [[Halfling]]s (at least in the Warhammer World): giant powerful but dumber versions. They're essentially giant bipedal crocodiles who spawned at the same time and in the same ponds as skinks. They're the main workers and builders of the Lizardmen, which also means they are the least bright as they were literally created with menial labor as their purpose. As such they rely on skinks for direction in almost about everything, and if left by their own devices they will act based on their animal insticts: when marching to war the Skinks tie heavy clubs to the wrists of Kroxigors, so that they do not throw the weapons away in the attempt to RIP AND TEAR the enemy barehan- ehm clawed, and in battle they often work together with Skinks, forming units termed "Skrox" by the fans. '''HOWEVER''', in a cooperative collaboration between GW and CA, Kroxigors have been given something of a sanctioned lore rework in Total War: Warhammer 2 in which they become smarter and stronger with age like the Saurus, meaning that they're not so dependent on skinks for directions and can finally lead Lizardmen armies in battle. This change has been positively welcomed as a breath of fresh air and goes a long way to explaining the backstory of Nakai, the Wanderer.

* '''Kroxigor Ancients''': These Kroxigors have lived for several millennia and are much more smarter, stronger, and dangerous than their younger kin.

==DINOSAWZ==
Lizardmen are also known for their use of [[dinosaur]]s found on their native continent of Lustria. Thus they have the best monsters and cavalry period. Dinosaurs bitch. Like fucking Jurassic Park. <s>(and like Jurassic Park they are fantasy dinosaurs with little basis in science and firm roots in awesomeness)</s>

===Stegadons===
Probably the most well known dinosaur used by the Lizardmen, this stubborn, motherfucking Triceratops hits like a freight train and can trample all who oppose the Lizardmen underneath his feet. Stegadons are, unsurprisingly given the harsh nature of Lustria being a continent sized Catachan, angry all the fucking time, extremely territorial and not obligatory herbivores, which adds even more thrill to the life of Skink handlers. They usually carry Howdahs on their back which include a Skink crew, and a FUCKHUEG bow. As the stegadons age, their tempers cool and they will be able to carry either 2 massive blowpipes which fire buckets of dice, or a mystical Engine of the Gods that can buff, or shoot lightning bolts like a [[video games|Red Alert]] Tesla coil.

===Carnosaurs===
This guy is based on the large and awesome theropod dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus, Giganotosaurus, and Allosaurus, and can [[RIP AND TEAR|rip the throats out of Dragons]], knocking them down a peg like the pussies they are. In fact, the reason there are no dragons in Lustria is because Carnosaurs kept hunting and killing them so they decided to settle somewhere less hostile. The newest version of the model adds additional cool factor by including a killing claw like the ones seen on Dromaeosaurs, such as Velociraptor. Only the beardliest of Saurus can ride them, as even the babies can rip a human in half: once again it is up to the unlucky skinks to steal eggs from a Carnosaur nest, which might very well be the most dangerous place in the wilderness of Lustria, dodge an enraged Carnosaur mother and rise baby dinosaurs that can very well take a skink's head off in a single bite. Even when fully trained, for a lack of better term, Carnosaurs are constantly twitching around the edges and even the most strong willed Saurus oldblood rider knows that when a Carnosaur smells blood all they can do is sit tight and enjoy the ride. In summary they spill blood in the name of the Old Ones and don't give a shit about that pushover [[Khorne]].

===Troglodons===
Looks like a Blind ''Spinosaurus aegyptiacus'', freaking [[Awesome|awesome]] and anybody would pay money to see it fight a Carnosaur Jurassic Park style. But knowing how it goes, we can see the Carnosaurs win every time since Spinosaurids are weak and dismal. For some reason a Skink can ride them. This is because they team up and search for the lost plaques of the Old-Ones in a 1970's buddy cop film.

===Bastiladons===
The Lustrian equivalent of Ankylosaurus mixed with a Scutosaurus, the walking tank of dinosaurs, and the first recipient of a 2+ Scaly Skin save. Even a big Dragon, T-rex (ahem, CARNOSAUR), or Greater Daemon sometimes struggle to get through. Perhaps to the relief of Skink handlers, these guys are somewhat more chill that the other dinosaurs and their thicc armor means they are able to carry some of the more unwieldy devices of the Old Ones: the ark of Sotek which constantly vomits poisonous snakes (they can't really bite the armored Bastiladon who can safely waltz around with the tide of sneks coming from its back) or the Solar Engine of Chotec, a literal laser cannon that overheats so hard when firing that other non-naturally insulated beings can't hope to carry one around without risking fifth degree burnings.

===Cold Ones===
Not to be confused with the [[Old Ones]], Cold Ones are basically [[Awesome|velociraptor-like animals that are used as cavalry.]] They are also used by the [[Dark Elves (Warhammer)|Dark Elves]], who have much cooler Cold Ones. The official, in-universe explanation for this discrepancy is that the two types are related-but-distinct breeds of Cold One; the cool ones are native to [[Naggaroth]] and based off of irl Velociraptors, whereas the derpy ones are native to [[Lustria]] and based off of Spinosauroids.
For once, the Skinks are not left with the short straw as Cold Ones naturally respond the innate magnetism of Itzl-blessed Saurus and the two form a very close couple... no, not *that* kind of couple, what is wrong with you?

===Horned Ones===
A relative of the Cold Ones that are rare in Lustria, but prominent in the Southlands (the Warhammer World equivalent of Africa). They are distinguished from their counterparts by the fact that they are smarter, slightly faster and are based upon ''pachycephalosaurus'' with sharp teeth. They used to have their own models, known as Tichi-Huichi's Horned One Riders, serving as a unit in Dogs of War armies. Lizardmen mercenaries? Do want!

===Salamanders===
Not technically a Dinosaur but is still [[Awesome|awesome]]. The models seem to be based off of Dimetrodon (again not really a dinosaur(<strike> not dinosaurs at all, but a synapsid </strike> )) and shoot flaming poison like living artillery.

===Razordons===
Looks like what would happen if a Kentrosaurus was on steroids. Shoots out spikes at [[Memes| Sufficient Velocity]]. Very nasty, and usually has the side affects of being pinned to a wall like a "Lets pin the tail of a Donkey" game.

===Terradons===
Not a Dinosaur, just an average looking Pteranodon, but as large as a car. Terradons are the sneaky flyers of Lustria, hovering above the canopy for days at a time in search of unaware prey- that is, anything smaller. In battle, Skinks riding them employ primarily ranged weapons, and have the mounts carry large rocks to drop on unsuspecting warm-bloods. Their new models are also very sexy, unlike their retarded brothers.

===Ripperdactyls===
Just look at the name. GW is really phoning it in now aren't they. Otherwise, its a Pterosaur similar to the Terradon but with more of a basis in Pterosaurs like Rhamphorhynchus. These googly eyed bastards, like every other dinosaur in this list, are simmering pots of pent up aggressions and hold the distinction of being the one cavalry unit where the mount does all the job while the raider tries desperately to hold on. Clearly for the genius tactical minds of Skink Chiefs this flying meatgrinder is not enough, so they have Chameleon Skinks hide Lustrian Bloat Toads (favorite prey of Ripperdactyls) into the pouches of unlucky invaders before sending the Rippers to rip them a new one. Think seagulls swarming pizza leftovers on a beach, but each seagull is bigger than a man and screaming for blood.

===Dread Saurians===
Following GW's desire to create big monsters for Forge World to sell, the Dread Saurian was given rules in the Monstrous Arcanum Vol.1 (More was planned, obviously) and was awesome. This thing is larger than even the Carnosaur, is pretty rare and is so powerful that even the Slann can't control it without bedecking it in glyph-inscribed armour. These things are captured, presumably as eggs, and placed inside mountainside Temples, there they are worshipped as a physical manifestation of the Old Ones power. However, when shit hits the fan, a Slann will order a Temples gates unlocked and he'll release the power of the Dread Saurian on Lizardmens enemies. While the Dread Saurians stats are slightly better than a Carnosaur and has the same D3 Wounds bite, its main power comes from its options (which, for some reason, aren't restricted to just Lizardmen, derp). This includes turning it into a ghost (making it Ethereal), giving it Flaming Impact Hits, putting a huge stone disc on its neck to boost it's Toughness to 8(!) at the expense of 2 less Movement, but probably the most amusing (and something Creed would appreciate) is giving it the Ambushers special rule. Nothing says "fuck your Warmachines" than a T7 3+ monster charging you. All these buffs are named after Old Ones worshipped by the Lizardmen. Stick it in a list with Kroak and watch as it takes down whatever models you want it to. If it dies? Just use skele-frog to summon him back to continue his rampage. Can easily take Alarielle with this method.

This isn't the only interesting thing about it. It had a strange development history. It was released in Monstrous Arcanum Vol.1 before Lizardmen 8th edition by Forge World. In the book, the art depicted it as a sail-less Spinosaurus, yet when the model (finally) arrived, it had lost it's crocodile-like head, got more spikes and was now too-swole-to-control. I asked Forge World's Facebook page (when it had a Q&A) why it changed and was told, simply, "She wanted to change it". While this was a simple answer, it was clearly bullshit, as, when 8th Edition Lizardmen was released, we suddenly had a Troglodon, which was essentially a blind Spinosaurus. What clearly happened was a classic "Failure to Communicate" by GW between it's departments. The artist for FW was told to design a "1UP" of the Carnosaur, so based it on a Spinosaurus, the only known carnivore bigger than a T-Rex, then when the time came to actually design the model, FW learnt that the Troglodon had been designed. Thus, not wanting to make a "1UP" of a brand new model, they redesigned it to what it is now. But it gets more interesting still! In the Lustria Campaign Book, there is a conversion model of an Arcanodon with a EoTG's on top. If you compare the Arcanodon's pose with the Dread Saurian, it's nearly identical.

Fun Fact! The Dread Saurian model is so big, a human-sized model can fit inside its mouth. Conversion time, people!

===More Dinosaurs===
Since the Lizardmen have pretty much every iconic Dinosaur, the only thing they are missing now is a massive Sauropod like ''Amphicoelias fragillimus''...That . Would . Be . [[Awesome|Awesome]]. A Thunder-Lizard perhaps? Otherwise they could add it as the Arcanadon which used to exist back from the Lustria Sourcebook (although it is still in the fluff.)

There is several mentions of dinosaurs that the Lizardmen have, which don't have rules or models. Pliodons are described acting as "living ferries across the wide canals", while Voxosaurs "emitted their piercing screams to sound alarms" - A bit like a rooster, I imagine. Apt. As mentioned, the others are Thunder Lizards and Arcanadons.

==See Also==
*[[Warhammer/Tactics/Lizardmen|Tactics/Lizardmen]]
*[[Age of Sigmar/Tactics/Order/Seraphon]]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3CmxjTFv_Y How you make Total Warhammer II more awesome than Total Warhammer? Add the Lizardmen!]
[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]]
[[Category:Lizardmen (Warhammer Fantasy)]]

==External Links==
*[http://www.lustria-online.com/ Lustria-Online.com, the main Lizardmen and Seraphon army forum.]

{{Playable Factions in Warhammer Fantasy Battle}}
{{Template:Playable Factions in Warhammer: Age of Sigmar}}

==Gallery==
<center>
<gallery>
File:Slann and their Magical Force Fields.jpg|Look into this frog's eyes. He's half-asleep, probably drunk, and he's ''still'' going toe-to-toe against a Lord of Change in a magic fight.
File:A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.jpg|A typical Lizardmen city.
File:ThunderLizard.jpg|Please GW. I beg you. ADD THIS (Even if it's ripping off Dinotopia, with some change it'd be a good original idea)
File:ScaliePorn.png|Even Lizards need to beat one off sometimes.
File:Lizard lesbian kiss.jpg | Lizard woman are lesbians!?
File:Seraphon_AKA_Lizardmen_VS_Cowardly_Wizards.jpg|Seraphon riding Derpasaurus
File:Skink.PNG|Love makes us do strange things in our fanon. Like <strike>reinterpreting the Great Plan</strike> <strike>Commiting Heresy</strike> being circumventive and discordant.
File:TWWH2_-_XFHuPdk.jpg|Lizardmen "Watercraft." Watercraft may be a misnomer, seeing as they're completely made of stone and are instead projecting a magical repulsion field from the hulls that allows them to skim over the water or at least maintain an artificial buoyancy to prevent them from sinking into the ocean.
</gallery>
</center>

Nobledark Imperium Member States

2020-09-04T23:35:03Z

2601:647:CA01:2410:349C:D1E8:2DF7:5B30: /* Tarellian Religion */

A brief list of national entities that joined the Imperium whilst being interstellar powers in their own right.

Species that are members of the Imperium (Xenos Familiaris) can be found here. Other xenos species can be found at [[Nobledark Imperium Xenos]].

= Survivor Civilizations =

Not all planets were as lucky as Old Earth during the Age of Strife. Although the planet was devastated by the horrors of the Old Night, at least it still retained much of its technology and infrastructure and much of its surface still remained habitable to human life. Other worlds were not so lucky. On many planets, the collapse of the Great and Bountiful Terran Empire caused the inhabitants to regress to medieval or even Stone Age levels of technology. Other planets retained some degree of advanced technology, but the conditions of their world were so harsh that people could just barely survive without assistance from offworld, and welcomed the Imperium with open arms.

When encountering a devolved human society, the Imperium would often unify the planet by the most expedient means possible and then get the appointed representative of the planet to swear loyalty to either the Imperium, the Empty Throne or the Steward depending on prevailing cultural norms of that planet. Worlds with stories of a savior figure that would save them from the Old Night, a common type of story on many worlds, typically had the Steward inserted into that role to ease integration. Worlds that still had some dim memory of the Golden Age typically swore loyalty to the Imperium, which they saw as the great Terran Empire being rebuilt. Worlds that had prophecies of a king that would arise in the distant future to lead them into a Golden Age, another common belief, found it easier to swear allegiance to the Empty Throne instead. For these worlds, it was hard to see anyone born during that age as a potential messianic figure.

These worlds, which are typically under the direct control of the Imperial government and the Administratum, became known as Administrated Worlds, which make up the vast majority of the worlds in the Imperium today. One notable exception were the Forge Worlds, who would only listen or swear loyalty to the lost holy land of Mars, through which the Imperium acquired their cooperation.

However, the Imperium also discovered many worlds that like Old Earth had managed to rebuild from the Age of Strife and become highly advanced societies in their own right, some even managing to carve out their own small interstellar empires. In addition to the Sol-based Voidborn Migrant Fleet and the Mechanicum of Mars, these included the Realm of Ultramar, the Interex, the Hubworld League, Colchis, Inwit, and Necromunda, among many others. For these entities, which became known as Survivor Civilizations, the Imperium offered them a deal: political and industrial autonomy, within [[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#Imperial_Governmental_Structure|certain limits]], in exchange for inclusion and a prominent place in the Imperium. The Steward could see that they were as legitimate an inheritor of the Golden Age Empire as Earth was and knew that had he been salvaged by one of them then he would be offering this deal to Old Earth, not to mention that if he was in their position this was the kind of offer he would hope would made to him. The terms of these agreements sometimes varied slightly from world to world, sometimes resembling hammering out trade deals as opposed to treaties of alliance.

== Savlar ==
'''''Savlar: Because Fuck You, That's Why. - Above the Space Port door on a corrosion resistant glass slab.'''''

Savlar is a shit hole that runs on spite. Food grow there is poisonous and can only be consumed in careful combination so that the various toxins cancel each other out. The air is laced with harmful chemicals and the weather patterns are unpredictable across most of the surface making predicting what is on the breeze all but impossible. The water is unsafe to drink for all but the hardiest of constitutions and must first be filtered.

All in all nobody should ever go to Savlar. Life is short, dangerous and unpleasant. Much like the people that call it home. Or at least a Savlar curse word that is equivelent to home. Savlar has a lot of curses, all forms of wishing natural hazards upon the recipient in lewd and profane ways.

The only reason that the planet has any value at all to the Imperium is for the mystical substance known as neutronium. It is not actual "neutronium" but is just something that the lay-person calls neutronium due to it possibly being non-baryonic matter. Importantly it is the key ingredient in the orbital tethers and even more importantly it is produced nowhere else in the galaxy.

There are only two places in the galaxy that the Imperium can reliably get neutronium. One is by salvaging and repurposing neutronium from Dark Age constructions, mostly orbital tethers but occasionally the carcasses of Dark Age starships and other creations. The problem is that this neutronium is obviously limited in supply, there are many planets with orbital rings that were once home to thriving human populations that are now blasted wastelands, but it is not possible to dismantle something like the Daisy Chain of Earth or the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Medusa|Telstarax of Medusa]] for usage elsewhere. The other place is Savlar. Savlar neutronium has many more impurities and is much weaker compared to the neutronium produced by humanity during the Dark Age of Technology, akin to comparing low-quality iron ore to Damascus steel, but it is neutronium nonetheless.

Savlar has no native life forms and when man first set foot on it had almost no atmosphere. The atmosphere is has now is a side effect of the old industry. That it turned out breathable, if barely, was just a coincidence. Savlar is now home to an ecosystem made up of extremophile and borderline extremophile life forms of the sort typically found growing next to volcanos on less awful worlds.

The hideous environment is a result of the neutronium manufacture. In the old days of the Golden Age the chemical run off was contained for processing as the world around the facility was slowly terraformed. When the Old Night rolled in the tanks were breached, the processing facilities destroyed and all but one of the factories burned to the ground. This released the chemical cocktail that Savlar is known for.

The natives of Savlar are descended from the people who used to work there and got stranded in ancient days. Genetically they are more or less pure human but like Fenrisians there is very minor deviations. They can handle drugs and toxic substances far better than most people. Biological and cybernetic modifications to help deal with the environment are common on Savlar and in the regiments raised there.

The Neutronium Workshop operates at a mere 5% of it's original estimated output and is tended to by a peculiar and closed order of tech-adepts descended from the maintenance teams and workers that once operated the factory in the Golden Age. The Savlar Order is very much a closed order. They don't let anyone in, nobody leaves, they don't concern themselves with things beyond their gate, and they call no outside authority master. They make neutronium, and cybernetic trinkets, which they exchange for stuff. That's how they like it and that is the extent of how the arrangement would have, could have and should have been. But then the Olympus Mons brotherhood got involved and nearly ruined everything for everyone.

All technological wonders of humanity belong to the Mechanicum. The Savlar Order tended the last neutronium workshop. They were human, the workshop was a human creation and therefore they must submit to the rule of Mars. They sent them a letter, politely worded, to that effect. Savlar sent a letter back telling them in no uncertain terms that they would not submit to outsiders and called into question the parentage of the Mars Council and accused the Fabricator General of sexual deviation.

A second much more strongly worded letter was written, this time demanding, not asking with the declaration that refusal would have them meet the entire Skitarii army should they refuse and was delivered by none other than Ferrus Manus himself in all his brutal glory. The Savlar Order responded with a crudely stenciled picture of a magos bent over taking it up the ass from an anthropomorphic Aquila. The substance used to make the offending image was discovered to be fecal matter, apparently applied by aerosol.

Before this could escalate any further The Steward stepped in. Savlar was elevated to the status of Survivor Civilization, a status it did not deserve by a long way, to be counted alongside The Interex and Ultramar in legal standing. As an allied Survivor Civilization they had all the authority they needed to officially tell the Olympus Mons Brotherhood to go fuck themselves, which they did.

The Mechanicus could have banned all of their trade to Savlar and black listed anyone who did so. They could also have slit their own throats and gurgled the theme song to Aspects of Steel. By this point it was known that the Savlar Order were more than prepared to destroy all that they held dear rather than let it fall into Mars' hands. Mars had gotten into a contest of spite with Savlar and they were fools to do so.

One of the ways that Savlar has spent the better part of 10,000 years infuriating Mars is the baffling tradition of The Great Savlar Scavenger Hunt. Once the stockpile of neutronium is filled a list of items is placed on the outer gate of The Workshop. The list invariably contains a great variety of a great many thing, some of them quite strange. Partly this is almost certainly to prevent the Mars priesthood from deciphering the needed raw materials, some of it's obviously for personal use. The list somewhere will always contain food and fresh water. In exact amounts. Everything is given with exact amounts, in native Savlar measurements. If they ask for a very specific amount of Valhallan Brandy in a specific number of arsenic bronze containers then you bring them that, no more and no less. Deviation from the list is not permitted and the contestant is disqualified. First one back with the entire list ticked off to the Order's satisfaction gets the entire stock heap to divvy up and sell on as they see fit.

It infuriates Mars as it puts them on equal footing to common traders and the like. There is also no pattern to the demands and it is a constant point of discord in the filing system. Creatures of order as they are this infuriates the Mechanicus Scribes and that is almost certainly why the Savlar Order do it. Because fuck you, that's why.

Beyond this very little of the Order is known. Investigations have been requested and refused. The Inquisition could push the issue but it's not worth the risk.

The society outside of the walls of the Workshop is mostly slightly above subsidence farming with very little surplus left over to support many urban structures. Society, civilization is pushing it a little too far, tends to be tribaly based and ruled by the elders or those who have opted to stay sober for a while.

Religion is a plethora of small gods, though Salvlars would claim that they are too small to be gods. Typically they can only be interacted with after taking something mind altering but there is too much consistency in the hallucinations for them to be nothing but things see in the trips. There have been investigations by both the Arbiters and the Inquisition but nothing that can prove or disprove, all that they can say is that there is no notable Chaos corruption.

Indeed not. Chaos offers hope, but they have given up on great hopes. Chaos offers comfort in despair, but they feel not too much despair. They don't feel much anger at things and merely accept the shit. They don't revel in the fumes or seek much excess. If their small gods of the æther are deamons they are doing a terrible job. Most common advice that the small gods give is to slow down on the LSD wine, which is a distinctly un-Chaos thing to suggest.

One more or less consistent belief among the tribes, and it can be inferred to have originated in The Workshop, is the Great Machine. It follows that the Omnissiah is the underlying mechanisms of the universe, the Ultimate Machine, but that it's obvious that the universe is broken. Therefore god is broken and man must increase in wisdom to find a way of fixing it. Once fixed the universe will work right. It is known as the Faith of the Broken God. It is considered '''HOLY SHIT''' levels of heresy within the main branch mechnicus but the MArs Priesthood never quite gets as far as declaring the Savlar Order as such because neutronium.

Drugs are about the only thing that make life on Savlar tolerable. They will surely reduce your life time but on Savlar you're probably going to be dead by age 45 snorting Rainbow Dust or not so it's not really the issue it would be on a less fuck awful planet. Besides the neutronium the planets only other notable exports are soldiers and recreational drugs.

The soldiery is a motley band of mostly addicts ( usually recruits) and mostly former addicts (usually veterans).

== The Migrant Fleet ==

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Void_Born|Void Born]] (Placeholder)

== The Mechanicus of Mars and its various Forgeworlds ==

== Interex ==

=== Interexi Military Forces ===

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Forces#Interex|Imperial Forces (Interex)]]

== Hubworld League (Squats) ==

=== Hubworld Military Forces ===

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Forces#Hubworld_League_.28Squats.29|Imperial Forces (Hubworld League)]]

=== Hubworld Architecture ===

The worlds of the Hubworld League are all fortresses. This is in part due to their natural architectural inclinations: any sturdy, underground structure can become a bunker with a minimum effort. Mostly, though, it is a matter of natural selection.

Worlds that were not fortresses did not survive the Long Night. The bulk of the Hubworlds are located near the galactic core- the largest concentration of Orks in the galaxy. During the Dark Age of Technology, endless robotic armies rendered this a non-factor. During the Age of Strife, each already-devastated world thrown back onto its own resources... only the worlds which forted up survived.

Visitors to squat holds often remark on how elaborately decorated they are. Statuary, engravings and murals, fine masonry and intricate fountains; their excellent craftsmanship extends far beyond weapons and armor. Such artwork tends to accumulate over time; the oldest holds are best described as 'cluttered with masterpieces'.

Visitors experienced in military matters see how the complex and winding paths would force an invader to divide their forces and funnel through chokepoints. They would notice how the engravings conceal hidden passages for the swift movement of troops, or the mechanisms of elaborate deathtraps.

Perhaps the collections of fine art is a reaction to the stress of having to live in a giant, trap-filled bunker all the time.

== Ultramar ==

At it's height in the relatively short lived golden age of the Great Crusade the Republic of Ultramar counted approximately 500 worlds within it's borders and whilst many of these were mere provincial outposts and nothing more than seeds of potential they were indicative of a thriving and growing civilization.

At the time the Expeditionary forces of the Imperium first made it to the borders of that real, most august of the survivors of Old Night, it was grand and exceptionally so by the standards of the time though far less than it would become with a little over two hundred worlds to count as it's own and many is states of disrepair. But for all the faded glory they were not without their grandeur and when the diplomats and ambassadors of the Imperium offered them sanctuary within it's aegis they were somewhat hesitant. And why would they not be? They had survived for thousands of years alone at the other end of the galaxy to the long forgotten homeworld surrounded by barbarians and monsters. Their inclusion as a Survivor Civilization was eventually achieved on mutually favourable terms.

In the days of the Great Crusade Ultramar prospered like it had not done since the days it was part of the Great and Bountiful Empire before the Age of Strife. With fresh trade links and the pressure of barbarian invasion removed Ultramar again took it's old colony worlds back and regained the ground it had lost.

But for all that the realm itself prospered in this time the internal structure of it was called into question with many of the new border world powers, grown rich and strong on Imperial trade, questioning the right of Macragge to rule all undisputedly. As time went on this dissatisfaction did not abate and the rift between the Provincial Powers and the old money Throneworld only deepened.

Into this descended Gaufrid Fouché, grandson of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman, son of King Gunthar Fouché and about eighth in line for the crown of Franj. Gaufrid was under orders from his grandfather to set up the Ultimate Plan B contingency and set up the groundwork for the Imperium Secundus for the unthinkable eventuality of the Imperium failing. Ultramar was far enough away to probably be unaffected by anything that could kill Old Earth but civilized and prosperous enough to be a viable seed from which to regrow. Although Gaufrid had no actual direct authority within the Realm of Ultramar he did have considerable invested in him by the Imperium with which an ever increasing majority of Ultamars trade went through. Peddling this influence with the provincials and the nobility of Macragge he set forth propositions and proposals that would turn the elective monarchy of Ultramar into a fairer and more representative system of one planet one vote with an overall leader elected for times of dire emergency. Macragge agreed to this to retain some power against the increasing might of Calth, Calth agreed to it as recognition as not Macragge's subordinate was all they ever wanted and the provincial worlds agreed because it gave them a voice and they all agreed to it because refusal to do so would see a great decline in trade and hardening of the borders with the rest of the Imperium. Was this entirely fair? Probably not, but many things are less so.

With the long term threat of eventual civil war averted Gaufrid Fouché married the head of one of the major internal Ultramar trading companies (mostly a purely political decision though he was good friends with her) to further his influence and set about the meticulous and tedious task of reforming the planetary, even nation based, militaries into a more cohesive whole. His task was not entirely limited to maters of military and his hand could be found in almost every aspect of Ultramar's functioning.

Under his influence the realm grew richer and stronger than it had ever done before and many would argue since.

Then The Beast came and all that planning seemed so very insignificant compared to such reckless barbarity.

Ultramar was, by great good fortune, not as targeted as maybe it could have been in the War of the Beast. Guilliman's choice for an Imperium Secundus proving to have been correct in that regard. This is not to say that Ultramar got off easy, just that it got off easier and because of Gaufrid's tireless efforts Ultramar had never been more prepared. But worlds still burned.

The path of rebuilding took a long time. A long, long time as many of the WAAAAAAAGH!!!!! splinters scattered about and stranded corrupt eldar raiders filtered to the eastern fringe when The Beast was cast down. Ultramar endured, the Fortress of the Galactic East. Gaufrid took the name of Guilliman over Fouché to emphasize his authority, a name that his descendant would hold for the rest of Imperial history. Gaufrid Guilliman never saw the completion of the rebuilding of Ultramar, he was a rare example of Rejuvenant Rejection and had adverse reactions to the procedure, he fell to the ravages of time at the tender age of 156.

After the Breaking of the Legions it was deemed that the Ultimate Plan B was never not going to be a possibility and to safe guard it the XIII Legion core Chapter would be gifted to Ultramar and thereafter be renamed Ultramarines.

As of the dying of this Dark Millenium the realm of Ultramar spans nearly 300 developed, sophisticated and cultured worlds, still making it the grandest and strongest if not the numerically biggest of the Survivor Civilizations. As Acting Chapter Master Titus puts forth his reform plans before the Senate and the upheaval in an age of uncertainty all know that either Ultramar will finally die or will be reborn stronger than ever to meet the oncoming storm.

== Colchis ==

The planet of Colchis was a virtual feudal world by the end of the Age of Strife. The population had been nuked back to the Stone Age by the rebellion of the Men of Iron, and it had taken nearly nine millennia to reach even that level of technology again. An effort not helped by the sporadic Chaos uprisings and the brutal semi-arid climate of the planet.

From the stars came the Eldar of the minor Craftworld Bel-Shammon. The people of Bel-Shammon were desperate. The solar sails and propulsion mechanisms of the Craftworld had been damaged beyond repair, and they knew the birth of Slaanesh was soon at hand. Colchis was located only a stone’s throw away from the homeworlds of the old Eldar Empire, and the people of Bel-Shammon knew that without the ability to move their Craftworld away from the psychic eruption they would need to either find shelter or die. As a result, the people of Bel-Shammon were forced to take unconventional action, and ask the people of the nearby world for sanctuary. Tears of desperation turned to tears of joy as Colchians welcomed them to their home. In gratitude, the Eldar repaid the people of Colchis by teaching them how to build a global and peaceful civilization.

By the time the Imperium first reached Colchis during the Great Crusade, Colchis resembled some sort of planetside Eldar Craftworld crossed with a relatively calm and peaceful version of the ancient Holy Roman Empire. The planet was a veritable patchwork of nominally independent nation-states with a politically independent papacy acting as a mediator in international disputes and a representative for the planet as a whole. The Craftworld Bel-Shammon itself had been dismantled, its wraithbone structures turned into housing and architecture and its Infinity Circuit incorporated into the planet itself.

When the Imperial ships first arrived in the Colchian system, they were greeted by elegant system defense ships. The Colchians had no Warp technology, but only because they never felt the need to go anywhere. There was a Webway gate in the center of the papal palace, having been moved planetside from the old Craftworld, but the planet had little contact with the greater galaxy and had not had a visitor from offworld in decades. The language they were greeted in seemed to be some sort of Old Earth descendant language strangely hybridized with craftworlder High Speech. The Imperial ambassadors were later to learn that this was the global language of legal documents and trade, a practice mirrored in the Imperium with High Gothic.

The Imperium had expected Colchis to be controlled by an Eldar aristocracy ruling over a human underclass. To their surprise, no Eldar on the planet held any position of power above the level of provincial assistant administrator or equivalent title. The refugees of Bel-Shammon had never wanted to rule, they only wanted a place to settle. Colchis was brought into the Imperium as a unique and civilized world reminiscent of an idealized version of some pre-fall Eldar haven, albeit with only 8% of the global population actually being Eldar.

Colchis has remained relatively peaceful despite the general tumult in the galaxy since joining the Imperium. Colchis may not be armed to the teeth like Cadia or Krieg but it has still had to fight off its fair share of invasions. Among the people of the Imperium, humans from Colchis tend to get along better with the Craftworlds than the average human, due to their similar culture. Craftworlds like Alaitoc see Colchis as proof that mankind are not completely hopeless and can eventually learn to be civilized, perhaps in a few million years or so. Human and Eldar supremacist groups like Craftworld Dorhai see the harmonious and relatively non-militarized world of Colchis as the embodiment of everything wrong with the Imperium.

"''See, this is the cultural suicide of both the Eldar and human of this world. What my sights lay upon is the abominable fusion of both and the advancement of none. This is the destruction of Eldar culture and their human partners follow suit, there is the strength of none while holding the weakness of both.''"<br>
- unknown Dorhai writer

"''See that fool? That one right there? That is the actual suicide of both Eldar and humanity. I look upon them and I would be turned to pity were it not for the disgust at their stagnation and wretchedness. They prattle on about purity whilst their society crusts over in bones of wraith and dies starved of love or sunlight. They prattle on about purity, romanticizing a time that never was when they lived in some unseen Eden all the while carefully omitting their decadence and depravities. Let them turn inwards and look no more upon the outside world. We will pick their corpses clean, we will out last them, our beautiful hybrid society ever young, ever vigorous. If they cannot change they will rot.''"<br>
- Her Ecumenical Excellence Mother Dwynwen XXIII of Colchis.

== Necromunda ==

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Necromunda|Necromunda]]

= The Craftworlds =

The Eldar Craftworlds mostly entered into the Imperium as the same manner as the Survivor civilizations. The Craftworlds were never ones for formality or paperwork, but they venerated their goddess Isha, who was in a political marriage to the Steward, and originally followed for that reason. Like the Survivor civilizations the Craftworlds had to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, the terms for their inclusion varying from Craftworld to Craftworld. Over time many Craftworlds saw the benefits being part of the Imperium and integrated to greater and lesser extents, whether it be interacting with the galaxy directly or the colder, more pragmatic reason of having the rest of the Imperium as a buffer against any would-be enemies.

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#The_Craftworlds|The Craftworlds]]

= Minor Xenos Races =

Although the Imperium is best known as the grand alliance of humanity and Eldar, there are also numerous other minor Xenos races that also call the Imperium home. The Imperium first began officially admitting other races into the Imperium in M36, as a token of gratitude after receiving significant assistance from the Demiurg in the Imperial Civil War. Since then numerous other species, including Tau, kinebrach, the Watchers in the Dark, kroot, Tarrellians, even a few Necron Lords, have all been united under the Imperium’s aegis. These races are often known as “minor Xenos races” not because they are unimportant per se, but because they make up such a small proportion of the Imperium’s total population, even compared to the depleted Eldar. Even the Tau, the most numerous of the minor xenos races, are still outnumbered by the Eldar by an order of magnitude. Like Eldar Craftworlds and Survivor civilizations, minor Xenos races are often given a high degree of autonomy in the Imperium, so long as they follow the few [[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#Imperial_Governmental_Structure|universal rules]]. In some cases (e.g., Necron lords) inclusion into the Imperium is more like a mutual non-aggression pact than anything else, the Imperium pledging to keep its other citizens from antagonizing its signatories so long as those signatories in turn do not antagonize the citizens of the Imperium.

== Tau Empire ==
The Tau are the most recent major addition to the Imperium, and in some ways the most reluctant. They stood for thousands of years on their own, weathering Ork WAAAGHs, AI uprisings, Dark Eldar raids, and the vanguards of the hive fleets before finally admitting they could not survive alone in mid M39. They were a large nation by non-Imperium standards, the size of Ultramar or any of the other Survivor Civilizations integrated into the Imperium, and are the third largest single demographic in the Imperium after humans and Eldar.

Their long refusal to join the Imperium was a puzzle to Imperial minds. For thousands of years, 'Imperium' was essentially synonymous with 'Civilization'; for the Tau to reject membership was essentially to reject their own civilized nature, as far as the Imperial diplomats were concerned. Their stubborn independence is even more puzzling in light of how well Tau and Imperial ethics mesh, the 'Greater Good' ideal of a place for everything and everything in its place having a great deal in common with Imperial ideals of strength through unity and diversity. The Tau, naturally, believe the Greater Good is more complete, comprehensive, and generally superior.

Of course, integration was hardly frictionless. The Farsight Enclaves split off after a brief but bloody war to avoid becoming part of the Imperium. Many Tau resented going from an independent empire to a province of a far larger one, even though they understood the necessity. The subsequent attempts to accumulate more political power within the Imperium generated resentment among the Imperial aristocracy. But in the end, the truth won out- better together than alone.

As of M41, the Tau have become reconciled to their place within the Imperium, but remain ambitious. They want to become the equals of humanity and the Eldar, not just a junior member of the Imperium. They have the technology, they have the will, they have the unity of purpose- if they survive the coming storm, they have an excellent chance of doing so.

If.

=== Military Forces of the Tau Empire ===

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Forces#Tau_Empire|Imperial Forces (Tau Empire)]]

== Demiurg ==

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The demiurg, in the present day, are known as a nomadic race of stocky, silicon- based humanoids, noted for their superb craftsmanship and sharp business sense. As ever, the true story is more complex. The demiurg once had a homeworld, an empire. But no longer.

The foundations of the modern demiurg were laid almost eighteen thousand years ago, before the Fall, when they were a young race first expanding out into the stars. Their now long gone homeworld was located in a star cluster of intense stellar activity, which produced vast amounts of mineral wealth but also great radiation storms that sterilized all carbon- based life which tried to arise. It was not until a silicon based ecology arose that the cluster knew the touch of life, and after millions of years of evolution the demiurg were able to develop civilization and take their first steps into the stars in (relative) peace.

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Their first colonies were founded by slower-than-light ramscoops on their closest neighbors, but their expansion only began in earnest when they built the Kybernetes. 'Invented' would not quite be the right word, for the demiurg maintain that the design was revealed to their finest craftsmen by their forge god Faruul in a dream. The Kybernetes are the demiurg equivalent of humanity's Navigators, although naturally there are a great many differences between the two. The silicon biology of the demiurg is exceptionally well suited to the addition of augmetics, and it by this technology that they navigate the depths and currents of the Warp.

A Kybernetes, once selected, undergoes radical and irreversible modification, binding them on the deepest level with their ship. In a very real sense they become the ship, their sense of self expanding outward into the metal. They feel auspex arrays as their eyes, hull plating as their skin, magnetic and gravitic field projectors as their hands, plasma jets as their legs, air recyclers as their lungs, fusion furnace as their heart. They will never again be able to walk on the surface of a world, but very few Kybernetes mourn the loss. And most importantly, the gain the ability to see into the Warp without going mad, and guide their ship-body along its currents. Compared to Navigators, Kybernetes have their strengths and weaknesses. They're slower on average and are slightly more dangerous; a Kybernetes cannot peer as deeply into the Warp as a Navigator and thus are occasionally blindsided by dangers a Navigator would see coming. On the other hand, any demiurg could become a Kybernetes with sufficient training and the necessary modifications.

With this gift from their god, the demiurg began their expansion in earnest, colonizing the many systems of the stellar cauldron in which they had been born. It was not an easy expansion, for all the worlds around them were scorched and lifeless, but their craftsmanship was up to the task. To bind the many colonies of their growing empire together, they created the first of the great Trade Ships; cathedrals of industry, designed to be almost entirely self-sufficient on their years-long tours of the outer colonies, each almost a city unto itself.

For over a millennium, the demiurg methodically expanded. They breached the boundaries of the tortured region of space they called home, and discovered for the first time complex life besides their own; a joyous occasion, one still well remembered by the modern demiurg despite the millennia of tragedy since. They encountered a few other intelligent species, established trading relationships, fought a few small wars. They even encountered the eldar a few times; although by this late point in the Empire's history these all ended in tragedy. But a few small raiding bands boasting of having a vast galactic empire were not enough to halt their steady rise. The demiurg were emerging onto a wider galactic stage.

Then it all ended.

Once more the forge god spoke in their dreams, this time not bearing a gift but a warning. Soon a great divine catastrophe will overtake this entire region of space. None will survive. Board your ships and flee while flight is still possible.

So they refitted their existing ships and built new ones for the longest journey any of them would ever undertake, packed them full of as many people as could fit, and sent them out. Thousands of tiny metal seeds scattering into the bleak void, running as far and fast as they could. The billions upon billions left behind burrowed into deep bunkers and prayed.

Mere weeks after the last ship left, the Eye of Terror opened. Behind them the fleeing ships could see their homes, their families, everything they had ever known, swallowed up by the madly yawning chasm, consumed by the cosmic abortion wound. Everyone left behind, it is hoped, died swiftly. If there is any mercy in the universe they died swiftly.

And the survivors were separated from each other by the turbulence of the warp, scattered across the length and breadth of the galaxy, tiny and alone in a universe going mad. Many, most, would have been overwhelmed by the myriad horrors, and indeed many of the trade-ships-turned-arks vanished without trace. But the demiurg as a whole adapted and endured.

They adapted to lives of strict rationing and harsh discipline. They forged their weapons into tools and their tools into weapons. They traded with those sane enough to talk to and, when necessary, fought with those who weren't. They sifted through the ashes of cinder worlds, scavenging for useful technology or resources. (The Mechanicus is still a little salty about this, even though they handed over any STCs they found as part of the terms when they formally joined the Imperium.) The perfected the methods of quickly and efficiently strip- mining asteroids and minor planets, to extract the maximum amount of resources before some imminent threat forced them to flee once more. When the warp was too turbulent to risk transit, they took the long way, crawling through the long darkness between the stars with Bussard ramscoops.

Some of them turned to darker paths to try and ensure their survival. Some turned to piracy, looting peaceful and defenseless worlds. Some dug up technologies they really should not have. Some even made deals with the very dark powers which had destroyed their homes. None still persist; the demiurg made a special point of hunting them down.

As the centuries and millennia passed, the scattered arks were able to find each other once more. The demiurg would never really be a unified state again; there had been too much cultural and political drift during their long isolation. Even if that wasn't a factor, they were simply far too scattered for any sort of central authority to exist. Still, they raised their sights higher than mere survival and began to recover. To forge a new society in the voids between worlds.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Demiurg were the first non-human, non-eldar race to join the Imperium. Other species like the Watchers and kinebrach had been admitted as vassal states, but demiurg were the first to come in as an independent power in their own right. Demiurg got the invitation for helping the Imperium during the Age of Apostasy and were admitted in the midst of the post-Vandire political restructuring. However treaties for inclusion had to be hammered out on a brotherhood-by-brotherhood basis. The best idea for the reason the Demiurg were invited so far is that either the Orks or Crone Eldar massed for a big push on the Imperium while the Imperium was too busy forming a circular firing squad due to the Imperial Civil War. Demiurg stepped in to help fight because the Imperium usually acted as a buffer against the big threats and if they went down all hell would break loose. Accepted the offer because they saw the mercantile opportunities in joining.

=== Faruul ===

The identity of the demiurg's now- dead forge god Faruul is a matter of some debate. Some eldar believe it to have been Vaul, pointing the the demiurg's proximity to the Crone Worlds of the Old Eldar Empire, the mastery of the warp demonstrated by the Kybernetes, and foreknowledge of the birth of Slaanesh.

Some heterodox Mechanicus sects suggest it was a facet of the Omnissiah, pointing to the massive adoption of cybernetics among demiurg society, whereas Vaul was never associated with such augmentation in the slightest. (Such an opinion is considered heresy by many on Mars; to them the Omnissiah is a god of human technology and only human technology, not xenos.)

Although whether all technology or only human technology is the holy domain of the Adeptus Mechanicus per the will of the Omnissiah is a subject of theological debate still argued over by Mechanicus tech-priests to this day, the demiurg are still forbidden entirely from approaching within a million kilometers of Mars, officially to preserve its holy sanctity. Since similar restrictions apply to nearly all xenos breeds, nobody regards this as unusual.

The Guardians of the Dragon take no chances.

== Diasporex ==

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More of a religious movement than an actual species, the Diasporex are a nomadic fleet-bound civilization encountered by the Imperium during the Great Crusade. The Diasporex were first discovered by the expeditionary fleet of the Dark Angels, who were surprised when they accidentally stumbled upon what appeared to be veritable fleet after dropping out of warp around what they thought was a dead star. After an initial awkward misunderstanding, diplomatic contact with the Diasporex was made, and after turning down initial overtures at joining the Imperium the Diasporex pointed the Dark Angels in the direction of the nearest uncontacted human world.

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The movement of what would come to be known as the Diasporex began during the Age of Strife. The founders of the Diasporex were native to a planet that was devastated by the warp storms and other psychic phenomena common to the Age of Strife and were forced to leave their homeworld to the relative safety of voidspace in order to survive. It was here in space that the Diasporex had what could be considered a religious revelation. They realized that here, in void space, not on a planet, not in the Immaterium, it was peaceful. Upon further thought, it seemed obvious in retrospect that the Void represented the true nature of the universe, given that the Void made up the vast majority of the universe, with the only significant phenomena being the movement of the major heavenly bodies across the cosmos.

Today, the Diasporex are a nomadic civilization, constantly moving from star to star across the cosmos. One of the only reasons they ever stop are to refuel their ships at the hydrogen collecting space stations they have set up at various waypoints across their pre-planned journey. The Diasporex travel through space using a unique type of engine of unknown origin. It is still debated whether Diasporex engines are of xenos design, represent a modified pre-Warp Dark Age of Technology engine, or are a mixture of both. Although the Diasporex engines work well for their purposes, they are maddeningly useless for any Imperial use. Diasporex engines are no better than their Imperial counterparts for in-system travel, and although being to accelerate to slightly faster than the speed of light, their slow speed means that it can often take the better part of a year at minimum to move from one inhabited system to its nearest neighbor.

In times of peace, the only other time the Diasporex ever stop their journey is to visit inhabited worlds, to trade with the locals for goods that they cannot grow or manufacture aboard their ships, and to proselytize others to abandon terrestrial life and join their creed. The Diasporex are a veritable menagerie of sapient species, including humanity. It is not clear if the original founders were human, xenos, or a mix of both. The Diasporex have deliberately obscured the true origin of their founders as a point of pride, to show that their creed is open to people of any species.

The Diasporex creed follows several simple rules:
1) Warp travel is forbidden, or at least restricted to an absolute minimum. Although Diasporex ships are capable of Warp travel, they only use it if the fleet is under direct attack. According to Diasporex beliefs, warp travel irritates the universe and makes it more difficult to hear the Harmony of the Spheres.
2) No violence except in self-defense. The Diasporex exalt peace and self-harmony, though they realize the galaxy is unlikely to conform to their beliefs. Peace-loving does not mean unarmed.
3) Relinquishment of worldly possessions. In addition to the simple reasoning that if everyone brought their belongings on board there would be no room for anything else on the ship, the Diasporex believe in asceticism in order to keep focused on the nature of the void. However, the Diasporex are not cruel. They often allow new initiates to bring on objects that have personal value or could benefit the fleet, such as a picture of family members or books.

As can be expected, the Void Born like the Diasporex and their way of thinking quite a bit, although not enough that they are willing to part with their worldly possessions and join them.

The Imperium mostly lets the Diasporex survive unmolested for several reasons. First, as the Diasporex travel from world to world, they trade and barter for goods with the inhabitants of each planet they visit. The Diasporex essentially act as a trade convoy for the worlds in their region of space, one that the Imperium does not even have to expend resources to maintain.

Additionally, the Diasporex serve as an important early warning system. The path of the Diasporex is well known and can often be predicted years in advance. If the Diasporex caravans scatter, it means that something unusual is going on. Furthermore, despite being largely non-aggressive the Diasporex have proven to be tenacious in the defense of their way of life, helping the Imperium during several Black Crusade by channeling the power of the stars they absorb energy from into devastating beams of destruction. The Diasporex are also skilled voidsmen due to the amount of time they have spent travelling voidspace, often able to outmaneuver Imperial ships despite their relatively antiquated technology.

The Diasporex and the Imperium have only come into conflict over two specific issues. The first is when an individual, usually an Imperial Navy officer, tries to join the Diasporex and brings Imperial property such as an Imperial Navy voidship with them as a gift. The situation is usually defused by the Diasporex denouncing that they have any claim to the ship, although they are willing to accept new converts and new voidships, they will not do so at the risk of angering the Imperium. The other is when someone tries to disturb or destroy the various hydrogen collecting waystations scattered throughout the galaxy. Although the Diasporex are typically placid and unconcerned with the actions of those inhabiting the solar systems they travel through, they will vigorously defend any threat to their way of life.

The Diasporex occupied quite an awkward position in Imperial politics for many years. After it became clear that the Diasporex were a theocratic democracy, and that they had only sent humans to meet with Imperial representatives because they felt humans would be comfortable talking with human ambassadors, it was clear that the Diasporex could not be simply admitted into the Imperium in the same manner as Colchis or the Interex. However, the Steward did not want to allow free trade with the Diasporex as a non-Imperial power, as that might give other systems a legal excuse to trade with more unsavory entities. At the same time, it was clear that it was not possible to stop the Diasporex migration and trade with other worlds without resorting to open war. In the end, the Diasporex were named an honorary member state and protectorate of the Imperium, albeit one that kept to themselves and never interfered in Imperial politics. When the Imperium began accepting non-human, non-Eldar member states into the Imperium in M36, the Diasporex finally had a place to fit into the Imperium’s political structure. Nevertheless, the Diasporex still almost never exploit their status to affect Imperial politics, preferring to sail the same route through the stars their ancestors plotted centuries before.

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== Kinebrach ==

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The Kinebrach are a heavy-set, simian-like species of xenos native to the Segmentum Pacificus. Indeed, it is thought that many of the fortress worlds scattered around the segmentum were originally built by them. In many ways, kinebrach appear very similar to Old Earth gorillas. Like gorillas, the kinebrach are ape-like, mostly herbivorous (though they are more omnivorous than gorillas), and when given the choice prefer to live in humid swamps and jungles. However, unlike gorillas, kinebrach walk bipedally erect, though their extremely long arms (which extend below their knees) betray their tree-dwelling habits.

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Kinebrach have a tripartite jaw with well-developed grinding plates, which they use to grind vegetation and crush fruits and nuts. A deep slit between the two upper jaw plates contains the kinebrach’s oral olfactory organ, which lies at the front of the roof of their mouth. Kinebrach will sometimes flare the two flaps of their upper “hare-lip” apart, in order to better smell an unfamiliar individual or object. A kinebrach’s skin resembles a hippopotamus or wild hog, with a thick, dark blue-black skin covered by a thin layer of wiry brown to russet fur.

The Kinebrach are most famous throughout the galaxy for their skill as metalworkers. Metalworkers occupy an almost legendary status in kinebrach society, to the point that the kinebrach are actually led by a council of warsmiths. To the kinebrach, to be a decent leader you are almost expected to be a good blacksmith, as a good metalworker exhibits all the traits that must be present in a good leader. They must have vision, in order to be able to shape the metal to their liking. They must have patience, in order to be able to perfect their work into the form that they desire. And they must have strength of spirit, in order to endure the heat of the forge and the physical toil of hammering the metal into shape. Disputes between major kinebrach political figures are often settled by forge-offs, with each party trying to forge a superior work to demonstrate the righteousness of their belief or grievance.

This obsession with metalworking even extends into the Kinebrach’s method for dealing with daemons. Like many sentient species, the Kinebrach have figured out that if a daemon is bound to one place, then it can be easily accounted for and cannot roam freely to corrupt others. As a race of metalworkers, it seemed obvious to the kinebrach to bind troublesome daemons within forged weapons, as opposed to ordinary objects or living beings. These cursed weapons, as the Kinebrach call them, are then sealed in such a way that no one can access them or be tempted by the daemon sealed inside. Such cursed blades include Drach’nyen and the cursed blade stolen by Erebus during the chaos of the War of the Beast, which was later broken by the Dark Prophet and forged into the eight Anathame, the so-called “splinters in the eye of reality” that plague the Imperium to this day.

There is some suggestion that some kinebrach have gone rogue and joined the Chaos-worshipping Davinite warrior lodges, taking cursed weapons with them. The kinebrach are not happy to hear this news.

Kinebrach names are written as a series of hyphenated syllables, said almost like a drumbeat. This is apparent even in Kinebrach writing, where individual names are written in a distinctly different script than the words that surround them. This appears to be due to the modern Kinebrach writing style being the result of the fusion of two previously distinct Kinebrach cultures many millennia ago. Although the Kinebrach seem like a monolithic culture now, they apparently were not before the Age of Strife.

Like all sentient life in the galaxy, the Kinebrach were hit hard by the Age of Strife. After the end of the Age of Strife and the birth of Slaanesh, the Kinebrach believed themselves to be a dying species. This fear was only magnified when they encountered their nearest neighbors, the Interex. After first contact, communications broke down between the two species, and the two empires went to war. This war was devastating to the kinebrach, who feared that the conflict merely confirmed their imminent extinction. However, after about a century, the kinebrach were contacted by diplomats from the Interex. The Interex claimed that the breakdown in communications was due to imperfect translation technology on the Interex’s part, and they had never wanted to exterminate the kinebrach in the first place. Instead, they proposed an agreement. The kinebrach would become a protectorate of the Interex, providing them with advanced technology and metalworking in exchange for the Interex’s military protection. In addition, the Kinebrach would be forbidden to carry arms except during times of war.

The Kinebrach, for their part, did not care. They had been more concerned about the survival of their species than their ability to bear arms. Indeed, despite being led by a council of warsmiths, the kinebrach were a rather non-aggressive people and did not mind if another, more vibrant species went to war on their behalf. What’s more, the conflict had become so heated that some of the Kinebrach had almost been tempted to take up the cursed weapons out of desperation, something that the rest of the Kinebrach knew could have easily destroyed both civilizations. The Kinebrach were glad that such a worst-case scenario had not come to pass.

Like the Watchers in the Dark, the Kinebrach came under the aegis of the Imperium much earlier than other minor xenos races, entering as a protectorate of the Interex. However, with the official admission of minor xenos faces into the Imperium in M36, the Kinebrach became an officially recognized independent member state of the Imperium, albeit one with close political and economic ties to the Interex.

Today, the kinebrach are highly respected in the Imperium for their ability as metalworkers, representing one of the Imperium’s few non-Adeptus Mechanicus sources of technology along with squats and Earth Caste tau. However, unlike the Adeptus Mechanicus, the kinebrach are first and foremost artisans and metallurgists, rather than manufacturers. The kinebrach are more interested in making new alloys and crafting new masterpieces than in mass-production. Although the kinebrach have the knowledge to build starships, most find the intricacies of large-scale machines less interesting. Your average kinebrach would be more interested in a wall made of rare, high-quality, or particularly well-crafted metal than a highly-complex machine.

Given their similarities, many have wondered if the kinebrach are somehow related to the [[Jokaero]], another simian-like race with an affinity for crafting and technology, some even going so far as to suggest the jokaero are a subspecies derived from the long-lost descendants of the kinebrach that existed outside the Segmentum Pacificus. However, genetic testing has shown that the kinebrach and Jokaero are two completely unrelated species, and their ape-like similarities evolved completely independently. When asked about this, the kinebrach replied that they had once wondered the same thing regarding Eldar and humanity.

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=== Kinebrach Blades ===

The kinebrach’s main contribution to the Imperium and its long war against [[Chaos]] are not its soldiers. Although when pressed the kinebrach can be quite physically formidable, by weight of numbers they are insignificant on their own. It is their weapons, specifically their blades that the Imperium craves.

The kinebrach have tendency to put a lot of themselves into their work and that's not entirely figurative. The kinebrach as a species are all latent psykers but their ability is limited to what they can do with crafting and metalwork. [[Dwarfs_(Warhammer_Fantasy)#Runesmithing |In some ways this is a good thing, as it allows expression of psychic abilities in a more stable, controlled fashion, and if a daemon does possess a kinebrach what the daemon can do with its host is limited.]]

There's a lot of ceremony and ritual to it but one of their master smiths can beat a blade containing hate and anger and sorrow and it will hunger for war and vengeance on his behalf. The inquisition is always willing to pay top throne for a genuine Kinebrach knife. They make great daemon stabbers and a daemon stabbed with one of those knives knows it's been stabbed.

But there is a price to this.

Strands of fate twist around that metal and it will always be dragged to the war and will drag whoever is holding it. It is said that even an inanimate object has a minuscule reflection in the Warp, and kinebrach blades take this to extremes, its history impressing itself upon the present day in a vicious cycle. Not that this makes any difference in the Dark Millennium, everyone who owns one of those blades is already marching along the path of war.

== Watchers in the Dark ==

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When the Old Ones left much of their webway-making equipment on Caliban, it left a bit of a hole in the fabric of reality. This slowly allowed Warp energy to leak through into the Materium, something that wasn’t very helpful for a planet already so close to the Eye of Terror. Over the course of generations, much of the planet became uninhabitable due to Warp exposure mutating the local wildlife and turning the local ecosystem into a hellscape. Although natural selection due to Warp exposure had given the native sapient species a great deal of resistance to Warp energies and chaos-related mutations, it was not enough to protect them from the great beasts and detestable flora that covered most of the planet. Out of a sheer need for survival, the native sapient species of Caliban developed into a society fanatically obsessed with opposing Chaos and reclaiming their planet, but because of their limited physical prowess were unable to do much more than keep their few remaining bastions of civilization untainted at great cost.

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The Dark Angels, being the first legion sent out beyond the Sol system to look for survivors of the Age of Strife, were the first to encounter Caliban. Upon meeting with the Dark Angels, the Watchers saw the opportunity these visitors from the stars presented them and entreated the Dark Angels for help. Luther, more worried that the Imperium was going to carve up Franj while his back was turned, was dismissive, whereas Lion, ever the idealist, saw the Watchers as people, a Chaos-opposing people no less, in need and stepped in to help. Lion and the Dark Angels made short work of most of the Chaos Beasts on Caliban, and in gratitude the Watchers pledged their fealty to Lion and the Dark Angels. A small garrison of Dark Angels was left on Caliban, but this notably did not include Lion or Luther. The garrison’s job was to help the Watchers rebuild their planet, but it was difficult because they could never really find the source of the Warp corruption and could only keep the number of beasts to a minimum.

The Watchers in the Dark are essentially the reason the loyalist Dark Angels even survived the schism. When two-thirds of your forces turn on you at once, it is difficult to even survive under normal circumstances. Although the Watchers couldn’t physically fight against the traitor space marines in direct combat, they could relay information and help loyalist marines find one another in the chaos, even helping loyalists tell friend from foe. And in a pinch, if you don’t pay attention to a Watcher in the corner with a knife while fighting your loyalist brother, he will seriously mess up your day. However, in the course of the fighting during the schism, Caliban was destroyed, and the Watchers in the Dark were left without a homeworld. Some say the Watchers intentionally blew up their homeworld, to deny the Fallen the use of the Chaos Beasts and the artifacts beneath its surface.

The Watchers are a very minor xenos race, even in comparison to the other minor Xenos races of the Imperium. Their homeworld is gone, and there are only just enough of them to act as support staff for the loyalist successor chapters of the Dark Angels. At first the Watchers were a rather poorly kept secret to the rest of the Imperium. However, when the Imperium started allowing minor xenos races to join the Imperium, the Dark Angels were some of the first in line to present a petition on behalf of the Watchers. People coughed when they saw this, but let the Watchers in anyway. It is likely that the Steward knew of the Watchers’ existence and their contributions to the fight against Chaos before they were officially known to the Imperium at large (probably from the Lion if nothing else), which is probably the reason why the Watchers were admitted into the Imperium despite being a group of mysterious Xenos attached to the descendants of the legion most infamous for going rogue.

Even as an official part of the Imperium, the Watchers are rather enigmatic. Watchers in the Dark can occasionally be seen on hive worlds and other metropolitan areas, but are almost always running some kind of errand for their chapter. Their biology and social structure beyond “warp-resistant, long-lived, and hate Chaos” are only known to the Dark Angels and a few Ordo Xenos Inquisitors who have found out via other avenues. Even the gender or age of a given individual is not clear. The Watchers technically don’t pay a tithe, but since the entire species is basically a vassal race nearly inseparable from the loyalist Dark Angel successors, nearly every adult member of the species serves in some fashion.

Despite, or perhaps because of, this lack of information, a whole host of rumors have appeared regarding the Watchers in the Dark. As with all rumors, it is almost impossible to tell where these stories came from and if there is a grain of truth in them or not. Some say that the Watchers one sees today are the same Watchers that served during the War of the Beast, and there have been none born since the destruction of their homeworld. Others point out that the Watchers would have become extinct by now through simple attrition if that were the case, even if they had lifespans longer than the Eldar. However, exactly how the Watchers are reproducing is unknown. Some say that they are simply nomadic creatures now, forever moving with their Astartes masters and making their homes in star bases and fortresses and ships, whereas others say they haven’t died out because they have one last secret breeding ground, deep under one of the hives of Old Earth.

Other rumors are perhaps more farfetched. Some of these rumors, bordering on conspiracy theories, say the Watchers are able to travel through darkness itself, or are able to know the names of everyone they meet, or are the only creatures besides the Eldar who know how to navigate the Webway, or that they sing beautifully but they won't let anyone hear them, or are Imperial sword Hrud. Some theories are as fanciful as the Watchers hand out present to good little boys and girls on Sanguinala under the command of "Cypher Claws", to as conspiratorial as the Mechanicus uses the Watchers to spy on your comings and goings and dreams, to as eerie as the rumor that the eldar forgot who they were, but the Watchers remember them and remember much more than the eldar would like. As with all things, the Watchers never confirm or deny any of these tales.

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== Tarellians ==

During the unification and the Great Crusade, the Steward encountered the Tarellians. Though their race had never risen to match the levels of the Eldar, the Tarellians had a modest interstellar confederation of loosely aligned agriworlds. At first, things went well enough. The Tarellians were cautious, and after a few inconclusive skirmishes, were receptive to human ambassadors. In point of fact, they scorned worlds that were not self-sufficient enough to be able to survive off of their own food supplies, meaning they did not contest Imperial settlers that took the barren (If resource rich) unexploited rocks in systems surrounding them. But, eventually, one Tarellian governor got greedy, and attempted to enslave a human colony en masse to manufacture weapons for his soldiers. Well, the Imperium sent a naval ship, and the governor ran back to his confederates, and a war started.

The Tarellians were good fighters. Managed a few wins against the odds, due to bickering and overconfident Imperial generals. Then a primarch came. Luckily, it was only Dorn, but just the same the Tarellians were beaten horrifically, and quickly forced to peace. A white peace with mild reparations, but one that shattered the Tarellian confederacy over the shame.

After that, there was no more Tarellian Confederacy. The fractured states were left alone, and "Tarellian Space" was just another lawless backwater. Until the tyranids came. The Imperium intervened (even over the protest of some particularly proud Tarellian despots), but by the time help arrived the damage was done. Over a full quarter of the Tarellian population died fighting on worlds consumed.

Now, the Tarellian sector is peaceful. They provide mercenaries and foodstuffs. They're likeable enough, and cautiously judged by the Inquisition as mostly loyal subjects, even if some Tarellian mercenaries are found among ork and chaos warbands, and the rest mutter about how Tarellia will rise again from time to time. It is generally considered bad form among Imperial officers to remind the Tau of the Tarellian histories, though Tarellians themselves seem to regard the Tau well, particularly for their resistance to joining the Imperium.

When the Tarellians spread out from their homeworld, they developed a number of highly divergent cultures on the planets they lived on. Tarellians also range wildly in body size based on planet, ranging from Tau-sized to slightly taller than a baseline human. Even during their most unified periods, Tarellian culture and social norms could vary wildly depending on the planet. Hence the Tarellian Confederacy, instead of the Tarellian Republic or the Tarellian Empire. Nevertheless, there are enough cultural similarities between them that the Tarellan cultures see themselves as distinctly Tarellian, much like the different Greek or Mesoamerican city-states saw themselves as a distinct cultural unit.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that there are many different groups of lizardmen out there in the galaxy, of which the Tarellians are but the best known because they developed the most extensive interstellar network. The Imperium, lacking imagination, might refer to the species as a whole as Tarellians even though the term only really applies to the Tarellian Neo-Confederacy.

Like some groups of Native Americans (Comanche, Sioux), Tarellians are well known for their mobility in war, able to march hundreds of miles from base camp in order to strike. The difference is that the Native American tribes did this through the use of horses. The Tarellians do this on foot. Tarellians originally evolved in an arid environment where they had to keep pace over shifting sand dunes and the uneven terrains of arroyos in extreme heat. Marching through a relative flat environment in balmy weather is a literal walk in the park for them. The Tarellians don’t really have riding cavalry, it's hard to see a need for it when you can run as fast as a racehorse, though they do domesticate heavier draft animals.

===General Tarellian Society===

Describing Tarellian society in broad strokes is very difficult. Like humans, Tarellians do not have a unified cultural baseline. Maza’s decentralized rule by a council of tribal elders is very different from the highly stratified society ruled by the Xibalaniqan mage-priests on Tikan, and so on and so forth. However, the following type of social structure is the kind found the Tarellian homeworld after the Age of Strife, as well as Nova Tarellia, the current cultural heart of the Tarellian Neo-Confederacy in the wake of Hive Fleet Kraken. In addition, this type of societal structure is present on some form on many of the lesser colony worlds founded by the Tarellians, most of which were settled by colonists from Tarellia during the tenure of the Tarellian Confederacy or as resettled refugees following the attack of Hive Fleet Kraken. Therefore, this kind of social structure is the closest one gets to a “generic” picture of Tarellian society.

The functional unit of Tarellian society is the hunter pack, a group composed of several associated individuals form a military unit, as well as their offspring. Each hunter pack lives in a hauden, a structure made of an artificial cement-like mixture that is part barracks, part homestead, and part domicile. Each pack is expected to be responsible for their own needs, producing or hunting their own food and maintaining their own equipment. The individuals that form a hunter pack may or may not be genetically related, hunter pack are often at least partially composed of family units but individuals may leave or join new packs upon bonding with another individual. Nevertheless, most Tarellians on Nova Tarellia and the colony worlds are normally part of at least one pack at any point in their life.

Tarellians are fiercely meritocratic. The leader of a hunter pack is elevated to that position based on the consensus of their peers, usually on the basis of the glory they have won. The process of elevating one to a position of leadershipp is called “shield-raising”, named after the fact that in the distant past when a leader was chosen the individual in question would be raised up on the shields of their comrades. An individual could not be hoisted on the shoulders of their comrades if the majority of the pack did not cooperate, and an individual could only be raised up if they trusted those around them. Individuals are not be elevated to leadership status just because of their ability to kill things, but based on their perceived ability to lead and command others. No Tarellians wants to follow a leader they do not trust to make good decisions. The leaders of a group of hunter packs are then organized into their own group, who choose their own leader, and so on and so forth until one reaches the highest levels of Tarellian society. As a result every Tarellian is aware of their place in the social hierarchy at all times, but it is a societal structure that allows for a great deal of social mobility and individual say. Meritocratic ideals are present on many other worlds like Tikal and Maza, even those which differ dramatically in social structure (Maza, for example, has little social organization beyond a council of elders drawn from the matriarchs of each tribe).

This system makes the division between civilians and military in Tarellian society exceedingly murky. Almost every adult Tarellian is capable of picking up a weapon and defending themselves in times of war, although the same thing could be said of many human and almost all eldar societies as well. Does this mean the Tarellians are nothing more than an authoritarian system where civil society is merely an outgrowth of the military? Or is Tarellian society primarily a civilian militia that simply happens to be organized into a highly fashion? Tarellian leaders are subject to the will of their civilians, something which is typically not present in a military dictatorship. An argument could be made for either. The Tarellians would say those who debate such things are far too fixated on the details, it is what it is and should be considered on its own merits.

The meritocratic nature of Tarellian society is one reason for the Tarellian’s dislike of the Imperium. While not ungrateful that the Imperium was willing to provide assistance in the rebuilding of the Neo-Confederacy, they do not like the fact that the Imperium summarily imposed their will on them afterwards. They do not like the idea of having a leader imposed on them, rather than chosen. If the Imperium had presented the rescue of the Tarellian race as evidence for their ability to perform as leaders, some Tarellians might have even considered this enough of a valid argument to voluntarily shield-raise them, but the Imperium did not. They unilaterally assumed control. As social pack-hunters, the idea of unfamiliar outsiders having power over them on any level is vexing.

This long-standing issue dominates Tarellian interactions with the greater Imperium. Tarellians are well known for their caustic, contrarian attitudes in Imperial politics, though despite their stereotype of being bitter and grumpy Tarellians are capable of forming positive relationships with individual humans (Tarellians even have a saying that roughly translates to “beyond more than two degrees of separation in the chain of command everyone is a grunt”). Rather, the political actions of the Neo-Confederacy are due to the fact that under Tarellian custom, the subordinates to the leader of a hunter pack are also expected to voice dissenting opinions to make sure their leader. To the Tarellians, they smugly consider their contrarian behavior to be fair play given how humanity waltzed in and declared themselves in charge.

===Tarellian Weapons===

The Tarellians weapon of choice is the disruptor rifle, a weapon invented and primarily used by the various Tarellian worlds which literally boils the molecules of its targets. They do make some use of autoguns and lasweapons when available. Mazans tend to prefer chainmail and longbows with light skirmish gear.

==== Kultarr ====

Perhaps the most distinctive weapon of the Tarellians, aside from their disruption weaponry, is the kultarr. The melee weapon of choice for Tarellians, kultarrs resemble a cross between a polearm, a pickaxe, and a hatchet. The kultarr was originally thought to have started out as a simple hand tool repurposed for war, until it developed into the weapon known today. At the far end of the kultarr is a simple spike. The main purpose of this spike is to blunt cavalry or infantry charges, or finish off a downed foe. Just behind this spike is a recurved spike, which is the main armament of the kultarr. Typically, a kultarr is swung downwards like a tomahawk to brain a foe or impale them and allow them to be dragged closer. The spike can also be used as a hook to drag cavalry from their mounts or pull an opponent off balance (their more traditional use, seeing as the Tarellians did not have cavalry until the Industrial Era).

The military success of the kultarr has led the Tarelians to produce numerous derivations on the design, most prominently the mahukultarr. Instead of a single recurved spike, a mahukultarr has several backwards slanting blades appressed together to form a massive cutting edge. The purpose of a mahukultarr is to leave large, jagged wounds that bleed readily and are difficult to easily close. Although resembling a broadsword, the weight of a mahukultarr means that it is wielded more like an axe or a club. The cutting edge is composed of numerous smaller blades, rather than one complex piece of metal, in order to prevent breakage and make it easier to replace blades that are broken. However, the sheer weight of a mahukultarr means that it is almost impossible for a Tarellian soldier to carry both one of these weapons and a rifle at the same time. As a result, mahukultarr wielding-soldiers are relatively rare.

==== Tarellian Blessed Atlatls ====

The Warp is not a realm of matter and logic, it is a realm of myth and metaphor. It is a realm where thought and symbology are more important than anything else. This one reason why melee weapons like swords are so much more effective at banishing daemons and other creatures of the Warp than bolters and other projectile weapons. There is something instinctively satisfying about striking down an enemy with a blade, telling you that it is gone and cannot hurt you any longer, an act that resonates with the nature of the universe and says that because you believe the creature is dead it is more likely to be banished. It is a primal feeling, one entrenched in our DNA. Although powder weapons have been a part of human history for nearly forty thousand years, melee weapons like swords and spears have been entrenched in human consciousness for much longer.

Such is also the case with the humble javelin. Javelins have been throughout human history, from the earliest hunter-gathers to the armies of ancient Roma to the city states of Middle Merika. It was javelins and atlatls that are ancestors harnessed to bring down the great beasts that roamed the frigid taigas and to defend against the scimitar-toothed predators that awaited in the night. Even harpoons, which are javelins in a sense, were once used to hunt the great leviathans that once prowled the oceans of Old Earth. As a result of all this javelins have attained a rather curious position in the human psyche. Javelins kill monsters.

Such is also the case with the Tarellians. Although a much more carnivorous species than mankind, they too developed their own javelin throwers and atlatls to bring down megafauna, and as with humanity the atlatl also attain the status of the “killer of monsters”. And so, when the Tarellians first encountered daemonkind, first encountered the creatures from the id, is it any wonder that they dusted off their ancient tools in the same way that humanity repurposed its swords and axes?

Atlatls are the Tarellians first weapon of choice against daemons. The method of manufacturing is completely different, darts composed of stainless steel and titanium rather than fire-hardened wood or stone, but the weapon is the same, just as the force halberd of a Grey Knight has its ancestry in the ancient designs of Old Earth’s Bronze Age. The Tarellians painstakingly craft these weapons with intricate ritual, infusing their essence with even more significance and meaning. They consider them blessed by the Old Ones, gifted with the power to strike down the Neverborn in their name, as if Zeus had gifted mortals his thunderbolts. Javelin throwers are rare, but highly respected sight in Tarellian armies. Such weapons are little more than inefficient novelties against other species, but are lethal to monsters from the warp. Although their ammunition may be few in number, and their wielders must be skilled to make every shaft count, when the points hit the target they hurt.

===Worlds of the Tarellian Neo-Confederacy===

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#The_Tarellian_Neo-Confederacy|The Tarellian Neo-Confederacy]]

===Tarellian Religion===

EDITOR'S NOTE: Per original writer, section with Be'lakor could use some rewriting/expansion

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The Tarellians, in a rather roundabout fashion, worship the Old Ones as their gods. The Old Ones, from what little we know about them, seem to have some sort of connection to the Tarellians. However, the Tarellians are not direct descendants of the Old Ones. The Old Ones, despite having dry, leathery skin, were still semi-aquatic and had to return to the water to breed. The Tarellians have scaly skin, and lay eggs. Instead, the Tarellians appear to be descended from components of the Old Ones’ biosphere, likely spread to other planets in the Old Ones’ first attempts at terraforming. In human terms, it would be as if a race of sapient rats rose to power long after the extinction of humanity, only to find human artifacts and come to believe humans represented a race of gods.

The Tarellians did not evolve on the original homeworld of the Old Ones. Whatever planet the Old Ones originally hailed from was lost long before the War in Heaven even began, although there are numerous fringe theories as to where said planet might have gone. The Tarellian world with the greatest concentration of Old One artifacts was Tarellia, the planet where the Tarellians originally evolved sentience. Unfortunately, most of the Old One technology on the planet was rendered non-functional beyond any means of repair and only the simplest, most resilient objects, such as statues, tablets, and stone carvings, remained intact. Ironically, the few Old One artifacts that have survived the millions of years since the War in Heaven tend to be either exceedingly primitive (stone carvings and tablets) or ridiculously advanced (the Blackstone Fortresses, the Webway, three of the four Ruinous Powers). According the Tarellians, the writing on these Old One artifacts inspired their own writing system and they can even translate it to a crude degree, though modern Tarellian differs greatly from the language used by the Old Ones.

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After Tarellia, the Tarellian world with the greatest concentration of Old One artifacts was the colony of Xibalanique. Xibalanique was a harsh, dry world, even by Tarellians standards, one of the reasons why so many artifacts were preserved there in the first place. Said artifacts were just about the only reason the world was of any interest to the Tarellian Empire, as the world was barely habitable otherwise and its population before the Age of Strife was almost entirely composed to researchers studying the Old One artifacts. When Xibalanique was cut off from the rest of the galaxy during the Age of Strife, the Tarellians stranded there had to either adapt, or die. Xibalaniquans are short and stocky compared to other Tarellians and tend to be relatively heavyset, which is thought to be due to genetic adaptations towards conserving energy for times of famine in harsh environments.

The inhabitants of Xibalanique were also notable in being all psykers, a situation somewhat analogous to a Tarellian Prospero. It is not clear if this is because of something the Old Ones did to Xibalanique, or if it was simply due to a founder effect from the original population of researchers having a higher-than average proportion of psyker genes relative to the rest of the Tarellian worlds, as Tarellians psykers are not unique to Xibalanique. Tarellian psykers are normally so stoic and dispassionate as to appear almost emotionless, interspersed with huge spikes of emotion whenever they use their powers. There are a variety of Tarellian idioms and proverbs that allude to this, common in the Impreium is "past years' passions land fast as lightning," in reference to sudden emotional impacts. This makes them less susceptible to daemonic attention than psykers of other races, but it also means they tend to use their powers in quick bursts and become rapidly exhausted when trying to do anything strenuous, stress of the moment becoming entangled with emotionally depleting psychic highs and lows of feeling and realization. Nevertheless, this was not enough to completely avoid attention, as Xibalanique was destroyed shortly after the end of the Age of Strife.

The Xibalaniquans that survived their planet’s destruction migrated to the other Tarellian worlds, where they were eagerly assimilated with open arms. The Xibalaniquans were of interest not only for their psychic abilities, which were of value to any Tarellian warlord, but also for any potential lost knowledge that had been lost to the wider Tarellian Confederacy. Due to their psychic powers, the Tarellians viewed psykers as being closer to the Old Ones and on many worlds these psykers (typically Xibalaniquans) were organized into councils of mage-priests, who often served as advisors to the resident warlord. This arrangement varied from world to world; for example Maza has no mage-priests in an administrative position, whereas on Tikal at some point in history the mage-priests became the direct rulers of the planet, rather than just advisors. The organization of mage-priests into councils was not simply for symbolic reasons, as it also allowed for the organization of mage-priests into choirs similar to the human astropath system for interstellar communication. Even today, the Tarellian remain one of the few non-human, non-Eldar races to use their own methods of faster-than-light communication. The practical concerns of this system have likewise doubled back into Tarellian politics, as these councils are clearest in casting their messages when they are in unanimity as to the content, encouraging local cohesion as a necessary prerequisite for wider organization.

The Tarellians know the bare basics of the War in Heaven. They know that their gods were in a war with a pantheon of anti-gods and that their gods spawned a race of dark gods to help them. They know that the gods made lesser beings to act as soldiers. However, this is where the Tarellians get a few things wrong. They believe that they were the race created by the gods to fight in their war, when they were not. Indeed, in terms of age, the Tarellians are closer to humanity or the kinebrach than the truly ancient races like the Eldar or Orks.

The Tarellians believe the stylized bipeds in the Old One hieroglyphics at the right hand of their gods, figured to the same scale that peasants are often figured relative to gods and royalty, are the semi-mythical ancestor kings and queens, from who the Tarellians claim their descent. They’re not, but don’t bother try telling the Tarellians that. They’re actually representatives of the various gods of the mortal races the Old Ones uplifted during the War in Heaven. Isha recognized herself in the carvings, as well as Kurnous and Qah. Actual mortal representatives of those races are nowhere to be seen.

The Tarellians also believe that their gods walk among them, though perhaps not in a physical fashion. When Isha discovered this fact in M30 this, as well as the general physical similarity between the Tarellians and the Old Ones, was enough to excite the then recently-freed Eldar goddess Isha about the possibility of finding surviving fellow survivors of the War in Heaven and Age of Strife. Although, still acclimating to the current situation in the galaxy, Isha made plans to travel to Tarellian space at the first opportunity. The mage-priests were excited at the prospect of an outsider taking an interest in their gods, and eagerly escorted Isha to the nearest temple to “show her their gods”. However, Isha’s hopes were to be dashed. Instead of finding living, breathing Old Ones, she found stone statues and temples filled with a few attending devotees. Isha, furious at having her hopes raised at and having that hope yanked away just as quickly, almost lashed out at the “horrid little newts” in her grief and rage, before being calmed down by the Handmaidens. The mage-priests at the time were confused and did not know what they had done to make the outsider so angry, but it is thought that later priests figured out what happened and were slightly bitter to the Eldar about it, seeing Isha’s reaction as a dismissal of their gods.

When the Daemon Prince Be’lakor, the last of the Old Ones, found out that the Tarellians worshipped the Old Ones, he realized he had potential means to take control of the Confederacy. It has long been known that Be’lakor has a habit of setting himself up as the power behind the throne in a number of empires both human and alien in his attempts to break free from the machinations of the Chaos Gods, though typically his involvement with these petty empires was visible only in retrospect. Be’lakor often likes to cover up any evidence of his existence, or better yet lay contradictory evidence or trick his enemies into destroying the evidence for him. However, in the millennia following the Age of Apostasy, Be’lakor began to find he had fewer and fewer civilizations naïve to Chaos to work with, with most either being absorbed by the Imperium, subverted by other aspects of Chaos, or being outright destroyed. When Be’lakor found out the Tarellians worshipped his people, being the last of the Old Ones he was by default their rightfully inherited master.

When Be'lakor felt he had enough information, he made contact with the Tarellians and enunciated his demands. At first, the Tarellians were surprisingly receptive to Be’lakor, apparently believing his claims and requesting that he meet their mage priests at their peoples’ traditional sacred meeting grounds to consecrate his reign. However, when Be’lakor and his court of Warp anomalies manifested in front of the Tarellian mage-priests, the Tarellians dropped the act and Be’lakor realized that for the first time in millennia he had miscalculated. Despite worshipping the Old Ones, Tarellian society is largely meritocratic and achievement-based to the point that social advancement is based on personal deeds.For Be’lakor to show up and claim that the Tarellians should fall to their knees and worship him because he is one of their long lost gods simply because he is a god, rather than what he has accomplished with his godhood, was highly insulting. The mage priests told him as much to his face.

This, according to Kroak, leader of the Tarellian delegation, meant one of two things. Either he was a fake god who knew nothing of Tarellian culture and was stealing someone else's title and accomplishments for his own ends, or he was a terrible god with no glory to his name and did not deserve to be worshipped in the first place. On that note, the Tarellians revealed the so-called “sacred meeting grounds” Be’lakor had met them at was actually a fake (which, the Tarellians added, if Be’lakor had really been one of their gods he would have realized was a fake in the first place) built above a vast cavern and wired with explosives. Then they triggered the explosives and sent Be’lakor and his retinue screaming down the mile-deep crevasse. Kroak himself dealt the final blow, striking the daemon prince with a house-sized rock as he tried to fly out of the rockside and burying Be’lakor beneath the debris.

Unfortunately, the Tarellians paid a terrible price for their insolence. The Tarellians had maintained their freedom, but they had done so by humiliating Be’lakor, someone to disrespect at your own peril. Be’lakor would not tolerate such disrespect from the younger races, but he was patient and more than willing to play the long game to get his revenge. Less than twenty years after the Tarellians banished Be’lakor, Hive Fleet Leviathan made galaxyfall. It is rather noteworthy that despite coming from the same general direction as Behemoth, something made the Hive Fleet change course at the last minute causing it to take a different path through the galaxy. Right through Tarellian space.

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== Thexians ==

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The Pale Wasting and the Thexian Trade Empire|The Pale Wasting and the Thexian Trade Empire]]

== Nicassar ==

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The nicassar are a species of gasbag sophont, a species in which the organic components are wrapped around bladders or other containers filled with a lighter-than-air gas (usually hydrogen or helium) to form an organic blimp. Through an unusual quirk of evolution life on the nicassar homeworld evolved in such a manner that their physiology produced hydrogen gas as a waste product. At some point an organism developed a way to capture this waste gas in bladders rather than just release it and a whole evolutionary radiation of floating organisms evolved (lightning strikes are fun on said world). The Nicassar homeworld’s gravity is higher than Earth (which actually improves flight ability for large animals due to denser atmospheres), and the Nicassar also supplement their natural hydrogen buoyancy with their psychic powers.

The nicasssar themselves basically look like furry UFOs with bear-like heads and six arms spaced evenly around the “disk” of their body. Their belly is covered in tough plates of skin kind of like an armadillo carapace when they want to drop to the ground to rest or hibernate. They actually give birth in a similar manner to Earth marsupials, the baby is born small and underdeveloped and crawls into the mother’s pouch during their frequent hibernation bouts, where they will suckle while the mother’s deflated body hangs from the ceiling like a bat until she wakes back up. Because of their status as gasbag sophonts, the nicassar tend to have a rather ethereal, “breathy” voice, even when communicating telepathically.

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Nicassar are driven by an insatiable curiosity and are compelled to travel and seek out new experiences. This is as much rooted in biology as anything else, since as large airborne organisms it encourages them to disperse everywhere. Between their psychic powers, ability to hibernate, and three-dimensional thinking, it was rather easy for the Nicassar to develop space travel. They had spread out pretty widely (but thinly) over the area near Ultramar and the Tau cluster, and were well-known to the Imperium before they started letting alien races join.

Even after the Imperium started letting other species in, the nicassar were almost deemed Xenos Independens because of their wanderlust and curiosity. When the Tau were an independent power of the Imperium, it was hard to keep them out of Tau space. In many ways they were like the hrud, except unlike the hrud you could get the nicassar were capable of if they really had to. The primary fear was that the nicassar would go to a Chaos-corrupted system that was put off limits, get corrupted, and then spread it to the rest of the galaxy. Some even worried that their curiosity and desire for new experiences was a ready-made gateway for Slaaneshi corruption. And indeed, there are Chaos nicassar, like there are Chaos everything else, but the isolated nature of their conclaves makes it difficult for corruption to spread, and the initial fears of the nicassar being a vector for Chaos corruption seem to have been unfounded. Indeed, as the nicassar are all psykers, they knew about Chaos from the start and knew that it was only a shadow’s width away. It wasn’t some forbidden fruit waiting for them to come and visit it in some far off system, they had looked upon it already and presumably at least most turned away.

As they are curious by nature it could be more on the nature that they need interesting stuff to think about and they exhausted the potential for this of their homeworld. To this end they like stories and due to their psychic nature consider people to be walking storybooks. They travel a lot through tau space not because they consider the tau to be more interesting than any other group of people in and of themselves but because their homeworld, and their primary breeding ground, is on the border between Tau Empire and venerable Ultramar. It is frontier space for both peoples but the novelty hasn't worn off for the blue-skins yet whereas their ships in Ultramar space barely get mentioned because of how often they have been seen down the long years due to diplomatic interaction between the Tau Empire and the Imperium. Overall, the nicassar are kind of like the Diasporex in their tendency to wander endlessly and their nature as traders, but the Diasporex are in the northwestern corner of the galaxy and the nicassar are centered on the Eastern Fringe.

In more recent years, the tau have used the nicassar as a method of training the human and others psyker in their domain when no alternative can be made, the problem with this being that the Nicassar are unreliable and although they will let you on their ship they won't usually stop the ship so you will more than likely complete your training on the other side of the sector. The ships aren't all that fast but they are extremely efficient and low maintenance and so never have to stop. However, the positive of the Nicassar psyker training is that it's free. The presence of the new person on the ship is a new book to read and a new ear to listen. The Nicassar love to tell stories as much as they love to hear them. However they are made happy by gifts of sugary food. Honey in particular.

The ships of the Nicassar are not the most advanced in the Imperium, they are built for efficiency and rugged durability over most other concerns. For much the same reason they aren't the most well-armed or armoured. They don't typically go very fast because the inhabitants like to run them on the equivalent of not much more than tick-over. When startled they are more likely to run than fight, they might as a people look somewhat frightening in a bizarre way but they are not naturally aggressive or fighters. Their ships when commanded to do so do have a surprising turn of speed as the inhabitants shape their minds and psychic shape into something like giant sails and plunge deeper into the warp than most will go to get the deeper currents.

The technology that allows for this method of warp travel is non-transferable as it is linked directly to the Nicassar's psychic ability in some way. Attempts by both commissioned adepts, hereteks and earth caste specialists to build an analogous system for human or other species have met with only failure.

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== Ulmeathic League ==

The Ulmeathic League was a collection of world protected/subjugated (the League had a singular word for both concepts as they did not see the need for a distinction) by the Ulmeatheans, [[Lizardmen#Kroxigor|a species of large (eight to nine feet tall outside of armor) semi-aquatic reptilian xenos that resemble crocodilians or marine iguanas]]. The Ulmeatheans are primarily herbivorous, having evolved from more carnivorous ancestors, but only relatively recently, still having the claws and large fangs to match. Their hide is covered by white, calcified callouses similar to those seen on marine iguanas or whales, which makes their skin even tougher to penetrate. Other than their callouses, their hide tends to be variations on green with some being almost blue and some being almost yellow, becoming gray, leathery, and with more pronounced scales with age. They have the ability to regrow severed parts given time but a limb will still take a few years. They are cold blooded and long lived, typically living about 100 to 120 years barring major illness or injury with the record being 168. They do have two sexes but outsiders can't tell them apart, the men tend to dress in brighter colours is about the only clue. Despite rumours they can't smell if you are lying and their sense of smell is no better than the average humans, similarly their visual range doesn't extend into the infrared. They can distinguish between colours better than baseline humanity and are brilliant at spotting thing like holofields, camelioline and camouflage nets.

Ulmeatheans naturally operate on a very authoritarian way of thinking with heavy emphasis on the notions of dominance, thought to be due to their evolutionary history and social structure. To the Ulmeatheans, the strong deserved to rule and the Ulmeatheans ruled the Ulmeathic League because they were strong and at the top of the social heap. The Ulmeathic League was primarily a caste system composed of the Ulmeatheans and a few other species of xenos. [[Lizardmen#Saurus|The Ulmeatheans were exclusively rulers and warriors]], whereas [[Lizardmen#Skinks|The other species basically ran Ulmeathic civilization and performed all other tasks]]. That was how Ulmeathic society ran and for a good long while it worked. Any of the subjugated species could have challenged them for dominance and if they won their roles would have reversed and the Ulmeatheans would have been fine with that.

In battle, the Ulmeatheans tend to be slow and hard-hitting. It is important to note that they are slow in that they advance and cover ground slowly; opponents thinking them lumbering and awkward in close-quarters are in for a rude awakening. Ulmeatheans wield swords, though they look more like pieces of metal scavenged from a construction site than typical swords, and the speed with which they can swing them around is rather terrifying. They tend to have marginally slower reflexes than smaller species but not as much as you would think. Surprisingly enough, the Ulmeatheans are also very good at poetry and stoneworking, the latter to the point that even the eldar begrudgingly notice they have a talent for it. However, they generally do not do so as actual work, but because proficiency in poetry and stoneworking is expected of their station, much like how noble or warrior classes on ancient Earth were expected to know etiquette or calligraphy. It's just that those pursuits tend to come alongside their duty as warriors. They are the strongest- physically at least- and under Ulmeathic tradition the strong thus have a duty to fight to protect those under their care not as strong as them. Somewhat ironically, the Passeri probably have better records of Ulmeathian history and culture than they do about their own; life was good under their rule, and they still remember their debt. Plus they love singing, so writing ballads about the exploits of Ulmeathian heroes is something they genuinely enjoy.

The Imperium never bothered much with the Ulmeathic League beyond token diplomats and a few Rogue Traders. They were between the Ghoul Stars and Tarellians space on the edge of the galaxy, stayed out of other people’s business, and acted as a good buffer. The Imperium left the Ulmeathic League to themselves and more or less forgot about them due to [[Chaos|more]] [[Necron|pressing]] [[Tyranids|concerns]]. Then Hive Fleet Naga came. The first real contact the Imperium had with the Ulmeathic League was a refugee fleet telling them that the League was gone. Just gone. To their credit the Ulumeatheans themselves had fought to damn near the last and bar a very few Ulumeathic children and essential personnel the ships were packed to the gills with their vassal races.

The Imperium offered the refugees settlement rights to a few systems with habitable but not all too pleasant worlds, gifts the League survivors accept with tears of gratitude in their eyes (well, Passeri tears at least; the remaining Ulmeathians were as stoic as ever). Today the League is a fading memory of better times. The Ulmeatheans were proud alpha males and females in the League’s prime, now they just look lost and sad. The younger generation deal with it better because they only heard tales about the League and how mighty they once were but they were either too young to remember or were just eggs when it all died. Soon a generation will be born without any contact with The League, Imperial Ulmeatheans. But the old grey-scales remember and they know the League won't rise again so they make lives as best they can. The Ulumeatheans have not tried to regain any of their old authority, their whole society is about knowing your place and they know theirs in the Imperium. They do though make very good soldiers.

The fact that the Ulmeatheans are reptilian, their ancestors were carnivorous, and their homeworld was right next door to Tarellian space raises the possibility that they are yet another lost Tarellian colony, ones that became “ab-tarellian” in the same way that ogryn are abhumans. The Ulmeatheans are incredibly offended by the idea that they were just an offshoot of those other tiny pipsqueaks (six feet being pipsqueaks by their standards); they forged their empire themselves, thank you very much. Younger generations are also prickly about it, though some are willing to entertain the idea. The Tarellians take offense at the suggestion of being related to Ulmeatheans as well, the Ulmeatheans heavily authoritarian system clashes with Tarellian sensibilities, Tarellians leaders are chosen on merit not because they've sufficiently punched their subordinates in the face. Actual geneticists don't know the answer to said question either due to this reluctance on both ends, but consider it an avenue worth investigating further, possible but hard to tell with how prone Tarellian genetics are to shifting to fit their environment, or are working on finding out alongside their main project of seeing if they can use that malleability to create some scaly super-soldiers.

=== Passeri ===
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The Passeri are an avian race located in roughly the same region of galactic space as the Ulmeatheans, though their tech was universally ahead of the lizards, if still comparable. Even so, they were friendly and a bit naive, so they played buddy with the big lizards and helped them onto their interstellar feet. The two races saw each other as equals- Ulmeathics perhaps begrudgingly, but if the strongest should rule, then those of equal strength should be of equal standing, and the fact that their technology was the source rather than physicality didn't really affect that- strength is strength is strength.

Then some other race in the local galactic neighborhood started expanding, and began targeting the worlds of the Passeri. While their name isn't remembered, their savagery and brutality most certainly is, as well as their penchant for taking slaves to serve as labor and "entertainment." The Passeri fought and fought hard, but while their ships were advanced they had never needed to pump them out on a war footing, and the aggressors had absorbed other races before them and was experienced in the art of killing. World after world fell as their fleets burned and tales of the horrors being inflicted on those who could not flee filtered through, until every Passeri world had fallen and the survivors fled in burning ships into Ulmeathic space, gleefully pursued by the ones who even now caged their families and made them perform for their twisted entertainment.

Their assault on the Ulmeathians can be likened to slamming headfirst into a wall.

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The Passeri had not hidden their plight from the Ulmeathians, and had been sharing all of their information on the invaders, especially once it became clear the end was coming. Technology once reserved to stay competitive was now given freely, along with the scientists and scholars who could teach and implement the new knowledge. They knew the Ulmeathians well enough to understand that doing so meant they would never again be free, that the Ulmeathians would demand their subjugation as they were no longer equals, yet they chose to at least sell their freedom to the masters who would not slit their throats in front of their families and laugh. For some, it was simply passing on the torch in hopes that maybe their neighbors would survive the onslaught in some fashion, unlikely though it seemed. Those who thought so grimly were unprepared for the Ulmeathian response.

Unlike their plucky neighbors, the Ulmeathians were prepared for conflict, and had already set their war machine into terrifying motion, the steady beat of a heavy drum announcing their slow but steady march upon the warpath. Asteroids were ground to dust for shipyards that worked beyond their designed parameters, every male and female unnecessary for production drafted and pressed into service, and generals and admirals meeting daily to review new information, give orders, and draw up battle lines and strategies.

When the enemy came, they found fleets triple the size of any they had faced before, worlds hardened and prepared to endure sieges for years, and cold reptilian minds unflinching in the face of their vessels decorated with the corpses of their victims. The fight was long and bloody, the Ulmeathians never hesitating to sacrifice lives if it created an opening, never failing to go for the kill on a fleeing opponent, never falling back or giving so much as a single inch.

Then the Ulmeathians began to push the invaders back.

Their advance through what were once Passeri worlds was slow but inexorable, their industrial might combined with Passeri advances meaning their losses were always replaced by stronger, improved forces. Ship by ship, world by world they advanced, each world retaken immediately being mined for resources and fortified against counterattack, the rubble of a destroyed civilization being used as bricks in defensive walls.

The Ulmeathians had taken prisoners at first, respecting those who submitted to those stronger than them. Then they reclaimed their first Passeri world, and saw what had been wrought. There was no more mercy after that.

The once-haughty invaders began to crack against this onslaught; once-timid races they had subjugated began rebelling once more, their leadership bickered and set upon one another with pointed fingers and bitter accusations that may have robbed them of their finest minds. They saw the stone boulder rolling towards them, and could not comprehend why their slaves could not match the efforts of a numerically-inferior force. They did not understand the unquantifiable multiplier of a willing workforce who did not need to be whipped to work long beyond when their bodies should give out.

The end was a long time coming, but inevitable. Whatever it was the Ulmeathians had seen that so incensed them has been lost, or rather destroyed. Their march did not stop at the worlds of their former neighbors, but onward through the stars claimed by these aggressors, freeing many who had been under them so long they did not know the taste of freedom, and accepted their new masters willingly.

Their crusade was unforgiving and absolute; the vile homeworld of the aggressors was burned to uninhabitable rock, and their works and knowledge ground into dust, even their name struck from all records to erase all trace of who they were. Considering speculation that they had fallen to the Ruinous Powers, this may have been for the best.

It was a bitter victory for the Passerians; while their friends had won, the nation founded by their people had burned, their worlds broken and their cities reduced to rubble that had now been used to build fortresses and machines of war. No longer were they caged, but shackles still weighed their ankles, and now if their new masters chose to they could easily inflict the same pains upon them, and this time there would be no salvation. Many wept bitter tears as they braced for the victorious Ulmeathians to turn their gaze from the broken enemy back to their new possessions- for that was surely what they had been reduced to, a prize to be taken for having bested the adversary.

Their tears fell anew when the Ulmeathians pressed tools into their hands, and bid them build not bunkers and bullets, but homes and cities of Passeri design. Where they had braced themselves for an iron fist, they found an open hand upon their back; controlling, yes, but also steadying and pushing them back onto their feet. Their brightest minds were accommodated for and recognized, and while they were ruled they were not unrepresented, electing parliaments and senates from their own to implement laws not far removed from their own.

For the Ulmeathians are not slavers, just authoritarian. Though they have no qualms about ruling over their once-equals, they still remember when they stood side by side, and would not allow the kindnesses shown when they themselves were weak to go unrepaid.

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=== F'feng ===

The F'feng are a desert-dwelling humanoid species. Mostly nocturnal and spent the daylight hours in borrows. They had primitive firearms, some success with agriculture and a very limited industrial base when the Ulmeatheans discovered them. In their way the Ulmeatheans took pity on them and conquered them for their own good, as is their way. All in all they were better off under League rule and in the end, when Hive Fleet Naga came calling, the lizards fought hard to buy some of the F'feng time to escape their doomed world. Technically, the term "F'feng" isn't the name they call themsleves, it's actually derived from a slightly obscene word in base-Ulmeathic that translates to moron. The planet was called Nok-F'feng which was Idiot Town for all intents and purposes. The F'feng had no word for themselves as a species that didn't just mean "people" (and therefore excluded everyone not from their world and quickly fell from common usage) and had no actual word for the planet as a whole.

The Chief Commander who took over the running of Nok-F'feng was unusual and was almost certainly given the "great honour" of being a planetary overseer fore being so unusual. Jovial Ulmeathics do not exist or if they do they are so rare as to be not a consideration and are considered by their peers to be damaged in some way. Krupfoth was possibly a female of good cheer but it was channeled into the usual displays of power and authority that so characterize her kind. Having been given rulership of the Worst Planet in the League she set about making it less shitty. She made all wars illegal on the planet without her permission and declared that she would eat the chief of which ever tribe instigated hostilities. After a few F'feng chiefs being invited to dinner the message was taken seriously.

The energies of the tribes were then set to more constructive uses. Mostly this consisted of diverting or damming rivers, building vast irrigation systems, and generally maximizing the usefulness of what water the planet had whilst simultaneously getting the orbiting patrol boats to nudge chunks of space ice into the path of the planet. As the first stages of the work were reaching completion fruit trees were planted along the banks of new waterways and lakes to hold the earth together.

Krupfoth was not popular with the F'feng as they saw her as enslaving them to her will and denying them the freedoms they had enjoyed as little as a generation ago. But she did not care for the petulant mewling of idiots and her fellow Ulmeathic enforcers ensured that rebellions were short lived and ended brutally. It could not be denied by sensible F'feng that things were objectively better for the average subject if they kept their heads down and didn't cause trouble. They were better fed, less likely to die in skirmishes and raids, there didn't seem to be as many virulent diseases as there used to be and it wasn't as if the Chief was working them to death.

Many of Krupfoth's public speeches had such wonderful lines in them as<br>
''"Cower before the might of League engineering prowess"<br>''
''"Plague and Contagion are slain without mercy"<br>''
''"Resistance to my agricultural reforms are futile"<br>''
''"All will tremble as I take your wastelands and beat them into gardens"<br>''
''"Your petty squabbles are nothing compared to the might of League Law"<br>''
''"Quake in fear as I call for rain upon the desert"<br>''
''"Your homes are being protected, peace is been imposed and nothing you can do can stop this"<br>''

Nobody could tell if she was taking the piss or not because all Ulmeathic public announcements blatantly emphasize the strength of the current leader, what that strength is being directed towards and a declaration of challenge to any opposition.

Krupfoth was a 112 and very grey in the scales when the Hive Fleet arrived. She did not survive but many of her subjects did. The F'feng no longer hate her, time has changed her in the memories from a tyrant to a noble protector.

=== Helith ===
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While the Ulmeathians did their best to erase all the works and identity of the Nameless Enemy, there is one piece of their legacy that could not be stamped out- not without crossing a line they could never uncross. Thus, some semblance of a legacy lives on within the race known as the Helith.

The Helith are a strikingly alien species, bearing close resemblance to an old-Earth jellyfish in some respects, with a series of air-bladders they use to float above the ground and four tentacles that split into fine cilia on the ends, similar to fingers, which they use to manipulate tools and pull themselves along. Their "head" sits on a thick, prehensile neck, and possesses six nostrils and four eyes. Their initial homeworld was a Gas Giant whose gravity was heavy enough to form a solid core but not quite enough to form a proper planet. The exact location is both lost and irrelevant, for they had only just begun to take their first steps into the Great Void when the Nameless Foe found them.

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How long they were enslaved is unknown; none of their records survived, and information had to be passed on by word of mouth. It is known that at some point, their captors pulled enough of their ancestors from their homeworld to have a stable population, then forced every last one of them to watch as their homeworld was bombarded, the weaponry intentionally igniting the planet's gasses and turning the entire planet into a raging inferno bright enough to illuminate every vessel within several hundred kilometers. Some stories tell of transmissions being kept on and forcing them to listen to the screams of the dying, others tell of complete silence as they watched their home burn. As none who witnessed the event survived to be liberated, the accuracy of this tale cannot be verified. What came next, however, is all too observably true.

Flesh-crafting must have been a hobby for the Nameless, as they turned it on the Helith with unspeakable glee. The gas-people were already of a delicate biology by the standards of other races; the Nameless broke them and twisted their bodies into something grotesque, organs vital to their survival made dependent upon mechanical implants to continue functioning, if not replaced entirely. Their genetic code was altered, curled around the finger of their masters before a yank snapped it in twain, ensuring that their children would be born broken and deformed. While the exact method has been lost and forgotten, the consequences paint a grim picture of how the Nameless Foe violated them. Where once the Helith would have used their gas-sacks to float through the sky, now they require thrusters to compensate for the weight of their mechanical augmentations. The thrusters were added by the Ulmeathic; apparently the Nameless took great amusement in watching the Helith be forced to drag themselves along the ground. Several organs simply do not form for them anymore; when a new Helith is born, the delivery doubles as a surgery to install their first mechanical parts before the newborn's body dies. Without a healthy specimen to determine the makup of these organs, or what they once were, replacing them is all but impossible.

When the Ulmeathics first found the Helith, they did not immediately recognize them as sentient beings, thinking them some form of twisted fleshy design to amuse the Nameless, though whether this is a reflection on a propensity for flesh-crafting as their main technology or simply indicative of their personal tastes can only be speculated at. Upon discovering that the bloated blobs dragging themselves upon the ground were not only sapient, but fully aware of their condition, it was debated on whether the greater kindness would be to simply put them out of their misery. The Ulmeathic were not cruel, but it was late into their campaign; their renowned endurance was wearing thin, their soldiers growing weary and their ranks tattered by their ceaseless advance. The resources simply could not be spared to care for those who could not lift a weapon or constuct fortifications when their own forces were beginning to wear thin.

It was when members of the Helith were brought to Ulmeathic medical wards in order to better study their physical state that their propensity for medicine was discovered. The Helith would seek out any injured they could reach, at first by dragging themselves through the halls, then carted along by nurses once their intentions became clear. Using the multiple fibrous cilia that are their analogue to fingers, they could delve deeper into wounds than fingers could dare go, stitching veins and tissues with a precision most would require tools to achieve. Shattered bones were reassembled and properly aligned, and soldiers thought to have been put out of action for good were able to stand and take up arms once more. While they were not miracle workers and could not save those beyond saving, the Ulmeathics were quick to flood their hospitals and regimental medical staff with their newfound workers. When the Nameless counterattacked, they found the forces that should have been breaking bolstered by troops thought eliminated, and resistance stiff enough to hold out for reinforcements instead cracking from the pressure. In thanks for ensuring their campaign could continue, and seeing them through to the end, the Ulmeathics and Passeri did all that they could to help improve the Helith's lot, and restored them to at least some semblance of a normal existence.

The Helith appear to have grown kind from their suffering; their entire race knows basic medicine as a necessity for their condition, and have become known as gentle and caring healers, treating each patient as precious as family. They are meek, yet when first the Ulmeathic found them, they wasted no time in seeking to treat the wounds of their liberators, enabling those initially deemed combat-ineffective able to return to the fight. They became the League's respected doctors and flesh-weavers, growing renowned for their compassion, gentle nature, and skill at the mending of injuries. Yet for all their knowledge and skill, there was always a quiet melancholy for the Helith, for they could not find a way to fix themselves.

Considering their subservient, empathetic natures, it is shocking to note that these passive, amicable xenos were also the source of the greatest diplomatic incident between the races of the Ulmeathic League and the Imperium.

The Admech officially arrived soon after the refugees from the League were accepted into the Imperium, eager to convince their new clients of the superiority of Mars-approved designs, especially when it came to their downright-primitive augments. For a time, all went well; the Helith were well aware of their augment's failings, having started from the worst possible designs and working their way backwards towards pure functionality. Admech's insights into the craft was already revealing flaws they had not realized needing fixing, and the techpriests were pleased to have such a rapt audience willing to accept their teachings without question- or at least, without contest; the questions were many, but in pursuit of elaboration, and there are few topics as appealling for a techpriest to discuss as the virtues and details of mechanical augmentations. The relationship was shaping up to be very pleasant and amicable.

Then one of the techpriests made the mistake of replacing his own biological arm with the servo-limb he'd been preparing, to give a demonstration.

The Helith were utterly horrified. They had thought the techpriests a race like their own, twisted by others or necessity into reliance on augments, or the injured and sickly of humanity who sought to overcome their sacrifices. That they removed their own flesh willingly to replace it with wires and welding, that they SMILED as they brandished the twisting of their form into something of oil and steel instead of flesh and bone... It was an insult, a slap in the face, a dismissal of the suffering of their race, the pain they had to endure, the sense of being 'wrong' that they still felt every time the thrusters did not respond as quickly as inflating their sacks would have, the itch in their flesh from atmosphere missing something that had been abundant on their homeworld, when flight that should have made them feel free instead made them feel the downward tug of the metal within them dragging them away from the sky that was their home. Why, they asked frantically, desperately, searching for something, anything to explain why these beings hurt themselves so, Why do you do these things to yourselves when the flesh is still good?

"The flesh is weak," said the befuddled techpriests, unsure why such a normal thing had disturbed their new clients so, "and thus we forge ourselves anew, that we may be better." For surely these beings who also sought the strength of the machine, who could not have traveled the stars if not for the augments within their flesh, surely they understood the importance of improving yourself by excising the limitations of your flesh?

''("Your flesh is weak," said the cackling horde that dragged them from their clouds and strapped them to tables, "and thus you are nothing. but rejoice," their hushed taunts carrying over the whirring of saws that smelled so strongly of wrong. "For we shall forge you anew- to better suit your stature.")''

The main reason no Mechanicus died on that day is because the Helith are utterly unsuited for violence. Weapons drag them to the ground, and they cannot compete the swing of a blade or handle the recoil of a gun. All they had was the grip of their tentacles, knowledge of the workings of the body, and a furious, hysterical rage. The cogpriests lost many of their parts, including the offending arm, before managing to lock themselves within a room the Helith could not enter. Intervention was slow in coming; it took several hours of argument, transmittion of shaky holovid recordings, and a relating of the sequence of events from one of the clearer-headed techpriests before any authority could be convinced that the Helith, of all people, were rioting.

When it was finally accepted that the Helith were on the warpath, Nakaidos' response was swift and brutal; the Ulmeathic may not be unkind, but they have little tolerance for rebellion or disorder, even from a race such as the Helith. This did much to soothe the Mechanicum's ruffled feathers, as did the ban placed on Helith access to Imperium technology for several year's time. That this was done in part to prevent further contact between the Helith and Admech goes unspoken by those in power, both in the Ulmeathic League who wish to protect their fellow member-race, and by those in Imperial governance who recognize that the Mechanicum is at least partly at fault for skimming over the details of exactly how the Helith came to their current state. As for the Helith, their care is now handled by the Adbio, with whom their relationship has proved much less turbulent.

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[[Category:Nobledark Imperium]]

Nobledark Imperium Drafts

2020-09-04T21:43:36Z

2601:647:CA01:2410:349C:D1E8:2DF7:5B30: /* The Rogue Trader's War */

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'''This page is part of the Nobledark Imperium, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the [[Nobledark Imperium|Nobledark Imperium Introduction]] and [[Nobledark Imperium|Main Page]] for more information on the alternate universe'''

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Eternal Emperor and Empress have been joined in their holy union. He is the last relic of a lost age when hope and wisdom ruled the galaxy, still clinging to his purpose of forging a better future, and she is the last remnant of an ancient pantheon, a mother watching over dying children brought low by their own hubris. Together, they are the Masters and Guardians of Mankind and Eldar, the keepers of the Last Alliance, the embodiments of the Imperium to which a hundred sapient species swear their fealty.

At the core of the Imperium is Humanity, its teeming multitudes ever resilient, stubbornly carving out a future amongst the hostile stars. The greatest of Man’s allies are the Eldar, ancient and wise, their shared bond forged in battle and sealed in blood millennia ago. Since then, others have been judged worthy to join in the light of the Imperium, to stand with Men and Eldar as fellows: the industrious Demiurge, enigmatic Tau, countless strains of Abhumans, and many more.

Yet for all the Imperium’s numbers, it is barely enough to stave off the forces that would tear it down. United under savage Beasts, the Orkish hordes throw themselves at the great edifice of the Imperium. The Necrons are awakening to a changed galaxy, and seeth at the primitives who would dare harbor their greatest foes the Eldar. From the galactic east, the Tyranids have made landfall and sweep over countless worlds in their hungering tide. In the shadows lurk the Dark Eldar, reveling in the carnage of a galaxy at war. And from the Immaterium, the Chaos Gods brood and plot their eternal vengeance, served by the twisted Chaos Eldar.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold trillions. It is to live in the last bastion of civilization as the darkness draws near. These are the tales of those times. Forget the stories of peace and harmony, for they are fables of a gentler time, when the world still made sense. Remember the stories of struggle and defiance, full of brotherhood and sacrifice, for those are the ones that really matter. Peace is a distant dream growing ever fainter, and there is only war as Men and Eldar hold the line for the promise that has been whispered through the generations, from father to son, from mother to child: that there is good left in the world, and that is worth fighting for.

== To-do List ==

*Finish Primarchs
*Establish timeline and events, and how similar they are to canon 40k
**Origins of Warlord/Steward/Emperor, and his own timeline
**Unification of Terra
**Great Crusade
**Rescue of Isha
**War of the Beast (replacing Horus Heresy)
**Armageddon?
**Tyranids? Have they fully arrived yet
**Other SMs? Only the original legions, or others? Chapters?

*When is present day?
*Repercussions of Imperium/Eldar alliance?
*add new canon from gathering storm and 8th e

== The Imperium: Then ==

''"Of course we are at war. Why on Old Earth's green soil would you believe we are not at war. We are in what is essentially a siege position, with an unfortifiable border stretching an entire 360 degrees for several light years in every conceivable direction. [[Chaos|Our]] [[Orks|enemy]] has no concept of "rest" or "armistice" and can pop up at any time, on any side, in any position within the massive amounts of space between the mud marbles that we call the worlds of the Imperium. The Imperium is always going to be at war. Why would you ever believe otherwise?"''<br>
- Primarch Rogal Dorn, showing his usual level of tact

=== A Brief History of the Early Days ===

Maps of Old Earth, circa M30

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Image:Old_Earth_before_the_Unification.png|Pre-Unification
Image:Old_Earth_after_Unification.jpg|Post-Unification
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==== Ursh ====

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Of all the national entities that existed when the Warlord emerged on Old Earth, none is perhaps as infamous as the Empire of Ursh. The Tyrant of Gredbriton consorted with the Ruinous Powers and used horrific chemical weaponry, but few others in Gredbriton actually worshipped Chaos and thus his ability to do widespread damage was limited. The Pan-Pacific Empire was an absolute nightmare to its own people, but seemed largely unconcerned with the world outside its borders. The Yndonesian Bloc was a brutalistic theocracy, but also tended to be rather isolationist. The Merican junta was an expansionistic, nationalistic military state, but at the very least it did not treat its citizens as disposable, if only to protect the investment, and the people there had at least some standard of living. Ursh, by contrast, shared all of these negative features with its contemporary empires and suffered none of the limitations. The Empire of Ursh was a major influence in the histories of numerous other Unification-era countries, including Terrawatt-Uralia, Duscht Jemanic, Bania, the former components of the Everlasting Tharkian Empire (including Macedonia and Achaemenidia), the Nord Afrik conclaves, the Afrique League, Merika, Ind, Sibar, Sino-Japan, and the Khanate. In many ways, the Unification of Earth can be directly tied to the rise and fall of the Empire of Ursh.

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The Empire of Ursh was originally founded in northeastern Azia, on the banks of the Amyur River. Despite containing fertile riverlands, this area was never an important center of industry and agriculture during the Dark Age of Technology, and so was spared from some of the worst of the horrors of the Old Night. The ancestors of the people who would come to form the Empire of Ursh came from such ancient, long-forgotten countries as Russia or China, but they nation they ended up founding would become a completely different entity altogether. The first ruler of Ursh was a rather eccentric man named Kalagann the Great, who in spite (or more likely because) of his eccentricity, was able to unite the various pocket kingdoms, city states, and villages around the Amyur River into an actual nation-state. Early historians often described Kalagann as nothing more than a prelude to the infamous cruelty of the Despots, but later historians have found that there was nothing to suggest that Kalagann was as evil as his successors. Indeed, Kalagann seemed to be genuinely concerned for the welfare of his people, and there is no evidence that Ursh had yet been corrupted by the Ruinous Powers. Ursh was one of the first nation-states to rebuild from the metaphorical and literal fallout of the rebellion of the Men of Iron and the beginning of the Age of Strife, and for a while it seemed like Ursh was going to be the pinnacle of civilization on Earth, an illustration that society could rebuild from the Age of Strife. However, a few years after Kalagann’s death, it all started to go wrong.

As they expanded from their initial cradle of neo-civilization, the Urshii found themselves surrounded on three sides by tribal hunter-gatherers (Sibar), steppe nomads (the steppe nomads of the future Khanate), and subsistence farmers that seemed to have no aspirations of greater empire (Sino-Japan). Over time, the Urshii began to see themselves as the sole remaining carriers of the torch of civilization that stretched all the way back to ancient Sumeria, and as “enlightened” people it was their job to shepherd the rest of the uncivilized masses back into the light. Urshii art and architecture was heavily influenced by this concept, being consciously modeled after imperial China or ancient Mesopotamia, two of the great cradles of civilization, despite Ursh itself have very little direct connection with either. These included a lot of ziggurats, which were seen as stairways to the heavens and often the site of important, and often unsavory, political or religious functions. The rulers of Ursh, the infamous Despots, believed that they had been given the divine mandate to bring civilization back to the people of Earth, granted to them by the four great heavenly powers, which were represented by the four directional winds. These four gods were, of course, the Ruinous Powers, who just loved to subvert and co-opt local cultural and religious beliefs for their own purposes. The Despots were educated from birth that they were god-kings, and that they and they alone knew what was best for Ursh and humanity. This, along with the systematic dehumanization of the serfs and non-Urshii, was one of the reasons for the infamous brutality of the Despots of Ursh. In their view, questioning the Despots or making a request was tantamount to saying the "god-kings" didn't know what they were doing.

Despite seeing the usefulness of advanced weapons of war, the Empire of Ursh was downright backwards technologically when compared to the other major empires of that time such as Merika, Hy Braseal, and the Pan-Pacific Empire. Indeed, one of the major reasons the Empire of Ursh invaded the Afrique League and the Nord Afrik conclaves in M28, one of the largest military engagements on Earth prior to the Unification Wars themselves, was primarily for technology to use against their larger neighbors. Instead, the Urshii preferred to look inwards, focusing more on religion and the occult rather than technological advancement. To the Urshii, technology was only useful if it could further aid them in their goal of conquest.

The Empire of Ursh had the largest fleet of any pre-Unification power with over twelve ships, but these ships were so derelict as to be borderline space hulks and could not even leave low Earth orbit. Indeed, because these ships were so decrepit and spread over such a wide area of territory they were used more for denying the orbital high ground than to actually fight. Records indicate that when a ship was too damaged to fly or an enemy ship was actually shot down the Urshii would swarm over the wreckage like scavengers on a Void Whale carcass, salvaging the ship's weapons to attach to ground vehicles to turn them into overbuilt weapons platforms. This was about the limits of Urshii technological aptitude.

Ursh was perhaps best known for its army, which despite its limited technology was the terror of Old Earth for many years. At the center of the army were the Nobleborn, elite warriors who were born of the upper class and given the best weapons and training the Urshii could afford. However, there were never enough Nobleborn to make a full-scale army large enough to take on Ursh's neighbors, even with Ursh's massive population. Additionally, although the Nobleborn made good shock troops, they had little tactical flexibility and could not perform specialist roles. Therefore, the Urshii often supplemented the Nobleborn core of their army with various auxiliaries, drawn from the numerous enslaved people and vassal states around the empire. Ursh primarily controlled its auxiliaries through mutual fear. The Red Engines feared the steppe nomads, who feared the Tupelov Lancers, who in turn feared the Roma, and so on and so forth. All feared the wrath of the Despot of Ursh.

Urshii society could be divided into three major groups. On the one hand, there were the various vassals and conquered peoples, who were seen as less than human and treated poorly. On the other, there were the serfs, who despite being Ursh-born were not “chosen”, and therefore also considered to be subhuman and treated poorly. And finally, there was an upper class, composed of a combination of the military, scientific, religious, mystic, and cultural elite. One of the only good things one could say about the Empire of Ursh is that they valued personal ability when they saw it, though admission into the nobility was only available to those who were both skilled and truly indoctrinated in the Urshii philosophy and religion. Urshii high courts were often a web of treachery and deceit, with nobles plotting against each other for power. The Despots encouraged this behavior, particularly among the Urshii lords of far-off conquered territories, as it kept them fighting among themselves for the Despot’s favor rather than deciding to secede and form their own petty empires.

After the fall of Ursh, this class system was thoroughly dismantled, though few of the nobility actually survived. Most of the nobility had been so indoctrinated in the superiority of Ursh and their gods that they would rather charge unarmed at a group of soldiers outnumbering them a hundred to one than accept defeat at the hands of “lesser peoples”. It was this attitude that led to the Urshii insurgency in Sibar, which was a thorn in the side of the Imperium for nearly twenty years after the fall of Ursh itself. The various freed vassals and serfs, on the other hand, were in some ways brought together by the shared experiences of the horrors of the tyrants, leading to the use of the term “Children of Ursh” to refer to those who had suffered at the hands of the Despots.

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==== The Khanate ====

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Pastoral_Worlds|The Pastoral Worlds]]

=== The Great Crusade ===

==== The Fable of Djerba ====

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Today the world of Djerba in the Segmentum Solar is not particularly notable. But it’s Crusade-era history is well-known. Like many worlds during the Age of Strife, the original population included a significant number of people who were touched by the Warp, which increasing manifested itself as the Age of Strife went on. Unfortunately, like many worlds during the Age of Strife, including Barbarus, the psykers on Djerba went mad with power and set themselves up as god-kings over the common people. On Djerba, these psykers called themselves Cognoscynths.

The psychic abilities of the people of Djerba primarily manifested as a form of mind control. Cognoscynths could invade and control the mind of an ordinary person on a whim, rewriting memories, suppressing morality and self-preservation, and forcing any who could not surpass their willpower and psychic might to be their slaves. Before long, although the surface of Djerba was nominally made up of numerous warring nation-states, the leadership of these nations were little more than puppets to the Cognoscynths. The Cognoscynths erected their City of Sight above Djerba, from which they controlled the people below like marionettes on strings. They forced the people below them to go to war for their amusement, laughing as man slaughtered man at their whim.

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According to legend, the Imperium sent three emissaries to the Cognoscynths. The first was the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Primarchs#Magnus_the_Red|Scholar]], a giant clad in red, who came bearing words of warning. He had come to Djerba hearing rumors of a society where outcasts such as he could co-exist in peace with normal men without fear of persecution. What he saw disheartened him. Here was a society which embodies the worst nightmare of the most closed-minded and hateful of mankind, who feared the witch and hated the psyker.

The Cognoscynths psychically commanded him to bow. The Scholar said no. In that moment, the Cognoscynths realized that they were to the man before them as hills were before a mountain. With rage burning in his one eye, the Scholar said he would give the Cognoscynths one warning. Dismantle their oppressive society and free the ordinary men and women they had enslaved, or face the consequences. For if they did not he would to return with his liege, and his liege was not as forgiving as he.

The second was the Shepherd, clad in gold, who brought words of doom. The Cognoscynths had ignored the warning of the Scholar, and had not changed their ways since he had left. The Shepherd was the Scholar’s liege, and came before the Cognoscynths much as the Scholar had. He said that he had seen the world the Cognoscynths had wrought. The Cognoscynths had been judged, and found wanting. Once more, the Cognoscynths were enraged at being judged by an outsider, and attempted to psychically compel him to bow. They failed. Whereas the Scholar had been a mountain, the Shepherd was like a monolith of adamantium, only gold instead of grey.

Their prodigious psychic powers failing them, the Cognoscynths turned to words. They scoffed at the idea of the Shepherd bringing judgement upon them. For all of his power, the Shepherd was just one man. Even if he brought the Scholar, the two did not have the power to command them on their own. The Cognoscynths were each powerful psykers, who could command armies of their own. Whereas any army the Shepard could bring would fall under the control of their powers and turn on their fellows. What could the Shepard do to them?

“I will bring your empire down with a single soldier,” said the Shepherd, then left.

The third Emissary was the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Jenetia_Krole|Slayer]], clad only in black. She brought no words, only death. Where she walked, men went mad, the witch-touched tearing their eyes out and clawing at their skin whereas the mundane became ill and collapsed from severe vertigo. None could seemingly touch her. Even the Cognoscynths were not immune. The Slayer only killed two-thirds of the Cognoscynths, by the time she turned her attention to the remainder they were already dead, the last choking on his own blood.

The people of Djerba were freed both in body and mind, and with freed fists celebrated their liberators. But to this day, the Imperium still remembers the lesson of the Cognoscynths, even if only as a cautionary tale, as best exemplified by the colors of Djerba. Red, gold, and black.

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==== The Rangdan Xenocides and the Slaugth ====

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The Rangdan Xenocides were by far the most costly conflict ever fought during the Great Crusade. The campaign included the involvement of three Space Marine legions (the Dark Angels, Space Wolves, and the Ultramarines), several Titan legions, and significant numbers of the Solar Auxilla; needed the assistance of the Eldar to gain a foothold; and required the direct intervention of the Steward himself to finally turn the tide.

The opposing forces of the Rangdan Xenocides were the Slaugth. The Slaugth were colonial organisms resembling masses of maggots (though pedantic AdBio members would point out they also showed similarities to Terran leeches and earthworms) linked together in a mucosal sheath into a humanoid shape. The constant psychic contact between the individual worms in the colony, combined with the completely horrific and alien mindset of the Slaugth by the standards of nearly every other race in the galaxy, made them revolting to directly touch with psychic powers. Psychic contact with a Slaugth was not like the mental communion of matter and anti-matter of a blank, but described more like sticking one’s arms up to the shoulder in maggots. “Only a daemon would want a Slaugth’s soul”, an old Crusade-era saying goes.

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The Slaugth themselves had an entirely self-centered mindset and only cared about themselves and their individual desires, lacking even the empathy requisite for sadism, they would with great and terrible apathy degrade and consume the whole of the universe. Although they were able to scrape together some semblance of social order, the Slaugth saw everyone and everything, even members of their own kind, as little more than tools or philosophical zombies set in the universe to fulfill their whims. For the most part, the most prominent of those was hunger. Although the Slaugth were naturally detritivores and could survive on any flesh, they most preferred to feed on brains (the larger and more complex, the better), and had developed a system to feed this gluttony. Humans, eldar, and other sapients were farmed like cattle, their brains extracted, and the waste meats fed back to the livestock and Slaugth bio-constructs like Osseivores. The Slaugth did not eat the brains of other sapients solely for their nutritional value. Absorbing nutriends from a brain would cause an individual Slaugth worm to be overwhelmed by neurotransmitters, producing a euphoric effect similar to a chemical high.

Indeed, just about the only reason the Slaugth didn’t readily turn on each other is that Slaugth couldn’t really eat other Slaugth. If one Slaugth colony tried to eat another Slaugth, the two would simply merge into a single giant Slaugth colony twice as large and twice as hungry as its constituents. Even if a Slaugth did manage to completely kill all the component individuals of a fellow Slaugth colony before eating it, Slaugth flesh simply tasted foul to their own kind. And this is assuming that a Slaugth could kill another Slaugth in the first place. Being composed of hundreds if not thousands of individual organisms, Slaugth lacked vital organs or a centralized nervous system and were notably hard to kill. For this reason, Slaugth tended to prefer necrotic weaponry, which rotted the tissues of their foes from the inside-out and was one of the few ways (aside from fire, plasma, or radiation) to make sure another Slaugth was reliably dead. The fact that it also worked well on the bio-constructs that Slaugth technology was largely based around just made it even more attractive.

Given this entirely self-centered mindset, it is difficult to imagine how a species like the Slaugth could have ever developed a civilization, let alone space travel. However, what little historical records remain show the Slaugth arose long after the end of the Old Ones in the War in Heaven and long before humanity developed widespread genetic engineering or spread out into the stars. Current hypotheses suggest that the Old Eldar Empire, or at least someone like them, was responsible for the uplift of the Slaugth from what were essentially fire and tool-using ant colonies into a starfaring species, as well as their adoption of a humanoid form.

By the time the Imperium encountered the Rangda, the Slaugth were being ruled by an [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Iron_Minds|Iron Mind]]. A minor Iron Mind, to be sure, but even a minor Iron Mind was still dangerous. The Slaugth and the Iron Mind had formed a kind of symbiosis, or as close to one as the Slaugth were capable of. The Iron Mind handled the long term planning of the Rangdan Empire, which the Slaugth naturally didn’t have the wherewithal or inclination to run, and the Slaugth indulged it in its god complex and protected its physical body while its artificial soul ran with daemons in the Warp. When the Imperium fought the Slaugth the Iron Mind was able to coordinate the movement of its forces with uncanny accuracy. Companies would advance only to be met with forces that already predicted their arrival. However, when the Imperium finally made a beachhead on Rangda, the Steward took to the field and struck down the Iron Mind with an ancient archaeotech device of unknown purpose from the vaults of Ganymede. With the Iron Mind destroyed, the cohesion of the Slaugth was broken, and the remaining factions were run down and killed by the Imperium and Eldar.

It was during the Rangdan Xenocides that the Dark Angels, who were previously tied for the status of “most numerous legion” with the Ultramarines, became the largest standing legion by a wide margin. Although the Ultramarines were well-trained and highly-skilled, the Slaugth were an outside context problem for them and they suffered grievous casualties. Still others became infested through some unknown means and had to be mercy killed, their eyes begging for death and their limbs moved to butcher their comrades in the name of their xenos master. By contrast, the Dark Angels had been traveling the void and dealing with anomalous phenomena for far longer, and knew how to deal with the unexpected. While the Ultramarines immediately moved to free the Slaugth chattel, the Dark Angels held back and waited. Although this seemed callous at the time, the Dark Angels knew that the Slaugth would use the prisoners as bait for an ambush, and that by focusing their efforts on the Slaugth or restricting any rescue operations to the cover of darkness they could save a lot more prisoners than otherwise possible. The rise of the Dark Angels as the undisputable largest legion set the stage for Luther’s actions during the War of the Beast, and made the betrayal of the Fallen that much more devastating.

Imperial and Eldar forces rescued numerous humans and Eldar from Rangda and the surrounding worlds of the Slaugth Empire. Eldar rescuees, due to the longer generational gaps, were not as mentally damaged and were herded off to the nearest Craftworlds where they could be given some semblance of a normal life. Although these slaves were physically normal, mentally, it would be more accurate to describe them as livestock than anything else. They had spent at least a few thousand years being bred for servile, docile natures and to be just strong enough to not need looking after much but too weak to pose any sort of threat. The Imperium tried to uplift them in a similar manner to the ogryn, but had variable success. In the end, the human survivors of Rangda were largely adopted by the various Legions. They were docile but they were dutiful, they also had inhuman patience and didn't get bored by repetitive tasks. Their tainted bloodline has by 999.M41 faded away though many in the Imperium, even some Space Marines, could claim to have at least one ancestor in the "serf families" as they became known.

Today across most of the galaxy the Slaugth are considered to be harmless boogeymen, an extinct xenos species whose only modern function is to scare children into eating their vegetables. There are others who know better. Not every Slaugth was killed in the aftermath of the Rangdan Xenocides. Some escaped the destruction of their species, hiding amongst the flesh of the dead in places beneath notice. Today the Slaugth exist in the shadows, multiplying in the places out of sight ready to emerge wherever weakness or rot presents itself. Slaugth have been sighted in the xenos districts of Low Commorragh, trading technological abominations to the Dark Eldar in exchange for slaves. Some have even suggested that the abundance of Slaugth in the Calixis Sector is not a coincidence, speaking in hushed tones of bargains struck between the maggot men and the separatist Emperor Severan of the Severan Dominate.

The surviving Slaugth seem surprisingly unconcerned with the loss of their empire. They resent it, but they are not devastated by it in the way that a human, eldar, or tau would be. Indeed, the Slaugth seem to see the destruction of their empire and near-extinction of their species as “not their problem”. And given that the Slaugth are colonial organisms, who can reproduce asexually or with minor contact with other colonies, it could be argued that the death of the rest of their race really was “not their problem”. Indeed, the empire at Rangda was in effect the normal Slaugth modus operandi on a large scale. The similarities are evident; a large number of thralls and bio-constructs lorded over by a Slaugth elite, resembling a feedlot or a parasitic infestation more than what one would think of as civilization. It’s possible that while the Slaugth might on some level desire retribution for the destruction of their empire, given their mindset they might just consider vengeance another flavor of eating.

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==== The Ullanor Crusade ====

Editor's Note: Needs to be edited with changes discussed in Thread 62, put here to avoid it getting lost since it is mostly done

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Imperial historians generally consider the Ullanor campaign to be the last major military action of the Great Crusade and a harbinger that set the stage for of the War of the Beast shortly thereafter. However, to those who participated in the crusade itself, there was little to suggest the Ullanor campaign would be of such significance. Ullanor was seen as one of the last major pockets of significant military resistance in the galaxy, but at the time of the Ullanor crusade peoples’ minds were beginning to shift away from exploration, warfare, and conquest and more towards consolidation and rebuilding. Most of the major threats to the Imperium during the Great Crusade were seen as dealt with. The [[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Rangdan_Xenocides_and_the_Slaugth|Slaugth]] were believed to be extinct. The [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Yu'Vath|Yu’Vath]] were seen as crippled, though not completely eliminated. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#the_Realm_of_Ultramar_and_the_Imperium_Secundus_Plan|Guilliman’s fear of a “counter-Imperium”]] located somewhere in the galaxy seemed to have never been realized. The map of the Milky Way had not been completely been filled in, but there was less and less of an area for any such an empire to hide. However, few would claim the Great Crusade was nearly over. Many planets were still in the process of reconstruction, a process that was expected to take several centuries given the extent of the damage from the Old Night.

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The empire at Ullanor was discovered quite unexpectedly by the Imperial Fists as part of their unification of the neighboring Osroene Sector near the border between the Segmentum Obscurus and the Segmentum Ultima. The people of the sector had reported numerous Ork raids over the years, most of which had been beaten back at great cost. They said the raids had become more intense over time, but had little more information on where the Orks were coming from or why the raids were so frequent beyond their general direction of attack. Similar sectors had reported the same thing, to the point that one Imperial map made shortly before the Ullanor Crusade has the Ullanor Sector rather cheekily labelled in High Gothic as “Hic Sunt Orcorum”. The Imperial Fists made a short Warp jump, expecting to find little more than a pirate base formed by a particularly successful Freebooter. When they saw the actual source of the raids, they immediately turned around and sent an astropathic message to Old Earth for backup.

What the Imperial Fists reported from Ullanor was shocking. Normally Ork camps resembled nothing more than the camps of a simple warband writ large. Nothing more advanced than a series of tents and ramshackle huts, and nothing more permanent than some Mekboy quarters and da Drops. Not Ullanor. Ullanor had been united by a rather ambitious warboss, who had decided to build his influence over the sector slowly than let his reign be a simple flash in the pan. Instead of a simple scrap-ridden wasteland and encampment, the planet had been criss-crossed by a series of Ork-made bunkers, crude and spartan but nevertheless planned in terms of their placement. These buildings were but crude fortifications compared to the permanent structures erected by the Orks at places like Gorkograd on Prax. However, at the time of the Ullanor Crusade, it was an unpleasant surprise.

The increasing Freeboota attacks on the neighboring systems weren’t simply raiding parties. They were the signs of an empire ready to expand.

The threat posed by Ullanor was clear, even to the Steward. Having nearly been choked to death by a similar Warboss after a hasty and ill-advised personal assault on the hollowed-out world of Gorro, the Steward knew full well of what a Warboss of that caliber was capable of. Such was the threat posed by the empire at Ullanor that five primarchs and their respective Space Marine legions were called in to deal with the threat: Rogal Dorn and the Imperial Fists, Fulgrim and Terra’s Sons, Mortarion and the Death Guard, Jaghatai Khan and the White Scars, and Horus Lupercal and the Void Wolves. Each had their own role in the campaign. Mortarion’s troops were to form the backbone of the army, a fighting force of such fortitude that they could weather anything the Orks could throw at them. Terra’s Sons were to act as shock troops, striking at points of particularly hard resistance and cutting down the ‘ardest Boyz. Rogal Dorn’s job was to tear down any Ork fortifications and prevent the Orks from using the terrain against them. Jaghatai was to chase down any survivors to prevent them from regrouping, as well as contest the mechanized cavalry game with any Ork bikers. Horus was to hold the orbital high ground and use the Void Wolves to board and clear out any ork ships in orbit.

The Imperial Crusade had hoped to simply pick off the warboss and see his nascent empire implode. However, the Warboss at Ullanor, Urlakk Urg, was clever. Instead of exposing himself to danger by leading his army from the front, he kept himself hidden, where Imperial assets could not simply pick him off. In order to keep morale up, he used the bunker system spanning Ullanor to appear where he needed to be in the thick of the fighting to show his Nobz he hadn’t lost his stomach, then taking advantage of the chaos of battle to avoid being sniped. Further complicating the matter was the fact that Urlakk Urg didn’t always give his orders in person, instead creating a system of messengers to carry his orders for him when he had to be elsewhere.

In the end, it fell to the primarch Horus to end the threat of Urlakk Urg. Taking his flagship, the Vengeful Spirit, Horus opened a channel to recievers on all frequencies and began insulting the Warlord. For two hours Horus taunted Urlakk Urg, claiming he was cowering in his bunker like a pansy instead of fighting where everyone could see him and suggesting that rather than an ork perhaps he was merely a particularly overweight and foul-tempered gretchin. Urg tried to resist for as long as he could, recognizing correctly that it was a trap, but eventually his temper got the better of him. Eventually, Urg broke down, sending a message back to Horus incensed that he would say such things from behind the safety of a starship and claiming he wouldn’t be so glib if the two were meeting face to face. Horus, having finally figured out which bunker Urlakk Urg was hiding in, responded by slagging Urg’s bunker from orbit with a Rok-Buster torpedo.

''“And that, gentlemen, is how you do it. Now, let’s go apply some fungicide.”''<br>
-- Primarch Horus Lupercal, after hearing Urg’s response to his message

At the apparent death of their Warlord, the Orks began to lose morale and the tide began to turn in favor of the Imperium. On a local scale the Orks recovered quickly from the loss, with the various lesser Warbosses taking over where Urg had left off, but without Urg to hold them together the different Warbosses could no longer act as one, and as a result were picked apart piecemeal by the Imperium. Many Warbosses spent their last moments engaged in a war on two fronts, both fighting the advancing forces of the Imperium as well as their fellow orks for control over the WAAAGH!

The Imperium celebrated at the destruction of Ullanor. Some rumors say that Ullanor was turned into a world dedicated to the Imperial triumph there, though the Steward would be quick to point out that this was not the case, as removing the Orkish spores from Ullanor alone would have taken more time than elapsed between the Triumph at Ullanor and the War of the Beast. Ullanor was worth more as a productive world than a self-congratulatory glory shrine anyway. Nevertheless, a celebration was held on Ullanor the likes of which had not been seen before. Eleven of the nineteen primarchs showed up, the five who had served at Ullanor who were awarded additional honors in recognition of their service as well as Lorgar, Magnus the Red, Angron, Sanguinius, Guilliman, and Perturabo, as well as numerous chapters of their various legions, regiments of the Imperial Army, representatives of the Titan legions and the Adeptus Mechanicus, and more. An invitation was even extended to the eldar, though only the inscrutable Eldrad showed up, and much of what he did on that day was unknown.

Unfortunately, their celebration proved premature. Although Horus’ patented strategy of sniping the enemy leadership with extreme prejudice and cleaning up whatever disorganized remnants were left after the chain of command was disrupted had worked numerous times before on the battlefield, here it had failed. After Horus’ bombardment Urg was still alive, though wounded, beneath the rubble. Blood dripping from his wounds, Urg made his way to a device in his chambers, a Mekboy contraption the Orks had taken to call a tellyporta, which transported him to a nearly airless rock in the middle of nowhere before the Imperials began sorting through the rubble. This world had been Urg’s backup plan in case the Orks at Ullanor were defeated and had to come around for another go, but it had now become his place of exile. Urg bellowed in rage, furious at the Imperium for taking his empire, furious at the git that defeated him through such deceptive and underhanded means, and furious at Gork and Mork for allowing such a thing to ever happen. This rage brought Urg to the attention of [[Chaos_Gods|four other beings]] who shared Urg’s hatred of the Imperium and had a very vested interest in seeing it destroyed.

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=== The War of the Beast ===

==== Raid of Cthonia ====

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The Raid of Cthonia was not a strategically important battle in the War of the Beast, but it has long stood as an eerie portent in the annals of imperial history, and may be remembered with hate in the clash of some future war. During the Great Crusade the system spanning ruin had been garrisoned by detachments of both the Imperial navy and army, as well as a contingent of Mechanicus intent on the study of the ancient hub system, and a special Custodes unit nominally present to ensure the safety of the treasures of human heritage. At the time of the Dark Eldar engagement, Cthonia was far from the main theaters of battle, and much of its naval and infantry guard had been ordered into the defense of Old Earth. The raid is notable as the largest single incursion the Dark Eldar have ever made into realspace, and the only time the great tyrant Asdrubael Vect is known to have walked an imperial world. As the siege of Old Earth reached its terrible climax the Cthonian system was set upon by a force of corsairs and Kabalites, first seeming a particularly fierce attack of opportunity, but with the appearance of Crone and Upper Commorragh command ships, then Vect’s own, it became apparent the scale of the assault.

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While significant fortifications had been established on one of the system's rocky inner planets and the foundations and initial foundries of a new forge laid on another in hopes of staging exploration through the system the forces that remained to man them were few. Navy and Mechanicus ships scrambled to secure their orbits against the tide of corsairs. The imperial officers could do little but watch through their telescopes as the Crone and Commoraghi command ships maneuvered to the crest of the golden circlet and made to secure the broken ring set around the Cthonian star.

Of the Imperial forces present the techpriests were the best armed and in the greatest number, but they received the greater part of the Dark Eldar's attention. The guns of explorator ships and newly scavenged archaeotech illuminated the space around Cthonia III, but even as the darting corsair ships burned in orbit they made for the surface. The orbit of Cthonia rapidly became a dynamic hell of boarding actions and lance fire as incubi and skitarii ripped into each other in fierce engagements that were soon mirrored on the planet's surface. The Commoraghi forces on Cthonia made to plunder the forge of its magos and higher acolytes, while those around Chthonia IV tried to cripple the Imperial military force. The predominantly Voidborn battlegroup successfully held against corsair opening salvos, the remaining imperial army forces on Cthonia IV supported their meagre naval force with surface based lance and torpedo installations and polar weapons platforms. As the third day of fighting on and around Cthonia III dragged to a close the remaining Mechanicus forces retreated first to their ships in orbit, then to their sister world. As they broke from the fray the attacking Dark Eldar made for the crest and their command ships.

The dark battleships of the attacking force's Crone sorcerers and mighty archaeons were moored among the gleaming discharge towers and control domes of the crest facility, the forces of the haemonculus and balesingers they brought with them engrossed in the wonders they were dissecting. Assets drawn from Vect's own fleets and forces manned the shredding guns set up in the installation's spires and the cutters ready to intercept any counterattack meant to dislodge his expedition. In the years that followed Inquisitorial investigators and their illuminate superiors judged that his forces had access to facilities that were integral to the creation and engineering of souls, facilities that housed the stacks of Dark Age Abominable Intelligence that trawled the deep warp, and others that prepared blank bodies for life. The extent of his Haemonculi and sorcerers gained from this endeavor could not be known, and the Magos of Cthonia III was never found.

As the bloodied forces of the Mechanicus and Imperium regrouped at Cthonia IV under the protection of its surface armaments they made to contact the wider imperium and the Custodes garrison. Attempts to call for aid brought dismay, the latest news was that Sanguinius was dead and the Eternity Gate breached, and no reinforcements could be spared. In spite of this blow it was found that the Custodes still held the focal complex and central repository, and hoped to hold it longer still even as their barricades breached. It took two more days to prepare a meaningful attack force to challenge the Dark Eldar assembled at the crest, and for that time the focal complex and its golden defenders held by power glaive and sword even as they fell back from lab to lab, and dove back into lost chambers to face down witches and horrors that strove to pry forth their lord's very fundament.

The defending Custodes were all but overrun, but enough stood to continue to disrupt the invading Dark Eldar. In later stories of the battle it is said that Vect entered the complex guarded by mandrakes and his personal retainers, intent on ensuring the successful looting and study of this piece of imperial history, and was engaged at some distance by a Custodian wielding a rocket launcher. The remains of the Custodes unit was forced to its final fallback position in the central operating chambers, as well as a handful of holdouts fighting on across the massive complex. Vect was still in the complex when the remaining Imperial and Mechanicus ships entered combat with the corsairs and set course to charge the moored command ships. While some of the Imperial vessels were intercepted, others picked off by the corsairs before they could get the commanding crone ships in range, much of the counterattacking force got in among the enemy fleet, some ramming and others firing their guns until they no longer could.

The great tyrant's personal hasty retreat spared him and his ship. The corsairs fled soon after the first Imperial ships detonated their drives, their Mechanicus crews devoted to the sanctity of the Omnissiah and hatred for such things as haemonculi. The crone ships burned among the emission spires, their blasted wrecks were pinned to command domes by the broken prows of imperial ships. The ships that remained after the initial charge ran down the fleeing pirates until they slipped into the webway, or else entered the crest and threw themselves into the destruction of the straggling Dark Eldar. Even as the remaining Voidborn and Imperial army forces relieved the Custodes unit from their charred and melted fortification there was little celebration. To their best knowledge the Imperium had fallen, whatever their victory was worth, and they braced for the worst. It took another day to establish contact with the Imperial navy, which confirmed the opposite.

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==== Battle of Mount Afonso ====

See [[Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos#Drach'nyen|Drach'nyen]]

==== Battle of Necromunda ====

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The Battle of Necromunda was a major conflict during the War of the Beast, where the Imperial Fist fought to control both the planet and space around the hive-world itself. As a technologically advanced Survivor civilization, Necromunda was a major munition manufactorum that directly supplied munitions to the front lines and Terra itself. As the Beast made a beeline for Terra to recapture Isha and kill the Steward, in order to make the upcoming Battle of Terra easier other Orks and Crone Eldar worked together to cut off the entire Sol-Sector from the rest of the Imperium. When a blockade couldn't be establish the Chaos forces switched from cutting supply lines to outright attacking the production of supplies itself. The ever opportunistic Dark Eldar joined along for the ride with the Chaos forces to make the Imperial shipping lanes a living hell to operate within Segmentum Solar.

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The sights of a big WAAAGH! had the poor planet of Necromunda as the next prey after already destroying several Imperial worlds when they bypassed Terra. Still rich in mineral and other resources the hive-clusters on the surface would be devastated in the fighting in the orbit as debris from Imperial Navy wrecks, Ork Rokks, and twisted Crone corpses rained down upon the planet. Due to people living in such tightly packed conditions, tens of thousands of civilians died just in the first week of fighting over the planet. The Imperial Fist sent a detachment of 40,000 Space Marines under First Captain Sigismund to defend the planet at all cost, but an unknown amount of ships got lost in transit due to Warp interference that was probably conjured by the Crone Eldar. When Sigismund arrived over the planet, the Imperial Navy was in a stalemate with Chaos ships where neither side could attack without being destroyed in a single battle. Unfortunately, the Ork ships orbiting Necromunda had mostly crashed onto the surface to begin invading the planet. Sigismund would report that Imperial Fist ships are arriving over the planet at random times yet there were enough Battle Barge to kill the Chaos fleet. The Battle Barges combined with the Imperial Cruisers attacked to finally crush the remaining Chaos fleet, ending the battle in orbit.

However, the damage was already done for Necromunda as the majority of the invading Orks had already crash-landed into or near the hive-clusters. Sigismund ordered all available Imperial Fists to land and defend the manufactorums at all cost. The hive cities were turned to fortresses (more than usual), in that the Orks paid five Boyz for every one Space Marine. However, even this was not enough when the Orks outnumbered the Imperial Fist ten to one. What was more frightening was that the invaders were making fast progress as well. Thousands of Imperial Fist were lost within the first few days of fighting in the hives. Sigismund was not shocked with the losses but rather had expected them knowing how the battles in the War of the Beast worked. What he did feel was worried by the fact that as this battle of attrition continued, the Imperial Fist will lose the world being bleed dry.

The streets were filled with trenches, the spires were kill-zones, and rooms were bunkers. Hallways were blocked off with the bodies of fallen Imperial Fists with armor still on them. Hive gangers had resorted to cannibalism while the rest of the civilians fled away from the hives. The desperate and pure hopelessness of fighting in the hives led to many, including Sigismund, to fall under the sway of the Plague Father. The wishes of eternal life and reviving fallen brothers to help the defense of Necromunda were granted under a demonic pact with the First Captain's blood. The words "I offer all those presently under my command" had damned all 40,000 (living and dead) Imperial Fist, along with the mortal crew of the Battle Barges, to serve Nurgle.

The fallen Imperial Fist were brought back, along with some being granted immunity to pain and being able to fight while still missing all limbs but one arm. Now the Orks had to kill every Space Marine twice and each Marine could take twice as many wounds. The blessed Imperial Fist shot the Orks in the front as the revived brothers shot from behind, the Orks had walked into a trap of their own making. In the ending stages of hunting down the last Orks, an unknown Space Marine clearly blessed with illnesses shouted "For the Imperium!" before slicing an Ork with his Lighting Claws.

The Battle of Necromunda was won but neither for the Imperials nor the Beast. The real victors were the Chaos Space Marines. True the Imperium still held the planet and the Ork WAAHG! was crushed, but this was done for the price of almost 40,000 Imperial Fists turning to Chaos and forever being lost to the Imperium. Those on the planet that sought the Dark Gods’ help did so when they were forced to either flee and lose the planet or have a heroic last stand and then lose the planet. Well, one must remember that Sigismund was told to "Hold Necromunda at all cost" even at the price of any lives and damnation.

The traitor Imperial Fist would quickly and quietly depart from the sub-sector on their Battle Barges before the news broke out, then announcing to their mortal crew that they would now fight the Imperium. The traitors would rename themselves the "Rotten Fist" as a joke about how the Imperium would be rotting in the future. Their motto is still "For the Imperium" as some odd form of love for the Imperium or a reference to how they fell to Chaos due to defending the Imperium.

Rotten Fist marines during the War of the Beast were sighted fighting Orks and Imperial forces but not the Crone Eldar. After the Battle of Terra, the Rotten Fist along with other Chaos Space Marines were hunted down by Loyalist Space Marines. The Rotten Fist would flee to The Maelstrom, escaping into the Warp.

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==== Be'lakor and the Alpha Legion ====

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Every legion at a role to play in the War of the Beast, even if that role wasn’t immediately obvious. Such was the case with the Alpha Legion. When war broke out, the Hydra continued its work in the shadows, though they weren’t too happy about it. It was not the job of the Alpha Legion to fight on the front lines. It was their job to find the source of the threat, the man behind the man, and stop the problem at its root. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Urlakk_Urg|Urlakk Urg]] was the obvious threat to the Imperium, but there was clearly more going on. One did not just go from being a former warboss with no empire to his name to head of a galaxy-spanning WAAAGH! in less than six standard years. Chaos was clearly a factor, but beyond the four Ruinous Powers there were other players behind the scenes vying for power, ones the Imperium did not even know about yet.

The Alpha Legion was first put onto the scent of one of these players after the end of the Nurthene Campaign, which had ended in disaster when the natives, who considered autoguns and tanks to be the cutting edge of warfare, had unexpectedly gotten their hands on Chaotic Exterminatus-class weaponry and the means to fleshcraft nightmarish golems in the image of their animalistic gods. Despite stymying assets of the Imperial Army, Astartes, and even a Titan legion, the Nurthene insurgents known as the Echvehnurth could only slow, not stop, the Imperial advance, and in a grand act of salting the earth the Echvehnurth activated a Chaotic weapon known as a Black Cube. The Black Cube stripped Nurth of all life and left it an uninhabitable, primordial wasteland, killing all upon it but at the same time denying it to the Imperium and inflicting heavy casualties.

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The Alpha Legion were perplexed by this turn of events. Never before had their intelligence apparatus failed them so. It is possible they would have continued to be perplexed had they not heard from their contact with the Cabal, John Grammaticus. Alpharius and Omegon had heard from Grammaticus and the Cabal several times before, the two organizations having shared useful intel, but this time all Grammaticus had was a single cryptic line courtesy of the mysterious Gahet.

“Go to Eolith. The answers you seek will be there.”

As fellow espionists themselves, the primarchs of the Alpha Legion were at first unsure of whether or not to believe Grammaticus, but ultimately decide to investigate it for themselves. They didn’t fully trust the Cabal, but the Cabal’s goals were straightforward and their information had been reliable in the past. Additionally, even if the Cabal’s weren’t telling the whole truth, that didn’t mean what they said was incorrect. An expeditionary force was dispatched to investigate the Cabal’s claims, consisting of several cells of Alpha Legionnaires as well as reinforcement by the Geno Five-Two Chilliad. The Chilliad’s knack for pinpoint coordination and tactical adaptability had impressed the Legion’s twin primarchs, and meshed well with their own combat sensibilities. What’s more, the Chilliad knew how to keep a secret. The Chilliad and Alpha Legion had worked together several times in the past, and when the Alpha Legion was in need of more traditional military assistance the Chiliad was normally who they thought of. However, Uxor Honen Mu was not at the head of this expedition, having stepped down following her loss of cept many years ago at the beginning of the Great Crusade. Instead, the Imperial army detachment was commanded by Teng Namantjira, the commander who had overseen the Nurthene disaster. Namantjira’s record had been spotless until Nurth, and the commander was eager to discover whether some external force had caused his offensive to fail.

Their destination was a world which the Imperium had cataloged and ignored during a routine survey as 42 Hydra Tertius, but the source knew as Eolith. Eolith was a strange world. At first glance it seemed utterly out of the ordinary, but closer inspection revealed otherwise. Surveys of the planet found plateaus with perfectly sheer faces and straight lines buried in silt under the ocean’s continental shelf, resembling starship landing pads. Nature does not build in straight lines. The rest of the planet was also more abnormal than it appeared, basins were exposed hundreds of meters below sea level, while the planet’s core suggested a lack of rotation that made it hard to imagine how the planet could sustain a breathable atmosphere or magnetosphere. Indeed, in other respects the planet was almost too ordinary, having an atmosphere that was almost identical to Earth’s, albeit with more neon and oxygen and less argon and nitrogen in the atmosphere, and a gravity 1.5 times that of Earth, despite its diameter suggesting it should have had a gravity twice that. At the north pole of the planet found an unusual energy signature, suggestive of a continuously open portal into the eldar Webway, but the records the Imperium had gained on the labyrinthine dimension from the eldar never indicated that any such portal existed here.

Given such an anomaly, the first place to look seemed obvious. Taking half of the forces of the Chilliad with them, the Alpha Legion descended upon the basin at the planet’s northern pole. There, sitting in a basin that was supposed to be three hundred meters below sea level, was what looked like an open Webway gate, albeit one that didn’t look like it was made from wraithbone, but instead an eerie black stone that resembled obsidian, but seemed to reflect no light. The members of the Chiliad were commanded to secure the margins of the basin, while the Alpha Legionaires would act as the tip of the spear and enter the portal first. Nobody wanted an enemy force potentially attacking them from behind, and if there was something nasty on the other side better the Astartes go first.

Upon entering the portal the Alpha Legion found themselves in a shrine dedicated to a being older than recorded history and an evil older than man. The reliquary was lined with numerous paraphernalia and artifacts atop singular pedestals, fossilized statues of a horned and winged being carved out of fossilized bone, five thousand year old scrolls from the Age of Strife made from tanned human skin and written in blood, horn fragments that seemed to be both material and immaterial at the same time, all illuminated in an eerie half-light that seemed to come from spotlights that did not exist. More recent items were also present, grisly trophies from the Massacre of Teuthowald, the Battle of Pydinia and the Nurthene Campaign, all Imperial defeats or losses that had seemed to have no real culprit, at least until now. The halls were lined with cyclopean blocks of stone, inscribed with writing and hieroglyphs that no one had ever seen before.

At the very back was the centerpiece of the shrine, a massive mural several stories high. One of the Alpha Legion, a Katholian, immediately made the holy symbol of Quolious for protection upon seeing it. It depicted a single entity surrounded by flames, vaguely reptilian in countenance, with forward curved horns and three eyes, shrouded by a pair of leathery wings. One of the Alpha Legionnaires remarked that it vaguely resembled depictions of the devil in their home planet’s religion. The face of the being was hard to read due to the lighting in the room, but the shadows gave the impression of a vengeful god with power over life and death. Strange beings were on their knees surrounding the creature, supplicating it for mercy but seemingly receiving none. The beings were abstract and almost devoid of detail, akin to ancient Grecian black pottery, but the Alpha Legion recognized some that looked disturbingly similar to simplified humans or eldar.

The Alpha Legion may not have been able to read the stone carvings, but the text on the scrolls was decipherable, resembling an extinct dialect spoken on a world the Word Bearers had reluctantly purged for being violently insane and too extensively tainted by Chaos. It spoke extensively of the writer’s lord, a being it referred to as “Be’lakor” and called “The First Prince of Chaos”. To the Alpha Legion, it seemed clear the writings spoke of a Daemon Prince, but one on a scale in which the Imperium had never seen before, and which the Imperium knew nothing about. Having seen the scale of the den of iniquity they had found themselves in, the Alpha Legionaires turned to each other and grimly nodded to one another. The Steward had to know about this. The Alpha Legion set about meticulously documenting the scene, taking vid-picts of every artifact and helmet cam footage of the entire sordid shrine. Even if they didn’t know the meaning of every symbol, that did not mean someone else might.

Then, the Alpha Legionnaire Mathias Herzog made a fatal mistake.

He reached out and touched the stone mural.

At once the shrine reacted to the Alpha Legionnaires presence, much like an immune system suddenly recognizing the presence of an invader. The chamber began to shudder and contract, wretched artifacts rattling and falling off of their pedestals. The Alpha Legion made for the exit at once. But where their trip into the portal had been uneventful, now all the sudden the space within the pocket dimension was like quicksand, actively fighting their attempts to try and escape, the short space to the exit seeming to telescope endlessly. The Alpha Legionnaires could see what was going on outside the portal but were helpless to do anything about it. All they could do was watch what happened next.

It was not just the dark shrine that had reacted to the Alpha Legion’s presence. As the Alpha Legion struggled to escape, the planet itself seemed to break apart, whatever force was holding it together seemingly relinquishing its ownership. The planet’s atmosphere vented itself into space as if realizing it wasn’t supposed to be there, whereas whatever artificial force was holding the oceans the way they were suddenly dissipated leaving the oceans to slosh around the planet as intended by the laws of gravity once more. Including into the basin below sea level where the portal had been.

The Alpha Legion tried to make it through the portal to warn the Chilliad of the oncoming flood, having been aware of the planet’s self-destruction before they were, but were unable to escape from their own predicament in time. Nor could the ships in orbit provide any assistance. As rescue craft descended towards the planet, space-time seemed to ooze around them, slowing their descent to a crawl as they pushed their engines to the limit trying to reach the surface before the planet fell apart. They didn’t make it in time to save the Chilliad forces on the ground. The lucky ones died when the ocean reclaimed the basin. The unlucky ones asphyxiated when the atmosphere dissipated. When the Alpha Legion emerged from the portal, protected from the changed planet by their power armor, they did so at the bottom of the ocean and surrounded by the bodies of their dead comrades.

It wasn’t until the return trip from Eolith that the Alpha Legion noticed something else was amiss. At first it was relatively minor. Shadows out of the corner of one’s eye, strange flickering of the lights when people occasionally entered a room, nothing unusual to see on an old void ship. Then people started to get the feeling they were being watched, and some claimed to see the silhouette of a humanoid figure standing in the doorway in their peripheral vision that disappeared when they turned to look. Then people started having “accidents”. Then they just started to disappear.

The Alpha Legion quickly noticed that the people who were dying were not random, but were all people who had entered the portal on Eolith. At the same time, the shadowy phantoms became bolder, no longer disappearing when people turned their gaze and bearing a striking resemblance to the statue the Alpha Legion had seen on Eolith. When Mathias Herzog turned up dead, not vanished like all the others but his flayed body simply appearing in the middle of the mess hall between a brief flicker of the lights, it seemed clear what was happening. Be’lakor, the being referenced in the shrine on Eolith, had discovered their trespassing and was now following them.

As the days went on more people continued to die, first the last of the Alpha Legionnaires who had survived the portal on Eolith and then all who they had told what they saw. Be'lakor seemed to know exactly who had learned the secret on Eolith and who had not. People started to survive just long enough to describe what was happening to them. Be’lakor was no longer content to hover over people’s shoulder menacingly, but was now coming after his victims with a slow, predatory walk. Victims would burst into rooms, begging for help from phantoms only they could see, only for their would be rescuers to die in turn. But the Alpha Legion was determined. They had to get the information out there, no matter the cost.

And so began the ultimate game of cat and mouse. No matter how far they ran, and how fast, it always seemed like Be’lakor was just two steps behind them. Nothing the Alpha Legion could do seemed to stop it. Be’lakor was implacable, unstoppable, more like a villain from a slasher movie than anything else. All the Alpha Legionnaires could do was keep the intel alive, passing the information on to as many operatives as possible in the form of encryptions and secret codes hopefully below the daemon's notice, and then buy as much time as they could before inevitably dying. Then their comrades would pick up the information, and the hunt would begin anew.

When Be’lakor did catch them, he either killed them on the spot or took what information he needed out of them to continue his hunt, relying on torture techniques honed over millions of years of cruelty. However, Be’lakor’s strategy was starting to exhibit a major flaw. He had spent so much time toying with the Alpha Legionnaires, punishing them for daring to trespass on the hallowed ground of the Old Ones, that the Alpha Legion were getting further and further ahead. First by minutes, then by hours, then by days. A told secret tends to spread exponentially, and before long the Alpha Legion were reporting their findings to the highest levels of the Imperial military. The secret was out, and the truth had become so widely disseminated there was no way Be’lakor could ever cover it back up again. Be’lakor was informed of this fact by one Alpha Legionnaire, who cheekily called himself "Alpharius", though he almost certainly was not. Be’lakor had started to become worried after he noticed that cleaning up this little operation was taking longer than expected, but after hearing those fears confirmed, Be’lakor’s rage was explosive and immediate. The Alpha Legion could not say to have won the battle, having lost too many men over the course of the operation to claim the most pyrrhic of victories, but then neither had Be’lakor. The Imperium still does not know the whole story, believing Be’lakor to be an impossibly ancient Daemon Prince rather than his true nature, but they know he exists. And that is enough.

The loss of fully half the Chilliad and the Alpha Legion’s helplessness to do anything to stop the death of their long-term allies is thought to have been another contributing factor to the Alpha Legion helping the Chilliad disappear after the War of the Beast. The Alpha Legion and its primarchs had [[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#The_Hydra_Uncoils|done their share of horrible things throughout the years]], [[grimdark|often to people who did not deserve it]]. But that does not mean they were incapable of caring about others. After all, if they did not care, how could they call themselves human?
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==== Second Battle over Elysia ====

The 2nd Battle over Elysia took place when the Chaos fleets tried to keep the blockade of Segmentum Solar after the Battle of Phaeton started. Battlefleet Solar was effectively crippled in a few days as fighting on Phaeton started, the fleet was killed over the skies of Terra. The Chaos fleets stationed themselves around Terra in different sub-sectors to block the supply lines. Battlefleet Pacificus launched a series of small offensives including diversionary attacks in the galactic west, drawing away concentrated defenders from weaker sub-sectors to allow the real attacks to clear supply lines. Battlefleet Ultima along with what's left of Battlefleet Solar gathered to the galactic east of Segmentum Solar's bordering sub-sectors to prepare for war. The Imperial ships in the meantime were conducting hit-and-run attacks all along the bordering sub-sectors. Cronefleet L'Oquis assembled every CE and Ork ships it could get together to hunt down and snuff out the raiding ships coming in from Ultima Segmentum.

The raiding ships fled to the randevu point over Catachan and brought with them news of the chasing Cronefleet. The acting admiral of Battlefleet Solar ordered all ships at the point or heading towards Catachan to divert to Elysia. All of Battlefleet Solar and some of Ultima rushed to meet over Elysia while the bulk of Battlefleet Ultima was moving back to the galactic west. CEs had already teleported inside some of the raider ships to plant tracking beacons on them before leaving unseen. The ships over Elysia rushed to resupply themselves with whatever they can get their hands on until they were unexpectedly attacked by Cronefleet O'Oquis. The battle started with Imperial ships keeping distance while Ork ships tried to close in. CE ships did enter their firing range to launch voidcraft before the Orks could and the Imperials couldn't retreat by then. Many of the human cruisers slugged it out with the CE before the Orks could get a chance to board their ships. The Orks tried ramming the Imperials many times to mostly miss or worst, damage CE ships by mistake. Eldar ships had chased off the rearguard of the Cronefleet while everybody else was fighting in the main battle. Some CE ships from the rear advancing into the main battle were fired upon by other CE ships due to misidentification and were thought to be Craftworlder ships. When the human ships had taken considerable losses Cronefleet L'Oquis tried to withdraw but was blocked by Eldar ships in their rear.

Several days have passed when the Cronefleet first engaged the Imperial fleet over Elysia. The Imperial forces had clearly taken more losses than the Cronefleet near the ending stages of the battle. When the rest of Battlefleet Ultima arrived over Elysia, the Imperial fleet was much smaller while the Cronefleet had bloodied their noses. The admiral of Battlefleet Ultima assumed command of all ships over Elysia then ordered Battlefleet Solar to retreat. As Battlefleet Solar was disengaging, the rest of Battlefleet Ultima rushed to reach firing range. The Cronefleet was almost destroyed when giving chase to the retreating Imperial ships as Battlefleet Ultima shot them to pieces.
The 2nd Battle over Elysia reached a mythical status. The destruction of so many Crone ships in that one battle and ineffectiveness of the blockade in the galactic west caused a change in strategy for the Chaos navy in the WotB. Chaos fleets were now to fulfill a supporting role in the invasion of supply producing Imperial worlds rather than block Imperial supply lines. What was left of Cronefleet L'Oquis supported a WAAAHG! that already burned 2 worlds then supported the destruction of another world. Only 3 or 4 cruisers of Cronefleet L'Oquis survived the war to return home after almost all of the fleet was burned by Imperial Fist Battle Barges over Necromunda.

==== Appearance of Attack Planet Ullanor, the Sacrifice of Ollanius Pius, and the Appearance of the Ork Diplomats ====

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#Ork_Diplomacy|Ork Diplomacy]]

==== The Siege of Terra ====

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Primarchs#Sanguinius|Arik Taranis]], [[Nobledark_Imperium_Primarchs#Sanguinius|Sanguinius]], and [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Eldrad|Eldrad]]

==== Reclamation of Old Earth and the Formation of the Ork Empires of Charadon, Octarius, and Bork ====

See [[Nobledark Imperium Xenos#Ork Empires of Charadon, Octarius, and Bork|Ork Empires of Charadon, Octarius, and Bork]]

=== Remembering Old Earth ===

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"''When I first saw Old Earth for the first time, I was reminded of an Exodite world more than anything else. It was so rustic. The people talked about rediscovering mono-molecular structures and anti-gravity, as if these were groundbreaking innovations. I was shocked, how could this be the capital of the same empire whose ships dominated the stars, and whose warriors helped the Eldar to free me from my captivity. And yet, the people there seemed so proud. Proud that they had clawed their way out of the dirt and the darkness. Their society had only just begun to rebuild itself from the horrors of their Fall, and yet they looked back on the little they had accomplished so far, and felt optimistic about the future.''"<br>
-Grand Empress Isha, on her first impressions of Old Earth

For the average Imperial citizen outside of Segmentum Solar, the ancient nations of Old Earth from the Unification Wars are long forgotten. Those who are history buffs or lived in the Sol system itself might know these old Terran states. Having been born at the end of the Age of Strife, the primarchs knew full well that many countries had come and gone before theirs, particularly after the War of the Beast caused so much destruction that the entirety of survivors on Old Earth could have comfortable fit into the continent of Europe. After the War of the Beast, many of the primarchs labored to preserve as much of they could of their country’s history and customs, so that their people would not be forgotten. This is not to say that they were the only people to write of their nations, many did so as a way of working out their grief and to try to preserve some vestige of their culture after the War of the Beast. But the nineteen of them were the Emperor’s primarchs, and when they spoke people tended to listen.

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The Emperor himself of wrote a little bit of what daily life was like in Terrawatt, when it became clear to him that his old home was gone and not coming back. However, in later years, some scholars have privately criticized this account as having been overly mythologized. Between his accounts and the drier, more methodical logs of Malcador, it is possible to get a reasonable approximation of what pre-Unification life was like in the Terrawatt Clan. Given his eidetic memory as a Man of Gold, it is likely the Emperor remembers more about Unification-era Earth than what he has put down on paper, but between his duties as head of state and the feelings such memories would dredge up it is unlikely they will ever be written down.

Of the primarchs themselves, starting with Horus, he chronicled the entire rise of the Imperium from the start of unification for the migrant fleets of Sol to the end of the War of The Beast. Some have criticized Horus' Chronical after his death when a few historians noticed the lack of historical accuracy when writing about the Great Crusade. The best records by the primarchs of life on Old Earth pre-Unification come from Fulgrim, Guilliman, and Vulkan. Fulgrim managed to write a lengthy autobiography after his Legion was reduced to just shy of three companies in the Iron Cage. Going into great detail about his everyday life, readers are able to especially immerse themselves in his childhood of living in Merika to an eerie amount of degree. Everything after the childhood section of the book is known for being historically inaccurate and turning into the self-gratifying propaganda of later parts in his life. In addition to his general writings and thought experiments, Guilliman had his entire family history saved to an audio recording then transcribed to a book. The genealogy writes about members from this nobility starting at the end of the Age of Strife till the end of the Great Crusade. Vulkan often referred to the Afrique League (and its history both before and after the Warlord) in passing in the many writings he published over his long, long life, including one book entirely devoted to the topic and several different essays on many subjects, ranging from philosophy and theology, economics to warfare. These provide some of the best glimpses we have into life in the Afrique League.

Surprisingly, Jaghatai Khan wrote extensively on his life, mostly poetry about what life was like under the Despot of Ursh and how it got so much better after he threw off the yoke of his oppressors. He also wrote poetry about his wife and the simpler lives of his people after the Khanate was established to remind him why he does what he does. Unfortunately, most of it was written in Neo-Mongolian, which meant it was only legible to Pastoral Worlders, and even then only just (being about as similar to modern Pastoral Worlder languages as Old English was to 21st century English). Dorn’s writings, much like the man himself, were straightforward, rather spartan, and only ever discussed a single subject. The nature of the Calbi military of that era would be remembered if nothing else. Although he did not survive the War of the Beast, Sanguinius mentioned his old homeland in his Meditations, where he collected his visions and wrote on topics like philosophy and ethics. As part of that, he had a very detailed and honest description of pre-Unification Duscht Jemanic, as he was a firm believer of history and examining mistakes to avoid repeating them.The Lion actually wrote a little bit about Franj, in part to work out the grief of losing his old home and in part to spite Luther for trying to sully Franj’s name. However, the most famous work attributed to the Lion may not have been actually written by him. The book was done in a clunky style as if written by Lion and the finished product was found in his quarters on his writing desk but at that time Lion was in the main medi-bay of The Rock living off of IV drips. It was Holguin, Master of the Deathwing, who found the book when it became clear that Lion was not going to wake up any day soon and someone had to tidy up Lion's room. Holguin never admitted to writing the book. Dark Angel folk belief has it that Cypher did it for no easily describable reason.

Other primarchs either would not or could not write about their home countries. Although Magnus the Red was concerned with preserving knowledge and history and wrote extensively on warpcraft and daemonology, he wrote very little on his life as a subject of Ursh. As far as he was concerned before the Imperium he had no home nation, only jailers. About the closest he ever came was when he contributed to the writing of ''The Chronicles of Ursh'', mostly chronicling how horrible Ursh was. Historians have sometimes doubted his more outrageous claims, but in almost every case they have turned out to be true. Angron, in his better days, refused to write down his experiences in the Nord Afrik conclaves, even going so far as to claim “being subjugated by the Imperium was the best thing that could have happened to the country. If it became so far forgotten it was as if it never existed so much the better.” Nevertheless, a great deal of insight can be gained into from Angron’s poetry. The earliest pieces offer harrowing glimpses into the society of the Nord Afrik conclaves in its dying years. Interspersed are more cheerful things about his children or sorrowful things about his biological family. Angron’s’ poetry was not good by any means but that was because he was a warrior rather than a poet for a living. However, as the years pass the poetry became worse. The subject matter gets better for the most part but the style, vocabulary, rhythm, punctuation, spelling and legibility of the hand written notes start to decline noticeably. Not long before War of the Beast he apparently just gave up on it.

Perturabo probably would have written about Macedonia and the Great and Everlasting Tharkian Empire if he was asked during the Great Crusade, but afterwards he refused to do so. To him, it was just one more way he failed his people, and writing about his people for posterity felt like writing an obituary rather than a historical record. Corax did not have a happy life before the Imperium. Trying to write about his life reminded him of his old family, and it hurt to think of that subject. Like Magnus, the closest he came was advising those who wrote ''The Chronicles of Ursh''. Ferrus Manus did not write anything about Orioc as he saw no difference between the Antarctic Mechanicus and the Mechanicus as a whole, and as the Mechanicus was perfect and enduring and already drowning in data there was no need to. Curze just plain did not want to talk about it. Mortarion also did not. He would not sully the name of Gredbriton by associating himself with it too hard. Leman Russ was not much of a writer, although others in his employ were.

Lorgar was well-known for writing and talking extensively on things he did not like, but he was first and foremost a warrior-chaplain. He was more concerned about the good of the people now than the problems of the long past. However writings on the Yndonesian Bloc do survive, most notably from Lorgar’s father Archbishop Kor Phaeron. Alpharius and Omegon ████████ █████████ █████████████{Historical document confiscated by order of the Inquisition. Ave Hydra, Hydra Dominatus.}███ ███████ ███████ █ ███████ ████████ ███████████ █████████ ███████

Sadly, despite all their efforts, the primarchs largely failed in this endeavor. The customs and cultures of the nation-states of Old Earth in M41 are about as well remembered as the provinces of the old Roman Empire were by the third millennium, essentially trivia only of interest to historians. The only nation-state that is well-remembered with any degree of accuracy is Ursh, and that was more as a cautionary tale to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past than for historical posterity. Ursh is best remembered in the galactic midlands, the Imperial worlds too far from Old Earth to actually know Earth's history without a degree, but close enough that legends of the primarchs are still pretty popular. Still, the legends that get told a lot are the ones about king Oscar and his primarchs fighting heroic battles against the old Chaos king and his Habnervars (local low Gothic dialect, some kind of horrible monster) or how captain Horus took so long tricking the Chaos Gods over and over that he was almost late to fight the great grot. Sure, the old story teller could regale you with the tale of how Guilliman went to school for a long time and got married to a nice lady, all of this in Franj, or he could make some shit up off the top of his head about what Fulgrim found in the Rockies, but nobody ever asks.

When the nation-states are remembered, they are primarily remembered in a semi-mythologized fashion based on their role in the Unification, typecast as heroes and villains instead of being remembered for the people who actually lived there. The White Scars spit on the memory of Ursh and its people, forgetting that for many of them their great-great grandmother was an Urshii serf who was just as oppressed by the old regime. The people of the Imperium sneer at the Yndonesian Bloc and its brutal theocracy, forgetting that Lorgar, one of the Imperium's greatest humanitarians, came from its ranks. Franj is often remembered as being the motivation of betrayal for Luther, the arch-traitor, forgetting all the people in Franj who were horrified by Luther's ideals and would ultimately end up paying for his mistakes.

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=== Black Crusades ===

EDITOR'S NOTE: These events should not be considered the only things to have happened during the various Black Crusades. The Black Crusades are massive undertakings, composed of numerous warbands whose commanders often don't have the same goals in mind. Events like the Burning of Prospero or the Gothic War are merely one front in the larger Black Crusade. Case in point [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Lady_Malys_versus_the_Steward|Lady Malys' first battle versus the Steward]] happened during the First Black Crusade, which is better known for events that happened on Cadia and the Gate Worlds.

==== First Black Crusade ====

Despite there being eleven more events of the same name, the first Black Crusade was a watershed event in the history of the Imperium, if for nothing else than it established the relationship between Chaos and the Imperium for the next several millennia. After the events of the War of the Beast, Chaos regrouped and spent the next few centuries rebuilding and licking its wounds. Despite the events of the War of the Beast, Chaos had essentially made it to the Imperium’s door the first time around, several of the primarchs (e.g., Sanguinius, Angron, Horus) had died during or since, and Chaos could replace its losses (orks, daemons) much more easily and rapidly than the Imperium could replace theirs.

Chaos expected the Imperium to be permanently crippled, and the Imperium responded with a fist to their collective faces.

Making matters worse for the forces of Chaos was the unanticipated presence of the Eldar, who had started helping human forces in larger numbers in the years since the WotB. It took some time before the forces of Chaos realized they were sticking their hand into a cheese grater and pulled back to reformulate their strategy. This was far from the end of the first Black Crusade, and there were still significant losses for the Imperium (Dorn, Abbadon) but by the end of it the relationship between Chaos and the Imperium was clear. The Imperium was no flash in the pan that would crumple after one serious battle. If Chaos wanted to win, it would have to fight every inch of the way to get there. Later Black Crusades took this lesson in mind, and have become all the more dangerous for it.

==== Second Black Crusade ====

Alpha Legion operatives and the Inquisition had been intercepting an increase in encrypted orders for Chaos cultists near the Eye of Terror for a few years prior to the Second Black Crusade. Composed of complex geometric shapes drawn in blood, the messages were complete non-sense for any unintended recipient without the properly established telepathic link and informants leaking the enemy intelligence to the Inquisition can make little to no understanding of the orders. After the help of some unknown double agent within the Imperial Army, the Imperium had received enough information to act as they found out these cults had been sabotaging and spying on the defenses of Cadia for years. Planning to smash this so-called "Second Black Crusade" right at the entrance of the Eye of Terror, the Imperial Navy called for massive numbers of reinforcements to rally over Vigilantum, the naval training world near Cadia inside the system. The assembling grand armada was halved as those ships were destroyed in transit by the Warp storm "Hollowing Hull" created by Chaos. Indeed, in retrospect, the information leading to the massive loss of ships from the Warp Storm seems to have been a plant from the Croneworlders in the first place. The rest of the armada trickled into the system to be isolated then be hunted down as small pockets of resistance formed to fight the Cronefleets as they retreated in the 'Battle over Vigilantum'. Although the Cronefleets had trouble trying to take Cadia as the Imperial Guard still held the planet, they were able to simply circumnavigate around it to attack other sub-sectors while blockading the world. The purpose of this Black Crusade was not to raze Terra like the last time but to test the Imperium in their reaction and experiment if fleets from the Eye can bypass the Cadian Gate. For the first few months of the campaign, the Imperial Navy had to smuggle in troops to the front as the Battlefleets had been scattered by the Warp storm. Unable to effectively operate as a coherent whole prevented the Battlefleets from conducting any offensive operations until the end of the Black Crusade.

==== Third Black Crusade ====

Lady Malys promised Daemon Prince Tallomin the slaughter of millions of warriors if he and some daemons killed the population of Cadia. Starting in 005.M33, the 3rd Black Crusade started with the attack on Cadia, the Crone Eldar avoid fighting on the planet as they collected the millions slain by daemons. Barging with Ork clans for "great fights with the humies" and some shiny hats, Lady Malys was able to launch a campaign of extermination on some surrounding sub-sectors while the fighting on Cadia stall. Marines in Omega armor arrived onto Caida in time to rush to the defense of Kasrs the fortress city. Tricking the local Guardsmen that they were "Vanguard for more Inquisitorial required troops" the marines managed to grind the daemons to halt on multiple fronts.

Unknown to the Imperials, Orkz, or Tallomin however, the entire Black Crusade was a distraction to allow the first phase of the Long War to finish. Lady Malys had planned to kill hundreds of millions to collect their corpses to be used in dark rituals. The Warpcraft invoked would allow certain individuals to raise the dead with just a hand wave or cause outbreaks of the Rot with their mind. Chanting Nurgle's prayers in forbidden tongues while crushing millions of bodies to become fertilizer then flushing it down into the ground or sewer system was done on many worlds. The arrive of the Grey Knights prompted Lady Malys to order her human agents with being gifted such power over the dead, to share their Warpcraft or knowledge to a parasitic immortal race already infiltrating Imperial society. Magnus along with the Thousand Sons, Space Wolves, and Gray Knights arrived on Cadia to finally force Tallomin's daemons to flee. The Omega Marines were long gone from Cadia. Lady Malys learned how to trick the Imperials into giving false priorities like if they held Cadia the Black Crusade would retreat. She indeed ordered a fighting retreat after the daemons were driven from Cadia but her objectives were complete.

==== Fourth Black Crusade ====

Malys sent a huge Cronefleet to pillage and steal arcane knowledge from [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Prospero|Prospero]]. That was until Ahriman along with his sorcerers, in the loosest term, preserved the planet by teleporting it to a pocket dimension. [[Legion of the Damned|Those on the planet exist in a limbo state between the Warp and realspace with no real predictable way of entering or exiting it]].

==== Seventh Black Crusade ====

Chaos began a series of conflicts that targeted Space Marines for extracting their geneseeds, which Fabius Bile organized it for preventing the degradation of The Fallen geneseeds while production and experimentation of the New Men continued. Running many battles to draw out the elite of the elite from the Imperial Army using false intelligence gathered by Orders Securitas, they had double-agents or used psyker/hypnosis leak information to seemingly hunt down the Chaos fleet rampaging.

==== Twelfth Black Crusade (001.M41-???) ====

''The Destruction of Macharia''

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Macharia is a Hive World in the Segmentum Obscurus that has the dubious distinction of being the closest Hive World to the Cadian Gate and the Eye of Terror. Normally the conditions surrounding the Eye of Terror and the inhabitants that live within it are too harsh to allow a hive world to exist (indeed, no Hive World could exist within the Cadian System itself or else it would be a target of opportunity for Crone Eldar raiders), but being slightly “downwind” of the Cadian Gate in a neighboring sector Macharia is just far enough away from the Eye to allow a Hive World to exist. Macharia is significantly more fortify than your average Hive World, but it is a Hive World nonetheless. Together the three systems of Cadia, Agripinaa, and Macharia are considered the crown jewels of the region surrounding the Cadian Gate, a trinity of worlds that acts as the Imperium’s first bastion against any Chaos incursion.

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The surface of Macharia has seen hordes of plague zombies raised by wight kings, roving bands of Khornate Crone Eldar berserkers, and attacks by the imposing, deadly Fallen, just like any other system neighboring the Cadian Gate region. During the 12th Black Crusade, after the repeated failure of Cadia to hold back the Chaos death fleet, the imperial navy fell back and drew a secondary battle line at Macharia, hoping to halt the Chaos invasion there. The surface of Macharia was fortified to the greatest degree possible and Imperial warships buzzed about the planets of the system like angry hornets. Before long the Chaos war fleet entered the system, headed by the dark chaplain Erebus and his flagship the Chariot of the Gods, a.k.a. the Planet Killer. The Imperial military had their doubts about the ability to hold Macharia, but they were determined to take as many of the Chaos invaders down with them. Macharia was a Hive World, and nobody expected the planet could be taken with anything less than protracted, bloody struggle.

Then the Chariot of the Gods ominously shifted configuration before opening fire and unceremoniously reduced Macharia to rubble with a single shot. The beam set fire to the planet’s atmosphere, blew through much of the upper mantle and core, and sent continent-sized chunks hurtling through space. The few ships that survived the sudden conflagration and the resulting debris cloud could not stand up to the Chaos war fleet, having no planet to use as cover and no place to which they could retreat for fuel and repairs, and were quickly swept away. The Last Battle of Macharia, which had been predicted to have taken months or even years, was over within a few days, and there was nothing to stop Chaos forces from moving further into the Milky Way.

The only good news for the Imperium is that the forces of chaos were just too surprised by this turn of events as the Imperium was. Chaos had also expected a long, protracted siege in order to take Macharia, and in fact Erebus was giving a motivational sermon to his troops in preparation for such a battle when the Planet Killer unexpectedly activated and fired on Macharia without orders. Nobody on board the Chariot of the Gods has any idea what caused the ship to activate or how to repeat that shot. Erebus has begun taking to bothering Be’lakor, the “last of the first race to discover the Primordial Truth” in the hopes of getting him to tell Erebus how to unlock the Planet Killer’s secrets. Despite being amused by Erebus’ groveling and his rightful deference, Be’lakor has no intention of sharing such information.

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''The Gothic War''

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Following a lead based on ancient Eldar Empire records where the Eldar refuse to utter the true name of aliens who they fought. It was said that the aliens could use technology that rendered Eldar technology almost useless. Malys devised a plan on studying then using the artifacts scattered throughout the Gothic Sector to mass produce and integrate these weapons onto Crone ships. Slowly and secretly Chaos built up a force to bypass Cadia then swallow the Gothic Sector where they summoned a Warp storm to isolate the sector. This was done after several Cronefleets were in position and a diversionary attack started on Cadia.

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One such artifact was the Eye of Night which is said to drive machines mad by emitting beams of light that could hit kilometers away. Using sleeper cells, the Cadian garrison force on a planet with the vault holding it, they leaked the location then started a rebellion when a Cronefleet blockaded the world. Ornsworld, the homeworld of the Ratlings, was depopulated when the Warp Hunter warband landed to kill off the tiny garrison force while Crone Eldar witches began excavating the planet for the Eye of Night. Warp Hunters who loved the sadistic extermination of the planet after they refused to surrender, went out of their way to personally make sure "Let no livestock, pet, or citizen live in those settlements" for the Ratling towns. Attempting to reverse engineer the ancient xenos technology with psyker witches and hereteks. They were interrupted in the middle of their experimentation by an Imperial Guard force, led by Ordo Xenos, who reclaimed the artifact after many losses. Battlefleet Gothic was able to clear the Chaos blockade of Onsworld long enough for the Inquisition to smuggle the Eye of Night back to Sol, after multiple failed efforts to destroy the artifact back on planetside. The Imperial Army is unsure if the research on the technology has ever left the world.

At the same time as the Fallen Marine assault on Ornsworld began, the forces of Chaos arrived on the Imperial world of Purgatory to extract another artifact from the weak defenses of the Adaptus Mechanicus. The Hand of Darkness was an artifact that could disintegrate anything it touches when powered by the Warp. The Black Crusade came to study then copy how such a technology can exist by violently extracting it from the Imperials. Although there were a few Cadian regiments present to protect the vault holding the Hand of Darkness, they could only delay the capture. With a change of plans on the fly, the Crone Eldar planning the operation forced the human Battlegroups on the planet to protect the artifact to ship it off-world rather than go off looting. Battlefleet Agripinaa tried to intercept and prevent the evacuation of the Crone Eldar off-world to no avail as the Cronefleet proved too powerful while defending the void space over the planet. The Hand of Darkness was never seen again outside of the Eye of Terror as the Crone Eldar covet the weapon to study then copy the technology which the Imperium never recovered.

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=== Post-War of the Beast/Pre-Age of Apostasy (M32-M35) ===

==== The Throne Before the Emperor ====

EDITOR'S NOTE: Need to add history of Golden Throne itself, where it came from and what Emperor did with it.

It is a little known fact, even among the historians of Old Earth, that before the events of the War of the Beast the Steward was privately planning to crown Sanguinius as Emperor at the end of the Great Crusade. All of the other primarchs had flaws that disqualified them from the position, and the Steward had not encountered any other humans who seemed up to the task. Lion, Ferrus Manus, and Mortarion all lacked the necessary charisma, and Ferrus was more loyal to the Mechanicum than anything else. Perturabo, Angron, and Curze were all psychologically unstable. Magnus was too approving of the use of the Warp for anyone’s comfort. Horus the Steward considered too ambitious and disagreed with ideologically. Alpharius and Omegon were too shifty and he suspected they were hiding something. Corax, Khan, and Russ were all good leaders and loyal to the Imperium, but they were “front-line” leaders for whom the day-to-day tasks that would be required of them as Emperor would have driven them mad. They also would have been torn between the duties to the Imperium and their loyalties towards their own people, and would have been seen as a niche pick. Lorgar would have turned the Imperium into a theocracy. Vulkan was beloved, but had similar problems to Lorgar and his coronation would likely have alienated the eldar. Guilliman was too much of a perfectionist. Dorn was too harsh and blunt to function in politics. Fulgrim would have turned the Imperium into a self-aggrandizing horror show praising his own ego.

Sanguinius was the right combination of humble, charismatic, beloved, a capable bureaucrat, and perhaps just as importantly he had a similar vision for humanity as the Steward. Sanguinius was not a perfect choice, for example he hated Conrad Kurze and Mortarion and had his own personal flaws, but finding someone else who fit that criterion and was still qualified for the job in the teeming masses of humanity was probably an impossible task. Sanguinius was also well-liked enough that his coronation would not have driven any more of a wedge between the various primarchs than already existed. Even Horus would have supported putting Sanguinius on the throne, because it supported his pro-transhuman political narrative. It's kind of hard to argue for the purity of human form when your Emperor of Mankind has gigantic angel wings.

When Sanguinius died at the Battle of Eternity Gate the Steward was too shaken over the loss to even try thinking of another substitute (especially given that none of the other primarchs fit the bill) and wouldn't really start looking again for several millenia. At the same time, the primarchs as a whole mutually agreed in private that none of them were worthy candidates for the Golden Throne. By that point, many of the primarchs had their own personal black marks and those that didn’t felt guilty over not being able to prevent Sanguinus’ death. It was one of the only thing they ever agreed upon. Lion’s confidence was shattered by the betrayal of his brother Luther. Corax was devastated by the events of Azoth and what his self-percieved hubris had wrought upon his own legion. Russ felt he had no right to rule after what had been done at his command to the people of Fenris. Even Horus, ever ambitious, thought twice, having been shaken by the fact that the Chaos Gods had tried to tempt him and how it was his gamble that had almost led to the death of the Imperium.

In the years between the Battle of Terra and the Age of Apostasy, there were many who aspired to be crowned Emperor. Imperial history is littered with pretenders from throughout the Imperium that nominated themselves in aspiration to the throne and failed in whatever task the Steward gave to prove themselves. These legends are particularly popular farther out from Old Earth where they took on a folkloric and mythological aspect, equal parts folk legend and morality tale, that demonstrates a peculiar truth of the Imperium. Despite the laws on faith and presence of traditional religions, the century spanning, generation transcending politics of the high Imperial court have an undeniable quality of momentousness and immortality that have made the resulting tales akin to civil scripture.

Then, of course, came Vandire. Despite all the muttered curses and epithets posthumously directed at Vandire after the Imperial Civil War, there were actually no signs of the monster he would become. Vandire was known for his humility and kindness, and was a brilliant administrator, one of the best the Adeptus Administratum had ever seen, What’s more this charisma and talent were real, not just skin deep masking some deep pre-existing psychological problems. He was also well-liked by the eldar, having treated them fairly when the Administratum dealt with the Craftworlds and Exodite worlds, which made him a favorable choice from their point of view. Ironically, Vandire probably could have become an Emperor so great that Oscar would pale in comparison (which is what Oscar wanted) but he wasted his potential obsessing over what others thought of him than doing his job and letting his actions speak for themselves. What drove Vandire to madness was the pressure of running an entire galaxy and living up to the Steward’s example, and the fact that he believed that people were only listening to him because the Steward told them to.

After the Age of Apostasy and the ensuing Imperial Civil War, there was really only one acceptable candidate for Emperor: Oscar. For humanity this was obvious, Oscar was a hero to almost every world in the Imperium and everyone knew he would rule well and not abuse his power. He had six thousand years of history backing him up on this point. Inquisitor Sebastian Thor articulated this to Oscar very clearly in addition to the succession crisis issue when they argued over who got the Throne. The Steward pointed out that Thor had organized a galaxy-wide rebellion with little more than words, but Thor retorted that he was a firebrand, not a leader. Oscar had stopped a civil war just by showing up. Oscar insisted that humanity be free to choose its own leader, and to his surprise they had turned around and chosen him.

For the eldar the Steward was also the only acceptable candidate, but for reasons that are less obvious. To the eldar, Vandire was definitive proof that baseline humanity could not be trusted with power (the fact that the eldar were just as divided by the civil war and certain Craftworlds sent Vandire eldar bodyguards being quietly swept under the rug). Additionally, the short lifespan of humans compared to eldar means you would have Emperors turning over all the time, which would be ridiculous for consistency (by eldar standards) in Imperial policy. Oscar was a known quantity, and even though the safety of humanity was his first and foremost concern, his actions showed that he would treat the eldar fairly. He was also biologically immortal, which quelled any such worries about a succession crisis. Additionally, he was married to Isha, so putting Oscar on the throne basically meant putting Oscar and Isha on the throne, meaning eldar interests would always be represented in Imperial politics.

==== The First and Second Viskeon Wars ====

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The Viskeon are an extinct xenos race native to a planet on the very southern edge of the Segmentum Ultima right near the border with the Segmentum Tempestus. An asexual ectothermic reptilian or amphibian-like species (though with some similarities to Earth starfish), the Viskeon were known for their extreme regenerative abilities. Although they normally reproduced by budding, Viskeon regenerative capabilities were so extreme that a Viskeon cleaved into large enough pieces could regrow into four or five individuals.

The Viskeons are notable in that despite being capable of interstellar travel their military capabilities seemed downright primitive by most species’ standards. Viskeon lived by a strict honor code, which glorified face-to-face melee combat and saw most projectile weapons (ranging from bows and arrows to stubbers and lasguns) as dishonorable. The only ranged weapons the Viskeons ever used were thrown javelins and bladed discuses, which they typically used as skirmishing tools before closing to melee combat. Of course, when your skin is thick enough to blunt the impact of anything short of a bolter and your body can easily heal from such injuries, the use of ranged weapons might not seem immediately intuitive.

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The First Viskeon War happened roughly concurrent with the Fourth Black Crusade in M34. Spreading out in all directions from their homeworld on the southern edge of the galaxy, the Viskeon put several sectors in the Tempestus and Ultima Segmenta under siege. The Imperium, which had not known about the Viskeon and the few star systems they controlled, were caught off guard by the appearance of the Viskeon armada. They were used to attacks from Xenos Horribilis and Obscuras from the fringe, but not one this organized from a direction they didn’t expect.

All attempts at making contact and communicating with the Viskeon failed. They claimed they had been directed to attack the Imperium as part of a holy war demanded by their god, the Three-Eyed King. The Imperium initially struggled against the Viskeon, although they lacked ranged weaponry the Viskeon were able to regenerate from most glancing shots until they could close to melee combat (where they had the strength advantage over baseline humans and eldar) and killing them often made their numbers larger. Even shooting them with a bolter was a gamble, the resulting explosion could blow the Viskeon into small enough pieces that it wouldn’t regenerate, but it could also blow their limbs off and send them flying where one couldn’t see them, where they would regenerate into four more Viskeon.

However, as the Viskeon front line buckled, the weaknesses in their strategy became clear. The Viskeon had overextended themselves in order to attack multiple targets, hoping to overwhelm their opponents with shock tactics and surprise due to their smaller numbers, but this left them with few assets to reinforce holes in their formation. The Imperium also discovered the Viskeon’s ectothermic physiology and ruthlessly exploited it, hunting Viskeon down in the dead of night when they were at their most sluggish and least able to fight back. The Viskeon retreated back into the void from which they had come, and the Imperium were unable to track them down.

The Second Viskeon War happened roughly 800 years after the first, in M35. Once again the Viskeon set out from their unknown homeworld to wage war. The Viskeon moved out in a much tighter, directional formation instead of an omnidirectional campaign to prevent their front line from being overrun but surprisingly beyond this their military tactics had not changed to account for what they had learned in their first conflict with the Imperium. The Imperium, on the other hand, had learned from the encounter and adapted accordingly. This time, instead of Cadian Doctrine troops specializing in ranged lasgun and shuriken fire, the Imperium had brought in flamers and plasma weaponry to negate the Viskeon regeneration factor, with the Imperial defense spearheaded by the close-quarters, flamer specializing Salamanders, who had called for a Reformation of the Legion for this occasion.

The Second Viskeon War went much more in the Imperium’s favor, and this time the Imperium were able to dispatch forces after the Viskeon when the Viskeon forces routed rather than tending to their wounds. They tracked the Viskeon forces back to their home planets, a mere dozen in total, and burned them through a combination of orbital bombardment and ground operations. Today, the Viskeons survive only in the form of genetic samples collected by the Adeptus Biologis before their world was destroyed.

As the Adeptus Biologis and Imperial xenologists sifted through the rubble of the Viskeon worlds, trying to find an answer as to why a species would suddenly decide to attack an interstellar power they didn’t even know existed, they came upon a handful of startling discoveries. Based on Viskeon carvings and representational art of their god, the Three-Eyed King of the Viskeons was clearly the Warp entity known as [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Be’lakor|Be’lakor]], and from the remaining samples of Viskeon genetics and physiology they bear various marks of subtle but extreme artificial enhancement to produce their observed capabilities.

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==== The Pale Wasting and the Thexian Trade Empire ====

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The Thexian Trade Empire was an interstellar Xenos Independens empire located in the Ghoul Stars that controlled nearly sixty star systems at its height. The homeworld of the Thexians and capital of their empire were the Bloodmoons of Thex Prime, so named because of their intensely oxidized sediments causing them to appear bright red in color. When the Imperium first encountered the Thexians in the late years of the Great Crusade, they were shocked when Thexian ships sought them out and tried to open diplomatic channels and trade agreements with them. Previously during the Great Crusade, the vast majority of xenos races the Imperium had encountered had either tried to kill them on sight or had either come to a spoken or unspoken understanding to stay out of each other’s way. Even the Eldar, when they had sought out an alliance to free Isha some years earlier, had done so in a way the Imperium could understand, cautiously and half-heartedly out of fear that one side was going to break the other’s shaky trust. The fact that the Thexians had willingly approached them with apparently amicable intent baffled the Imperium.

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In the end, the Imperium decided to neither declare war nor ally with the Thexians but kept them at arm’s length. The Thexians were considered not worth trying to wipe out for a variety of reasons. First, Thexian territory was considered less than ideal for human occupation. The Thexian Trade Empire was primarily located in the coreward front of the Ghoul Stars, areas which the Thexians had no problems inhabiting but humanity less so. The Ghoul Stars were also on the far side of the galaxy from the Segmentum Solar and were almost outside of the range of the Astronomican, making any attempts to hold them expensive and inefficient. Secondly, the Thexians made for a good buffer state. Much like the Eldar, Tarellians and later the Tau, the Thexians were much better neighbors than the vast majority of alternatives as they could actually be diplomatically reasoned with, unlike the vast majority of xenos races encountered during the Great Crusade. And finally, the Thexians quite frankly were not a threat to mankind. There was a heated disagreement over the existence of human populations on Thexian worlds, but the Thexians surprised the Imperium by being willing to relocate the majority of the human population on their worlds to Imperial territory, in exchange for trade agreements with the Imperium that is. If anything, the problem was the Thexians seemed too nice, which set off the Imperium’s sense of paranoia immensely.

However, the Thexians' friendliness covered up a more self-serving motivation. The Thexians, as a species, were motivated by a species-wide case of greed. The Thexians were an extremely long-lived species and reproduced very infrequently. Therefore, from an evolutionary perspective, greed made sense. Many species hoard resources for hibernation or periods of want, and if you live for thousands of years you can hoard quite a lot of resources, enough to let you survive even the longest lean periods until the next opportunity at reproduction came. The Thexians were so friendly and interested in trade because trade was one of the best ways for an individual to increase one’s holdings, and people were more willing to trade with a friendly face than a backstabbing or violent one. And the Thexians could afford to be friendly, for few unarmed or unaugmented beings could harm a Thexian in their true form. However, this did not mean the Thexians were soft. They were interested in amassing wealth and power, and when it suited them they were capable of oiliness that would make a Void Born proud. Nor were Thexians unambitious, power plays between Thexians were not uncommon, though they usually took the form of displays of subtle power behind the scenes or hostile takeovers of assets than open warfare.

The Thexians were a vaguely chiropteran species like the Khrave, though unlike the Khrave they did not spin webs and fed on flesh and blood rather than minds. The Thexians were a polymorphic race, capable of shifting into one of several different forms depending on their need. First and foremost was warform, a large, quadrupedal bat-like form capable of limited flight, covered in a leathery, squamous hide, and armed with fierce talons and massive fangs, which was believed to be the Thexian’s true form. There was flightform, a lighter-than-air shape somewhat similar to warform but with larger wings, a smaller body, and an almost ethereal appearance. There was thoughtform capable of emitting bolts of Warp lightning from its semi-corporeal shape. And perhaps most importantly among the myriad forms the Thexians were capable of taking was diplomacyform, their preferred shape when interacting with non-Thexian races, which resembled strangely androgynous humanoids that did not quite resemble either human or eldar.

Thexian society was organized into groups called aedes, feudal households comprised of a small ruling number of Thexian adults known as the Thexian Elite, their material wealth, other alien species that had sworn fealty to the Thexian Elite, and their immature offspring who had not amassed enough of a horde to become independent yet. Because they reproduced so slowly, less than 15% of the population of the Thexian Trade Empire was composed of Thexians, with the rest representing vassal populations of dozens of minor xenos species including some quasi-legal human populations that were missed by the resettlement or were the descendants of refugees into Thexian space.

Approximately during the latter half of M34, the Thexian Trade Empire became afflicted with a condition that became known as the Pale Wasting. The Pale Wasting exaggerated the normal Thexian tendency towards greed to extremes, to the point where it became an obsession. The Thexians began hoarding in earnest to attempt to sate this craving, throwing out all reason or subtlety, but no matter how much they hoarded they could never get enough. Eventually, the affliction developed into a physical craving for sustenance as well, turning their bodies growing gaunt and emaciated as they resorted to guzzling blood and shoving gore-filled chunks into their mouth in an effort to quell their bottomless hunger.

It is generally thought that the Pale Wasting was Chaotic in nature, given its corruptive effects and mental deterioration, though those that think so debate whether it was the work of Khorne (because of the hunger for blood and gore), Slaanesh (because of the excess), Nurgle (because it acted like a plague), Tzeentch (because of its strange nature) or all four Ruinous Powers together. If it was, it is possible the Pale Wasting could have been transmitted to the Thexians via the Loxotl, whom the Thexians had some contact with despite the warnings of the Imperium. However, it is not out of the possibility that the Pale Wasting was caused by contact with C’tan/Necron technology or some form of C’tan vampirism.

While humans and other xenos species were immune to the Pale Wasting, they could easily act as carriers transmitting the disease between the Thexian Elite. From there, the Pale Wasting could easily reverse the roles, corrupting the vassals underneath Thexian fealty through their connection to the Thexian Elite. When the Thexian Elite finally shrieked their declaration to go to war, millions of brainwashed thralls responded to their call. The result was all out war between the Thexians and their neighbors, resulting in a massive military response from the Imperium in which more than a dozen Adeptus Astartes chapters were wiped out in the fighting. In the end, as the corruption and Thexian Nightmare Engines wreaked havoc the Thexians and the Pale Wasting could only be stopped by mass-Exterminatus tactics and a scorched earth policy, leaving numerous Dead Worlds across the Ghoul Stars including the sixty or so worlds held by the Thexian Trade Empire.

A few Thexians survived, those immune to the Pale Wasting. Some fought alongside the Imperium, warforms tearing into infected kin with ferocity and thoughtforms banishing Thexian thralls with blasts of Warp lightning. Others fled the conflict, hitching rides on the starships of the Nicassar and hiding where they could. Today, through various quirks of history, most remaining Thexians can be found under the Imperial aegis, mostly as diplomats, traders, advisors, and occasionally members of government. Their numbers are spread so thin that members of the species can go without seeing another one of their kind for more than a century. Some have tried to live outside the Imperium, setting up small fiefdoms that are pale imitations of the aedes once seen throughout the Thexian Trade Empire A few corrupted Thexians afflicted with the Pale Wasting are also still in existence, but thankfully like their uncorrupted counterparts are rare.

The Pale Wasting had several long-term effects on galactic politics. Perhaps the greatest long-term effects of the Pale Wasting was that it helped set the stage for the Imperium to start admitting other races into the Imperium. When debate was raised over the possibility of admitting other races into the Imperium, the Thexians were a prime argument by those in favor of admission. The Thexians had been an advanced, relatively friendly xenos empire, and (in the minds of the pro-Admission advocates after nearly two thousand years of hindsight and nostalgia) the Imperium had left them out in the cold. Such a policy had not only let the Thexians get corrupted by the Pale Wasting, but created a massive interstellar threat that had cost the Imperium a significant amount of lives and resources to contain. If the Thexian Trade Empire were still alive today, they would have been classified Xenos Familiaris with little difficult and would have been easily admitted into the Imperium, so long as efforts were made to prevent Thexian ambition from subverting the functioning of the Imperium, and none of this would have happened.

The second impact of the Pale Wasting was perhaps more insidious. The Pale Wasting wiped out most of the conventional life in the Ghoul Stars, though it soon became a lawless hellhole filled with little respect for law and order or the conventional laws of physics. Although outside the light of the Astronomican, for many millennia the Space Marine chapters such as the Death Spectres stationed on the edge of the Ghoul Stars did a good job of defending the Imperium’s borders from any threat that might come from the Ghoul Stars. Unfortunately, the northeastern galaxy and the Ghoul Stars in particular had once been the heartland of the Necrontyr Star Empire nearly sixty six million years ago, and the mass extermination of life in the Ghoul Stars meant that there was little opposition and a sizeable buffer from any external power when the surface of many of these “Dead” Worlds cracked open and thousands of Necron warriors rose from beneath the earth in mechanical unlife.

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=== 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 they 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. 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 struggling to keep pace with tyranid hyper-evolution. Vast armies of Mega-Gargants, in numbers not seen since 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====

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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.

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 killed all the daemons which tried to escape back into the warp. 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- it was close to death, 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 kill it. 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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=== Minor Historical Events ===

====982.M31, An Awkward Reminder====
Imperial military assets are put on guard by the sudden appearance of an ancient Webway gate in the Sol system out of the interstellar blackness. Both humans and eldar are confused as to the significance of this event, until the Harlequins find mention of an Old Empire project to launch an invasion of the Sol system via a Trojan horse webway gate. The gate appears to have been constructed on a planet over a hundred lightyears away at some point in late M24 and fired at the Sol system at a fraction of the speed of light, with the Old Empire military leadership expecting it to reach Sol some eight thousand years later, apparently not realizing [[Fall of the Eldar|how much the galaxy would change in the interim]]. This awkward realization suddenly turns to horror when the Imperium realizes that while the Old Eldar Empire may no longer be around to implement their plan, [[Anal_Circumference|there is nothing stopping the Crone Eldar from doing the same]], and the Ilios gate, as it is come to be known, is quickly shut down and moved elsewhere.

====432.M32, A Lover’s Quarrel====
''“I sometimes try to reassure myself that we live in a [[lulz|sane, just, reasonable universe]]. Then I remember that we once lost a planet because [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Lady_Malys|some Crone bitch]] [[grimdark|was going through relationship issues]].”''<br>
-- Imperial Colonel Ismerelda Guerregia, circa 400.M33

The galaxy’s longest on-again, off-again relationship, that of [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Asdrubael_Vect|Asdrubael Vect of Commorragh]] and [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Lady_Malys|Lady Aurelia Malys of the Crone Eldar]] of Shaa-Dome, ends unexpectedly when Malys receives a message from Vect telling her that their relationship is over. The relationship between the two had been deteriorating for some years prior to that, rumor has it due to Vect and Malys’ relationship becoming strained over Malys’ attempts to convert Vect to Chaos, but for Vect to abruptly declare their relationship over without warning stuns Malys and sends her into a rage. Only Vect would have the audacity to tell the Daemon Queen to her face “it’s not you, it’s him”.

In response to Vect’s message, Lady Malys rampages across Commorragh, determined to drag Vect out of his hole and confront him fact to face. She easily tracks down his refuge, a fortified bunker beneath one of his dwellings in Upper Commorragh. There was no way for Vect to hide, for as Vect’s former lover Malys knew exactly where Vect was likely to run (or, at least, so she thought) and few Dark Eldar were willing to stand between the Daemon Queen and the target of her wrath. In her emotionally compromised state, Malys’ normally razor-sharp mind is dulled with rage, failing to notice the ease at which she had managed to break into Vect’s hidden sanctum or the fact that resistance within Vect’s fortress was surprisingly lax. Malys finds Vect on his throne, surrounded by his harem of eldar and xenos slaves. When confronted, Vect is surprisingly remorseful of his actions, presenting Malys with a wrapped gift merely labeled “For my sweetheart”.

When Vect moves to open the gift, the containment field keeping its contents in stasis breaks down, unleashing the portable black hole held within. Malys only survives by slamming the door to Vect’s throne room behind her and allowing the black hole to consume the entire throne room before dissipating into Hawking radiation. In the moments before the box was opened, her rage had lifted enough for her to realize Vect would have never allowed her to get so close given recent events, as well as the fact that the being calling itself “Vect” had let slip numerous tells indicating that it was not her beloved Asdrubael. “Vect” was later found to be a slave surgically altered to resemble Vect and given access to the harem, having no idea it was meant to be a sacrificial lamb for Vect’s ex-lover or the nature of the “gift” Vect intended for her. Vect’s throne and entire harem are destroyed, a price Vect considers worth paying to keep Malys off his back. The actual Vect would not reappear until months later. Rumor has it he was on the other side of Commorragh enjoying a drink and watching the show unfold. No one in Commoragh was naive or foolish enough to actually believe him dead. Nevertheless, in the moment, Malys’ sheer rage at the situation, now compounded by the fact that Vect had the audacity to try and assassinate her, had yet to be sated.

[[Exterminatus|An entire Imperial system burns]] [[Rape|at the hands of Crone Eldar in service to Lady Malys]] before Malys manages to calm down. It would be years before Malys and Vect were on speaking terms again. Although the ways in which their relationship has periodically ended have varied, sometimes with Vect dumping Malys, sometimes with Malys dumping Vect, sometimes the two mutually agreeing they need to see other people, the fallout from this breakup was particularly notable.

====M33 (subjectively), the Melee of the Impossible Mountain====
As the tides of the deep Warp continually shift, they lead to the rediscovery of Excalpurnia, the Impossible Mountain, in the Chaos Wastes, a location thought to be lost for a thousand years said to have a font of unimaginable power at its center. As word of this discovery spreads, the Impossible Mountain becomes a free-for-all, as daemons from all four gods battle each other for control of the source of power at its heart. Perhaps the most surprising participant in this contest is [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Be'lakor|Be’lakor]], intensely motivated by a desire to obtain any source of power not already claimed by one of the Big Four, tearing through Khornate, Slaaneshi, Nurglite, and Tzeentchian daemons alike to get his claws on the prize.

Eventually, only two real contenders are left for the prize, Be’lakor and Skalaban’thrax, a Bloodthirster of Khorne. In terms of raw power, Be’lakor and Skalaban’thrax are evenly matched, but Be’lakor knows the Bloodthirster outclasses him in stamina and martial prowess and, if allowed to, will simply outlast Be’lakor before landing the killing blow. Be’lakor wins the fight by tricking the Skalaban’thrax into charging him before shoving the Bloodthirster into a warp portal to [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Blanks_and_the_Pariah_Gene|Pluto]], catching the Bloodthirster in a banishment loop until his will breaks and he forfeits the contest.

Although smug from his victory over the Bloodthirster, Be’lakor’s hopes are dashed when he realizes what the prize of the Impossible Mountain is: [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Drach'nyen|the daemon sword Drach’nyen]], finally coming to light after being cast into the Warp by the last act of the kinebrach warsmith Ra-Ham-Be. Furthermore, Be'lakor in his rage recognizes the hand of the Architect of Fates in this turn of events, clouding his sight just enough to let him see an unclaimed well of power but not letting him see enough detail to realize it's a source of power he doesn't want. Recognizing Drach’nyen for the white elephant that it is, Be’lakor concedes defeat, allowing Drach’nyen to be taken by Ka’junhada, a minor Bloodletter of Khorne. Ka’junhada is found dead a (subjective) month later, his bloodlust not sufficient enough to quench the thirst of the daemon sword. And so Drach'nyen is set loose on the galaxy once more, albeit in a different form.

====169.M35, The Malalian Heresy====
A group of Crone Eldar discover the true nature of Malal as a fifth (technically second), independent Chaos god. Such a fact was not exactly uncommon knowledge among the Crone Eldar, however, the fact that the Crones in this case responded to this information by renouncing their allegiance to all other gods and worshipping Malal exclusively was quite unusual. It is thought that the eldar in this case were nihilistic “true” Nurglite Crone Eldar, which meant this discovery resonated with their worldview and they were already in the right mindset to act on this information rather than just dismiss it as most other Crones would. These Crone Eldar painted their faces white and black, preaching that Malal was the one true god (or at least, the god to be placed before all other gods) and that he was their savior through their destruction. The movement gained popularity, with billions flocking to their banner.

This notion was quite franky regarded as the highest levels of blasphemy to most levels of Crone society, albeit for different reasons behind the different sects. Khornates considered it blasphemy to place Khorne’s vizier above Khorne, Tzeentchians inherited their patron’s animus for the anti-god that had existed since the dawn of recorded history, and Chaos Undivided eldar considered it heretical to claim that any gods worthy of worship existed beyond the main four. Even Slaaneshi and Nurglite eldar joined in, Slaaneshis likely because [[That Guy|they relished in the opportunity to bring anyone spite]] and Nurglites possibly because Nurgle feared retribution from a reformed Malal for what happened at the end of the War in Heaven (as well as the fact that Nimina and the Conservators were very vocal about how heretical the notion of worshipping someone other than Nurgle was compared to what would be expected of a Nurglite) As a result, persecution of this heresy garnered an abnormal amount of cooperation from followers of the big four.

The full force of the Crone Worlds and Shaa-Dome was brought down on the movement, but the fighting was not as easy as would be anticipated. Although greatly outnumbered, the individual Malal cultists seemed to have the strength of ten eldar, not to mention the assistance of the Malalic daemon prince Apep. At one point even Skarbrand was summoned and depopulated a continent-sized region of a layer of Shaa-Dome before being banished. In the end, it was the orthodoxy’s sheer numbers along with the summoning of daemons that turned the tide, Malal had not regained enough strength to form daemons yet whereas that daemons of the big four were so angered by the rebellion of the outcast god the Crones could summon them for a song. Hundreds of billions are killed in the resulting conflict before the surviving heretics are defeated and put to the sword.

====???.M38, the Raid of Bor’kan====
In an early encounter between the Tau Empire and the Dark Eldar, a raid by Archon Klax on the Sept world of Bor’kan takes thousands of Tau and Poctroon slaves. Sending a communication receivable by Tau technology, Klax offers to release the slaves in exchange for a significant amount of ransom. Still naïve to the ways of the Dark Eldar, the Tau Empire pays the sum, only for Klax to send another communication openly laughing at the Ethereal council’s actions and broadcasting the torture of dozens of prisoners. In response, Tau and Poctroon engineers spend several months building a 0.8 km unmanned projectile out of modified unused Poctroon designs for an interstellar sleeper ship and launch it at the apparent location of the transmission at one-third of the speed of light. Several years later the ship strikes the moon of a seemingly uninhabited gas giant several lightyears beyond Tau space with enough force to leave a crater in the planet’s surface kilometers deep still visible when the Tau colonize the system centuries later. Although the attack fails to kill Klax, it damages his operation enough that Klax is not heard from for several decades.

====970.M41, Reactivation of Ouakronos====
The Imperial world of Neo-Alexandria is invaded by Necrons of the Sarnekh Dynasty led by Thaszar the Invincible at the orders of the Silent King. Unbeknownst to its inhabitants, Neo-Alexandria is really the Necron World Engine Ouakronos, millions of years of asteroids and debris being drawn into its gravity well leaving it deceptively caked in kilometers of soil. Covered in rich regolith, the planet was terraformed by humans during the Dark Age of Technology, with none the wiser as to its true nature. While the Imperial military above engage the Necron forces, oblivious to their true goal, Thaszar descends below the planet’s surface and reactivates the World Engine. Great fissures open up across the planet, cyclopean engines jutting forth from the layers of earth, before Thaszar points Neo-Alexandria at Mandragora and engages its inertialess drive. Not being protected by external shielding or artificial gravity, the planet’s soil, atmosphere, and inhabitants are stripped away by the acceleration by the time Ouakronos arrives at its destination.

== Imperial Governmental Structure ==

[[Image:1485614099098.jpg|thumb|Emperor Oscar of the Glorious Imperium and its people uncounted, Consort of the All-Mother and her most favoured champion, last of the Golden Men, founder of the Imperium, bane of gods, unifier of all civilized peoples and Defender of the Realm. Not as gold-colored as most people think.]]

The Imperium is vast and covers a little over a million inhabited worlds of humans and xenos and the styles of governance of these worlds varies greatly from one planet to another. Represented under the ever watchful Aquila can be found meritocracies, stratocracies, bureaucracies, plutocracies, oligarchies, theocracies, monarchies, aristocracies, democracies and many others. All of these are local systems usually confined to a single solar system or planet or even a nations on those planets.

The Imperium itself is an autocracy under the rule of the Emperor who operates mostly via benevolent indifference. As a general rule the Imperium does not care what you do so long as you pay the tithe and don't rock the boat.

The only time when the Imperium does care is when one of it's few rules is broken to a degree that they can't pretend to not see it any more. The rules being:

# Pay the tithe
# Don't worship the gods of Chaos
# Don't worship the Emperor
# No militarized religious institutions
# No open warfare between member worlds of the Imperium

So long as these few rules are followed the Imperium does not care. If those rules are broken or the boat is excessively rocked the Imperium suddenly does care and that is terrible because it has no sense of proportional escalation and will confiscate your planet.

Although the Emperor officially rules in practice the Royal Couple spend most of their time touring the Imperium overseeing and inspecting. The day to day running of the Imperium is done by the High Lords of the Imperium who reside on the Holy Planet of Old Earth, know as Terra to the Mechanicum and affiliated institutions.

The High Lords of the Imperium are:

*[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#Master of the Administratum Irthu Haemotalion|The Master of the Administratum]]
*The Inquisitorial Representative (currently Hector Rex)
*[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#Fabricator-General Oud Oudia Raskian|The Fabricator-General of the Adeptus Mechanicus]]
*[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#Grand Provost Marshal Aveliza Drachmar|The Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites]]
*[[Nobledark Imperium Writing#The Saga of Fedor Jiao|Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators]]
*[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Master_of_the_Adeptus_Astra_Telepathica.2C_Astronomican.2C_Schola_Psykana_and_the_Black_Ships_Lady_Ina_Kissa|The Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Astronomican, Schola Psykana and the Black Ships]]
*Grand Headmaster of Rhetor Imperia and Schola Progenium
*[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Lord_Commander_Militant_of_the_Imperial_Army_Lukas_Bastonne|Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Army (ground forces)]]
*[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Lady_High_Admiral_of_the_Imperial_Navy_Merelda_of_House_Pereth|Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Army (space forces)]]
*[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Spokesman_for_the_Collective_Synod_of_the_Imperium_Walden_of_the_Aaldenbergs|Spokesman for the Collective Synod of the Imperium]]
*[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#The_Speaker_for_the_Merchant_Navy_and_Rogue_Traders_Abdul_Golberg|The Speaker for the Merchant Navy and Rogue Traders]]

[[Image:Nobledark Aquila.jpg|thumb|left|250px|The Imperial Aquila, with the twin heads of the Eagle and the Phoenix, symbolizing the union between humankind and Eldar. This is merely the most common variant, with the colors and even to some degree the shape of the Aquila varying based on organization and world.]]

The High Lords of the Imperium were originally set up during the days of the Unification of Old Earth as the task of ruling was becoming too time consuming even for the superhuman Warlord, as he was known at the time. The Warlord's long term hope was that they would eventually be able to replace him entirely and he could step down as the temporary immortal ruler of the masses. His short term goal was to get a bit of free time to learn how to socialize.

As the years wore on it became obvious that humanity on the galactic scale would always need one man of supreme competence to set precedents for the High Lords to follow. The rank of Emperor was created but not occupied by the Warlord who instead became the Steward and would wait for such an individual to arise. In his mind humanity should be ruled by humanity, not be an artificial construct of a failed and half forgotten Empire.

After Goge Vandire was appointed Emperor, screwed everything up and was promptly executed the Steward was bullied by Inquisitor Sebastian Thor and the demands of the masses into taking the role of Emperor. He was not particularly happy about this and at first refused until Inquisitor Thor pointed out that by the end of the day one of them would be sitting on that gaudy old chair and out of the two of them one of them would die of old age eventually and then another civil war this time of succession would almost certainly ensue.

With the exception of the position of the Inquisitorial Representative (which is a ten-year rotating position to make sure the High Lords have the best expert for whatever crisis is facing the Imperium on hand and no one Inquisitor gains too much power), the High Lords of Terra are all human. This is because Eldar live for thousands of years and no one wants to be stuck with one person in the same position for thousands of years. Of course, this doesn’t stop every High Lord and numerous officials beneath them having at least one Seer on their payroll giving advice and wisdom. This benefits the Eldar as well, as it allows them to influence Imperial government without putting themselves directly in the crosshairs. The idea of non-human, non-Eldar High Lords has never come up, seeing as the Imperium has only been officially admitting other species for the last 4,000 years and other species make up only about 1% of the Imperium’s total population. Though given the Tau’s current political ambitions it’s likely that this point is going to be brought up in the near future.

=== Xenos Classifications ===

As the Great Crusade made its way across the stars, back before the Eldar joined and the Imperium was merely the Imperium of Man, the nascent Imperium encountered numerous forms of sentient alien life. Some were non-aggressive towards humanity but merely wished to be left alone, something the Steward was more than willing to oblige. The point of the Great Crusade was to strengthen and unite humanity, not start a hundred petty wars that could weaken humanity in the future via a death of a thousand cuts. Other races, like the Kinebrach or the Eldar of Colchis, were interested in interacting with humanity on peaceful terms, either coexisting as equals or acting as trading partners. The Steward allowed this with some reservation, though he probably told the Xenos in no uncertain terms if he ever found out they were antagonizing or abusing humanity his response would be swift and vengeful. And still others, such as the Nephilem and the Laer, were just so destructive and antagonistic that they simply could not coexist with humanity and had to be destroyed. Any Xenos that would enslave or prey upon proud humanity, and as it often happened other meeker sentients alongside them, would be put to the sword.

It is these types of interactions that led to the modern Xenos classifications that we know today. Today, the Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition recognizes three major types of sentient alien life:

'''Xenos Familiaris''' – Literally “familiar Xenos” in this case. Used to refer to any Xenos species that is a member of the Imperium. Eldar, Tau, Tarellans, and Demiurg are all representatives of this category. Ironically enough humans also fall into this category if used by a non-human Imperial citizen, as the term essentially means “species that are not my own that are part of the Imperium” as opposed to a human-specific term.

'''Xenos Independens''' – Xenos races that are rational enough that they can negotiate with the Imperium, but for whatever reason are not part of it. Some engage in heavily restricted trade with the Imperium (usually through Rogue Traders, as the Imperium likes to use free trade with the rest of the Imperium as a selling point for minor races to join). Others are aloof and territorial and may have even fought minor skirmishes with the Imperium, but are generally smart enough to sue for peace before things escalate beyond the point of no return. The Q’orl and the Jokaero represent the aggressive and affiliative extremes of this category, respectively. Ordo Xenos Inquisitors like to monitor Xenos Independens like a hawk, as they are ideal tools for Chaos to subvert and use against the Imperium. Most modern Xenos Familiaris (with the exception of humans, eldar, kinebrach, and a few others) were treated as Xenos Independens prior to M36, when the Demiurg were inducted as the first official non-human, non-eldar member state of the Imperium. Interestingly, the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos|Necron Star Empire]] was in this category at one point when the Imperium thought they could be negotiated with until the Silent King started getting unreasonable.

'''Xenos Horrificus''' – Hostile xenos. Xenos that are aggressive, destructive, cannot be negotiated with, or have express aims to make total war upon the Imperium, and therefore should be eradicated whenever possible. A declaration of Xeno Horrificus is essentially an all-out biological declaration of war on the species. Orks, tyranids, Crone Eldar, Rak’gol, Slaugh, and Barghesi, among others, all fall into this category.

There is also a fourth category recognized, though not commonly used, by the Order Xenos to refer to Xenos that the Imperium knows little to nothing about: '''Xenos Obscuras'''. Most of the time this classification is used to refer to long-dead races that are of little to no threat to the Imperium, though sometimes it will turn out the species is not as dead as everyone once thought. This doesn't stop entertainment media from using it to explain Inquisitorial heroes finding knowledge of rarely-glimpsed xenos of rumor. If the Inquisition decides that rumors of a xenos species have enough truth to warrant a classification, it is listed as Independens (Pending) or Horrificus (Pending).

Although some Imperial citizens mistake abhumans for Xenos, there is actually a very clear line between the two. If an organism is an Earth-based lifeform originally descended from humanity, it is an abhuman, no matter what it looks like. Anything else is a Xenos, with few possible edge cases concerning ancient extraction of biological samples form earth species by Xenos later developing on other worlds.

{| class="wikitable"
!|Xenos Familiaris
!|Xenos Independens
!|Xenos Horrificus
|-
|style="width: 33%" |'''Humanity''' (including abhumans)<br> '''Eldar''' ([[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#The_Craftworlds|Craftworld]] and Exodite)<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Tau_Empire|Tau]]''' (joined M39)<br> '''Demiurg''' (joined M36)<sup>1</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Watchers_in_the_Dark|Watchers in the Dark]]''' (joined M36)<sup>2</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Kinebrach|Kinebrach]]''' (joined M36)<sup>3</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Tarellians|Tarellians]]''' (joined M38)<br> '''Nicassar''' (date unknown, M36-37?)<br> '''Kroot''' (joined M39)<sup>4</sup><br> '''Poctroon''' (joined M39)<sup>5</sup><br> '''Vespid''' (joined M39)<sup>5</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Diasporex|Diasporex]]'''<sup>6</sup><br> '''Enoulians'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Pale_Wasting_and_the_Thexian_Trade_Empire|Thexians]]'''<sup>7</sup><br>
|style="width: 33%" |'''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Hrud|Hrud]]'''<br> '''Jokaero'''<br> [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Saruthi|'''Saruthi''' (the Sane)]]<br> '''Q'orl'''<br> '''Thyrrus'''<br> '''Zoats'''<br>
|style="width: 33%" |'''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Da_Orkz|Orks]]'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#The_Crone_World_Eldar|Croneworld Eldar]]'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Dark_Eldar|Dark Eldar]]'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Necron_Star_Empire|Necrons]]'''<sup>8</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Tyranids|Tyranids]]'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Rangdan_Xenocides_and_the_Slaugth|Slaugth]]'''<sup>9</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Rak'gol|Rak'gol]]'''<br> '''Barghesi'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Medusae|Medusae]]'''<br> [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Saruthi|'''Saruthi''' (the Broken)]]<br>'''†Khrave'''<br>'''†Laer'''<br> '''†Nephilem'''<br> '''†[[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_First_and_Second_Viskeon_Wars|Viskeon]]'''<br> '''†Yu'Vath'''<br>
|}
† - Considered extinct by the Imperium<br>
<sup>1</sup> - First non-human, non-eldar species to officially join the Imperium. Offered alliance in recognition of the great help they gave the Imperium during the Age of Apostasy and the Imperial Civil War <br>
<sup>2</sup> - Were allied with the Dark Angels as early as the Great Crusade, officially didn't exist until Imperium began admitting other species in M36<br>
<sup>3</sup> - Were a protectorate of the Interex until M36, at which point they obtained separate representation <br>
<sup>4</sup> - Originally allied with the Tau, carried over when the Tau joined the Imperium. The Kroot technically don't see themselves as part of the Imperium, rather the Imperium are "preferred clients", but given they dislike Chaos as much as the rest of the Imperium does and the Necrons and tyranids don't hire mercenaries the difference is almost academic.<br>
<sup>5</sup> - Originally allies of the Tau Empire, still associated by proxy<br>
<sup>6</sup> - Technically a union of multiple species, including humans. Treated as distinct because it's unclear what species, if any, is in charge.<br>
<sup>7</sup> - Formed a Xenos Independens empire called the Thexian Trade Empire with relatively good relations with the Imperium until its destruction in M34 due to the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Pale_Wasting_and_the_Thexian_Trade_Empire|Pale Wasting]]. Inducted as Xenos Familiaris when surviving representatives were found.<br>
<sup>8</sup> - Were Independens until M40 and the war sparked by the return of the Silent King, still some exceptions like the Gidrim (Nemesor Zahndrekh) and Solemnace (Trazyn the Infinite) Dynasties who are mostly Independens.<br>
<sup>9</sup> - Declared extinct multiple times

=== Member States ===

Most of the worlds encountered by the Imperium during the Great Crusade had greatly devolved during the Age of Strife, and ended up having to be directly administered by the Imperial Government and the Administratum. However, several national entities, including other technologically advanced Survivor civilizations, the Eldar Craftworlds, and several other species of xenos joined the Imperium whilst being interstellar powers in their own right. In these cases, these entities joined as semi-autonomous member states, granting them almost complete political and industrial autonomy in exchange for following the Imperium's few universal rules.

For more information see [[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States|Member States]]

== Forces of The Imperium ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Imperial Forces]]

== Imperial Society and Culture ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Imperial Society and Culture]]

== Notable People ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Notable People]]

=== The Primarchs ===
See [[Nobledark Imperium Primarchs]]

== The Galactic Pantheon ==

'''The Emperor of Mankind''' - "Is not a god" according to his own words when asked. Nevertheless, even if the Emperor is not a god, he is undoubtedly the most powerful champion of humankind, and the Men of Gold were by far the closest thing humankind ever made to Warp Gods. Though he is not a god, he is the mightiest of mortals and more powerful than many purely supernatural entities, similar to Hercules among the old legends of ancient Greece on Old Earth. There are rumors that the Emperor has grown even more powerful, or more skilled, with age, though for the safety of the Imperium the Emperor has never been put on the front lines where these rumors have been put to the test.

'''Isha''' - Embodied in the Eldar Macha, the all-mother and Eternal Empress of the Imperial dominion. Millennia ago she was the fertility goddess of the Eldar pantheon, she opposed Khaine and in the fall did all she could to save the Eldar people, though she was herself taken captive by Nurgle. Through theses valiant efforts and the rule of ages hence the Matron goddess is said to have gained a regality and might that surpasses her old self. She is much occupied by the maintenance of spiritual health at the widest level for the imperium, vying against Slaanesh for whatever fragments of Eldar souls she can salvage, and affording the Imperium's peoples a dominion within the realm of souls somewhat more hospitable than the wilds of the warp.

'''Cegorach''' - The laughing god of the Eldar, also survivor of the fall, now endless jester of the galactic court and master of the Dark Carnival. An involved player of the Great Game, he is supposedly an invaluable asset to the Imperium in the intrigues of immortal beings. To all the worlds of the Imperium he is a figure of myth and folktale, and any real deed is indistinguishable from pure fabrication.

'''[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#The_Void_Dragon|The Void Dragon]]''' - At some point this being was a self-aware expression of nested complexity, or perhaps a very long bolt of lightning, but in the millions of years since then it has gained first an indomitable body of living femto-machines, and now a significant warp presence. It is curious, and eccentric, and it wants to experiment with the warp on a grand scale. It seems to have some appreciation of beings more finite and fragile than it, but it is infinite and hard, and it remains to be seen what god it wishes to be. It it also the Omnissiah, and it is fond of its cult, and finds it a perfect instrument.

'''The Nightbringer''' - This one wishes to be death. It has slain countless species, for ages, across light-years of space and centuries of time. It has done so by stellar radiation and by scythe, and it found that as it killed it's legend and spite proceeded it, until it's own lifeless visage was so known and feared that it cast the Nightbringer its own perfect double in the warp. The great murderer withstood even the full and unilateral hatred of the Necron Star Empire and came away not in shards, but as a great battered undead husk and accompanying splinters. Now awakened, the reaper wishes to regain his mighty warp presence and to restore his form. To this end he embeds lesser shards in mortal hosts, saddled with mortal personas to better domineer them to his will, and sets them to sow death in his image.

'''The Deceiver''' - As consumate a player of games as Cegorach, the liesmith, avatar of duplicity, reveled in the peak of the Necron empire's golden age, happy among the chrome aristocrats and toasted as the diplomat of living gods. He is reviled by the Necrons now, and shattered beyond assembly, but the presence of this being persists despite itself. Its incoherent shards still long for subtlety, for veils of words, and find themselves in the flesh of mortals of high stature as best they can. What plot the Deceiver pursues is unknown, perhaps unknowable, but its shards are of a conspiratorial and avaricious sort, with no favor among the living.

'''Gork & Mork''' - The supreme brutes might be thought unchanged in the eons of their long lives. Not so, for unlike the weaklings of Materium, with each blow to the head they become more cleverer.

'''Tzeentch''' - Created alongside Malal, he was an early warp god of boundless creativity, writing new rules of sorcery and new beings of thought into existence as quickly as Malal could deny them. In the original duality, formed from and shaped by the Old Ones, the warp and sorcery were ultimately manageable and illuminating forces. In subsequent eons this order has changed, Tzeentch has changed, and sorcery has become a bleak art of insane rituals and hateful acts. Where once he sung a song of creation, he is now a delirious, deceptive crow of plots. Tzeentch maintains power bases across the galaxy, as he has since time immemorial, but the true might of his cult is in the twisting redoubts of the Webway and the Warp, in colleges and orders of fell and maddening arts.

'''Malal''' - Originally the 'destroyer' of the Warp, be he denial or the thought of mortality, Malal swept up the multifarious gibbering creations of Tzeentch and met them with their nullifying opposites, or talked them apart with what they weren't. He was supplanted by Khorne after the War in Heaven, and it seemed like impassioned, honorable, involved destruction would better suit the minds of the galaxy than Malal's own nihilistic void of denial.

'''Nurgle''' - In the spring of the galaxy Nurgle was created between Tzeentch and Malal, to me maintainer, shaper, and preserver, until such time as Malal might rightly end a story or thought or thing. In the wake of the War in Heaven, as the triumvirate adjusted to the new galactic order, Nurgle began the slow slide into malignance that also afflicted Tzeentch. Nurgle still ultimately serves his role as preserver, but where once in his garden he strove to safeguard against Khorne and temper Tzeentch he now maintains a landfill. His servants can be found on caustic wasteland planets and in the gutters of rookeries, but the foremost among them are the attendants of Isha, seeking to return her to the garden 'for her own safety', and the Astartes of Sisigmund.

'''Khorne''' - Born in the heat of the War in Heaven, he may be the psychic reverberation of that bloody event, but it has been posited that he coalesced on the battlefield around some great weapon of the Old Ones, prototype to Eldar and Ork alike. His relationship to Khaine is unclear, but they were alike in aspect, and he has taken up much of the old Eldar empire's military caste in his immortal service. He has much love for the Great Game, and it was in the wake of Nurgle's horrible loss that Khorne championed the usurpation of the Orks. The Blood God is the great power in the warp as of the 41st millennium, commanding the fiercest core of Crone Eldar and Fallen warbands and retaining his Ork auxiliaries with greatest ease. His catalyzing role in the War of the Beast, drawing Slaanesh's lust for Isha and Tzeentch's will for change to push Nurgle's corruption en-masse of the orks, such that he might incite them to a direct and purposeful war, has emboldened him to name himself lord of the Immaterium. The Blood God arrays his armies before the Skull Throne in him immaterial domain, and there they drill, and march, and war, and stage interminable invasions of the real. Khorne is said to retain Malal, in some form, as advisor, or weapon, but the diminished god's status in the court of murder is unknown.

'''Slaanesh''' - The Prince of Pleasure was originally conceived to be the god of joy, and of beauty, but its birth, the fall of the eldar, demonstrated the already fallen nature of the eldar empire. The prince now rules the Brass Palace in the warp, attended by daemons and horrors, and for a long while it eagerly feasted on the souls of the eldar. The great mistress of Shah-Dome has since turned to more complex, extended, and varied predilections. While young and weak as a warp presence, Slaanesh maintains a vast physical empire and cult within the eye of terror, intent on shaping the state of the materium for greater power within the warp. The dark prince and its cabal of faithful cenobites wish to see Slaanesh as master of the warp, with all other gods bound before its throne. The Slaaneshi cult is particularly interested in fulfilling the domination of the eldar pantheon, hoping to angle its personal enmity with the unified empire into a claim to arch-deamonhood and luciferian mastery of all temptation.

'''[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#Khaine|Khaine]]''' – (UNFINISHED) Still shattered into a million pieces like in canon. Needs a blurb.

'''The Outsider''' – See [[Nobledark Imperium Notes#The_Outsider|The Outsider]] (Temporary placeholder)

'''[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#The_Hive Mind|The Swarmlord]]''' - More of a primordial force of nature than an actual deity, though perhaps it is only natural for mortal minds to immediately jump to the deific when confronted with a warp presence of such magnitude. The Hive Mind is both the summed consciousness of every tyranid organism within the swarm as well as its commander. It’s thought process is alien and incomprehensible by mortal standards. At the very least, its goals are clear: the consumption of every living thing in the galaxy.

'''Ynnead''' – There are whispers of something going on in the warp. Echoes seen by farseers communing with the Infinity Circuits and World Spirits like the thunderhead of a great storm. Some say there appears to be some strange congruence between the portents of this phenomenon and the Starchild Prophecies All that is known is the name of this being and that it is not here yet. Everything else is up in the air.

== Notable Planets ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Notable Planets]]

== The Craftworlds ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Notable Planets#The Craftworlds|Craftworlds of The Nobledark Imperium]]

== The Forces of Chaos ==

=== The Forces of Chaos ===

See [[Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos#The_Fallen|The Fallen]]

=== The Crone World Eldar ===

See [[Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos#The_Crone_World_Eldar|The Crone World Eldar]]

=== Chaos Guard ===

See [[Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos#Chaos_Guard|Chaos Guard]]

== Da Orkz ==

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Da_Orkz|Da Orkz]]

== Necron Star Empire ==

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Necron Star Empire|Necron Star Empire]]

== Dark Eldar ==

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Dark Eldar|Dark Eldar]]

== Tyranids ==

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Tyranids|Tyranids]]

== Writefaggotry ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Writing]]

== Timeline ==

'''M25''' - Fall of the Eldar/Beginning of the Age of Strife. The hedonism of the Old Eldar Empire gives birth to Slaanesh, which wipes out 90% of the eldar population in a single night. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Iron_Minds|Iron Minds]] (A.I. that controlled most of the Men of Iron) and [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Men_of_Gold|Men of Gold]] are driven mad by the backlash, effectively destroying the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion. Warp storms make interstellar travel nearly impossible. Societies, human and alien alike, are either wiped out, driven insane, or reduced to Mad Max levels of technology and anarchy. Five thousand years of hell ensues.

'''Mid to Late M29''' - Warlord arises on Old Earth. Divides nations of Earth into two lists. On one side are the ones worth inclusion to the Imperium and on the other the ones that need to be destroyed and their lands divided amongst more worthy men.

Begins global unification using diplomatic means when possible and brute force when not possible.

'''Late M29/Early M30''' - First use of early model Thunder Warriors

'''Early to mid M30''' - Refinement of Thunder Warriors.

Old Earth unified (Except for Hy Brasil). Warlord sets up the Throne of Earth and refuses to sit in it instead becoming the Steward of the Empty Throne. The Throne stands waiting for a worthy individual to become Emperor.

Steward looks towards the sky and is inspired to take the Unification to the other planets of Sol. Appoints 20 generals the title of Primarch to be his leaders among generals.

Sol is unified in a sequence of assimilations, partnerships and short brutal wars of conquest.

Steward sets up High Lords of Terra to run the day to day affairs of the Imperium. Long term goal is to make the Imperium self-governing and then fade away again. Short term goal is to get be able to spend all evening in the pub.

Warp storms subside enough for large scale warp travel to become viable.

Steward looks to the stars and the dream of Unification burns again. Great Crusade starts, lasts slightly longer than in canon (300-500 years, as opposed to 200), because Steward wants whole and functional worlds brought into the Imperium, not broken vassals.

During Great Crusade Steward is contacted by Eldrad "got in a fist fight with Skarbrand and won" Ulthran. The two of them concoct a fiendish plan to break in to Nurgle's mansion and steal Isha back. Eldar send a band of the most fearsome ninja clowns as well as the Phoenix Lords to-be and the Imperium sends its most brutal nutters. Steward leads the expedition. Isha is rescued.

Isha is rescued. Imperium earns the eternal hate of the Chaos Gods. Eldar petition Stewards for inclusion into Imperium. Steward agrees in exchange for Webway access. Eldar are reluctant due to potential damage to webway. Compromise is reached that Inquisition can have unlimited access and the Eldar will upgrade the Astronomican.

Chaos Gods direct the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#The_Crone_World_Eldar|Crone World Eldar]] to manipulate the orks into unifying under the banner of a warboss know as The Beast. The Beast and all his Boyz are directed towards Old Earth and other key worlds of the Imperium. Dark Eldar join forces with the Crone Worlders for the promise of plunder and slaves.

'''546.M31''' - Beast and his forces finally make it to Sol, and the Battle of Terra and the Siege of Sol begins.

Primarch Sanguinius dies in the ruins of the Eternity Gate of the Imperial Palace.

Steward about to be pummeled into fine red paste by The Beast. Eldred Ulthran smashes through the wall and joins in the Beast-beating festivities and he and the Steward beat The Beast is a savage brawl.

As payment for saving his life the Steward owes a favour to Eldrad. Eldrad immediately call that favour in and demands that the Steward marry Isha so that the union of Human and Eldar can never be broken.

Imperium recovers over time. Most of the Primarchs die off in battle or simply by time. The title is never given to another; relic of a past age. The title of "Warmaster", occasionally used by the steward in the Great Crusade, does eventually get applied to a number of subsequent commanders considered to be later-day Primarchs.

Chaos forces usually from the Eye of Terror periodically form Black Crusades to try and topple the Imperium. Imperium stays strong.

'''M32-M35''' - Imperial "Golden Age". Highs not as high as later but lows are not as shitty because you have "only" Orks and Chaos to worry about (Necrons and tyranids not being a thing yet) and there are no constant political upheavals from Age of Apostasy, Tau, etc. Just before the beginning of this period the Imperium has rebuilt enough to reclaim much of the territory it lost during the War of the Beast but was unable to reassert control over. One notable intrigue is the Genestealer war, where among many heroes a young Adept Vandire distinguished himself in organizing the fight against the strange conspiracy.

Eventually at about the turning point of M35 and M36 a great man by the name of Goge Vandire arises to be the head of the Administratum. Steward believes that he has found a worthy man to sit upon the Empty Throne of Earth. Emperor Vandire is an asset to the Imperium. The Steward steps back to give space to Vandire's rising star and gladly fades into the shadows of some distant world, and disappears for some time.

After a lifetime and more, pickled in juveanat and cracking under the weight of a galactic government designed to hinge around his position, Goge Vandire goes nuts.

Inquisitor Sebastian Thor raises rebellion against him and causes the Great Civil War. Steward is rediscovered with the Avatar of Isha sitting at the bar of a tropical beach resort on some backwater nowhere planet. Apparently having been on that beach for the last ~150 years.

After 10 years of devastating war Goge Vandire is slain and Sebastian Thor bullies the Steward into sitting on the Throne of Earth and becoming Emperor. Three of the old Primarchs, Vulkan, Magnus, and Ferrus Manus, survive long enough to be present at the ceremony.

Due to substantial Demiurg assistance in the war the new Emperor permits the space traveling craftsmen membership to the Imperium, to the grumbling of the eldar. Imperium becomes open to the idea of accepting other "lesser" peoples into the fold.

'''Late M36''' - First scouting fleets of the Tyranids are sailing through the Imperium. Connection with gene-stealers is made. Scouting fleets eventually slain and it is believed for a time that they are defeated.

'''Mid M37''' - Hive Fleets have arrived (Behemoth in M37, Kraken about 900.M38, and Leviathan some time in M39). A few are slain eventually and at great cost over the next handful of centuries. Most shatter into splinter fleets and terrorize huge swathes of the Galaxy for a long, long time.

At about the M38 mark the Necrons start to rise from their half-death into mechanical unlife. Up till the end of the Dark Millennium there is a gradual and unstoppable increase in Necron activity.

'''Mid M38''' - Tau expeditionary forces encountered for first time. Contact made. Fledgling Tau Empire is unaware of the scale of the wars across the galaxy or the vastness of the Imperium. Refuses all efforts at inclusion.

'''Late M38''' - Tau have a serious Artificial Intelligence rebellion after ignoring the repeated warnings of the Mechanicus. Dark Eldar take advantage of this time of weakness to use their failing Empire as slave raiding grounds despite the Tau themselves being "bland". Still refuse inclusion to Imperium when offered.

'''Mid M39''' - Tau have recovered their old Empire bounds and are once more expanding their borders. Historians note passing similarities to the expansion of early Imperium.

'''Mid M39''' - Ethereal Council of the Eastern Fringe is once more pressing for closer relations with the greater Imperium. Fire Warrior general by name of Farsight believes that too much of the ideologies of the Greater Good have already been compromised by outside influences. Demands return to old ways.

Political turmoil and minor skirmishes that the Tau believe are real wars erupt across the eastern fringe. Largely the Imperium fails to notice. Or care.

Farsight and friends carve out their own Enclave and defy the Imperium. Ethereals furious at this breach of Tau honour. General Shadowsun swears a blood oath against Farsight.

'''Mid to Late M39''' - Series of crippling wars with the Hive Fleets and pyrrhic victories leaves the Tau once more vulnerable to Dark Eldar raids, and raid they do. They finally accept the offer of inclusion to the Imperium.

'''M40''' - Necrons awakening increases. Silent King spotted. Silent King tries to rebuild old Necrontyr Star Empire. Silent King wishes to find a way to reverse the biotransference. New rebellions against The Silent King erupt on both scores.

Some of the more minor and "eccentric" Necron Lords seek refuge in the Imperium. Emperor eventually agrees on the logic that it's better to have them in here pissing out than out there pissing in. Necron Lords, inhumanly powerful and prideful as they are, swear to obey their new liege so long as he never actually orders them to do anything.

Eldar are livid at the inclusion of the Necrons. Some craftworlds consider trying to leave the Imperium.

Necron Star Empire gets along with the Imperium at first. Then the Silent King makes a demand of one trillion subjects from the Imperium as tribute. Imperium is outraged and a short, brief war erupts between the Imperium and Necron Star Empire before eventually fizzling out into the current cold war that has continued to the "present".

'''Early M41''' - On the turn of the millennium in M41 [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Lady_Malys|Lady Malys, the Daemon Queen]], announces her marriage to her long-time on-again, off-again lover [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Asdrubael_Vect|Asdrubael Vect]] and the subsequent union of the Dark and Crone Eldar, and declares the 12th Black Crusade as a wedding present to herself. 12th Black Crusade is the bloodiest one yet and sets the stage for many future conflicts (e.g., Badab War). Mass social unrest and exodus from Commorragh as many of the younger Dark Eldar not trapped in a sunken cost fallacy feel that allying with Chaos crosses a line.

'''Mid M41''' - [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Brain_Boyz|Brain Boys]] spotted. Any talk of abandoning ship stops abruptly. Nobody wants to jump off the boat, no matter how many vermin are in it, when the alternative is sharks.

'''Late M41''' - The Hive Fleets were just a vanguard. The Tyranids are assaulting the entire eastern galactic edge in such numbers that they blot out the stars.

== Miscellaneous Notes ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Notes]]

== The Archived Threads ==

Thread 1 (warning: extreme waifuing and shitposting) - https://boards.fireden.net/tg/thread/49437641

Thread 1b (warning: extreme waifuing and shitposting) - https://boards.fireden.net/tg/thread/49488764

Thread 2 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/49591185/

Thread 3 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/49707496/

Thread 4 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/49889220/

Thread 5 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/49948023/

Thread 6 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50077670/

Thread 6b - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50119235/

Thread 7 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50263743/

Thread 8 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50425952/

Thread 9 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50684106/

Thread 9b - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50719277/

Thread 10 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50874097/

Thread 11 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50992723/

Thread 12 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51105718/

Thread 13 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51257007/

Thread 14 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51441824/

Thread 15 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51524369/

Thread 16 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51646615/

Thread 17 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51833468/

Thread 18 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51833468/

Thread 19 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51972949/

Thread 20 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52094866/

Thread 21 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52262671/

Thread 22 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52451994/

Thread 23 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52634996/

Thread 24 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52769445/

Thread 25 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52931666/

Thread 26 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53143370/

Thread 27 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53338185/

Thread 28 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53557919/

Thread 29 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53787726/

Thread 30 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53972235/

Thread 31 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/54215770/

Thread 32 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/54503379/

Thread 33 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/54715863/

Thread 34 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/55001131/

Thread 35 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/55066206/

Thread 36 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/55313386/

Thread 37 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/55583946/

Thread 38 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/55824461/

Thread 39 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56059361/

Thread 40 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56286128/

Thread 41 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56468501/

Thread 42 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56684946/

Thread 42b - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56706040/

Thread 43 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56930616/

Thread 44 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56947494/

Thread 45 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57055511/

Thread 46 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57242663/

Thread 47 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57265950/

Thread 48 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57452096/

Thread 49 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57661171/

Thread 50 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57828105/

Thread 51 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57999291/

Thread 52 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/58264906/

Thread 53 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/58563280/

Thread 54 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/58818593/

Thread 55 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59020817/

Thread 56 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59183440/

Thread 57 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59412072/

Thread 58 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59566862/

Thread 59 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59767125/

Thread 60 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59905153/

Thread 61 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/60121526/

Thread 62 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/60371811/

Thread 62a - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/60859322/

Thread 62b - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/60898868/

Thread 63 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/60604925/

Thread 65 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/61123571/

Thread 66 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/61372827/

Thread 67 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/61588973/

[[Category:Nobledark Imperium]]

Nobledark Imperium Drafts

2020-09-04T20:57:46Z

2601:647:CA01:2410:349C:D1E8:2DF7:5B30: /* The First and Second Viskeon Wars */

{{stub}}

'''This page is part of the Nobledark Imperium, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the [[Nobledark Imperium|Nobledark Imperium Introduction]] and [[Nobledark Imperium|Main Page]] for more information on the alternate universe'''

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Eternal Emperor and Empress have been joined in their holy union. He is the last relic of a lost age when hope and wisdom ruled the galaxy, still clinging to his purpose of forging a better future, and she is the last remnant of an ancient pantheon, a mother watching over dying children brought low by their own hubris. Together, they are the Masters and Guardians of Mankind and Eldar, the keepers of the Last Alliance, the embodiments of the Imperium to which a hundred sapient species swear their fealty.

At the core of the Imperium is Humanity, its teeming multitudes ever resilient, stubbornly carving out a future amongst the hostile stars. The greatest of Man’s allies are the Eldar, ancient and wise, their shared bond forged in battle and sealed in blood millennia ago. Since then, others have been judged worthy to join in the light of the Imperium, to stand with Men and Eldar as fellows: the industrious Demiurge, enigmatic Tau, countless strains of Abhumans, and many more.

Yet for all the Imperium’s numbers, it is barely enough to stave off the forces that would tear it down. United under savage Beasts, the Orkish hordes throw themselves at the great edifice of the Imperium. The Necrons are awakening to a changed galaxy, and seeth at the primitives who would dare harbor their greatest foes the Eldar. From the galactic east, the Tyranids have made landfall and sweep over countless worlds in their hungering tide. In the shadows lurk the Dark Eldar, reveling in the carnage of a galaxy at war. And from the Immaterium, the Chaos Gods brood and plot their eternal vengeance, served by the twisted Chaos Eldar.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold trillions. It is to live in the last bastion of civilization as the darkness draws near. These are the tales of those times. Forget the stories of peace and harmony, for they are fables of a gentler time, when the world still made sense. Remember the stories of struggle and defiance, full of brotherhood and sacrifice, for those are the ones that really matter. Peace is a distant dream growing ever fainter, and there is only war as Men and Eldar hold the line for the promise that has been whispered through the generations, from father to son, from mother to child: that there is good left in the world, and that is worth fighting for.

== To-do List ==

*Finish Primarchs
*Establish timeline and events, and how similar they are to canon 40k
**Origins of Warlord/Steward/Emperor, and his own timeline
**Unification of Terra
**Great Crusade
**Rescue of Isha
**War of the Beast (replacing Horus Heresy)
**Armageddon?
**Tyranids? Have they fully arrived yet
**Other SMs? Only the original legions, or others? Chapters?

*When is present day?
*Repercussions of Imperium/Eldar alliance?
*add new canon from gathering storm and 8th e

== The Imperium: Then ==

''"Of course we are at war. Why on Old Earth's green soil would you believe we are not at war. We are in what is essentially a siege position, with an unfortifiable border stretching an entire 360 degrees for several light years in every conceivable direction. [[Chaos|Our]] [[Orks|enemy]] has no concept of "rest" or "armistice" and can pop up at any time, on any side, in any position within the massive amounts of space between the mud marbles that we call the worlds of the Imperium. The Imperium is always going to be at war. Why would you ever believe otherwise?"''<br>
- Primarch Rogal Dorn, showing his usual level of tact

=== A Brief History of the Early Days ===

Maps of Old Earth, circa M30

<gallery>
Image:Old_Earth_before_the_Unification.png|Pre-Unification
Image:Old_Earth_after_Unification.jpg|Post-Unification
</gallery>

==== Ursh ====

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> '''''The Nightmare of Old Earth:'''''

Of all the national entities that existed when the Warlord emerged on Old Earth, none is perhaps as infamous as the Empire of Ursh. The Tyrant of Gredbriton consorted with the Ruinous Powers and used horrific chemical weaponry, but few others in Gredbriton actually worshipped Chaos and thus his ability to do widespread damage was limited. The Pan-Pacific Empire was an absolute nightmare to its own people, but seemed largely unconcerned with the world outside its borders. The Yndonesian Bloc was a brutalistic theocracy, but also tended to be rather isolationist. The Merican junta was an expansionistic, nationalistic military state, but at the very least it did not treat its citizens as disposable, if only to protect the investment, and the people there had at least some standard of living. Ursh, by contrast, shared all of these negative features with its contemporary empires and suffered none of the limitations. The Empire of Ursh was a major influence in the histories of numerous other Unification-era countries, including Terrawatt-Uralia, Duscht Jemanic, Bania, the former components of the Everlasting Tharkian Empire (including Macedonia and Achaemenidia), the Nord Afrik conclaves, the Afrique League, Merika, Ind, Sibar, Sino-Japan, and the Khanate. In many ways, the Unification of Earth can be directly tied to the rise and fall of the Empire of Ursh.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The Empire of Ursh was originally founded in northeastern Azia, on the banks of the Amyur River. Despite containing fertile riverlands, this area was never an important center of industry and agriculture during the Dark Age of Technology, and so was spared from some of the worst of the horrors of the Old Night. The ancestors of the people who would come to form the Empire of Ursh came from such ancient, long-forgotten countries as Russia or China, but they nation they ended up founding would become a completely different entity altogether. The first ruler of Ursh was a rather eccentric man named Kalagann the Great, who in spite (or more likely because) of his eccentricity, was able to unite the various pocket kingdoms, city states, and villages around the Amyur River into an actual nation-state. Early historians often described Kalagann as nothing more than a prelude to the infamous cruelty of the Despots, but later historians have found that there was nothing to suggest that Kalagann was as evil as his successors. Indeed, Kalagann seemed to be genuinely concerned for the welfare of his people, and there is no evidence that Ursh had yet been corrupted by the Ruinous Powers. Ursh was one of the first nation-states to rebuild from the metaphorical and literal fallout of the rebellion of the Men of Iron and the beginning of the Age of Strife, and for a while it seemed like Ursh was going to be the pinnacle of civilization on Earth, an illustration that society could rebuild from the Age of Strife. However, a few years after Kalagann’s death, it all started to go wrong.

As they expanded from their initial cradle of neo-civilization, the Urshii found themselves surrounded on three sides by tribal hunter-gatherers (Sibar), steppe nomads (the steppe nomads of the future Khanate), and subsistence farmers that seemed to have no aspirations of greater empire (Sino-Japan). Over time, the Urshii began to see themselves as the sole remaining carriers of the torch of civilization that stretched all the way back to ancient Sumeria, and as “enlightened” people it was their job to shepherd the rest of the uncivilized masses back into the light. Urshii art and architecture was heavily influenced by this concept, being consciously modeled after imperial China or ancient Mesopotamia, two of the great cradles of civilization, despite Ursh itself have very little direct connection with either. These included a lot of ziggurats, which were seen as stairways to the heavens and often the site of important, and often unsavory, political or religious functions. The rulers of Ursh, the infamous Despots, believed that they had been given the divine mandate to bring civilization back to the people of Earth, granted to them by the four great heavenly powers, which were represented by the four directional winds. These four gods were, of course, the Ruinous Powers, who just loved to subvert and co-opt local cultural and religious beliefs for their own purposes. The Despots were educated from birth that they were god-kings, and that they and they alone knew what was best for Ursh and humanity. This, along with the systematic dehumanization of the serfs and non-Urshii, was one of the reasons for the infamous brutality of the Despots of Ursh. In their view, questioning the Despots or making a request was tantamount to saying the "god-kings" didn't know what they were doing.

Despite seeing the usefulness of advanced weapons of war, the Empire of Ursh was downright backwards technologically when compared to the other major empires of that time such as Merika, Hy Braseal, and the Pan-Pacific Empire. Indeed, one of the major reasons the Empire of Ursh invaded the Afrique League and the Nord Afrik conclaves in M28, one of the largest military engagements on Earth prior to the Unification Wars themselves, was primarily for technology to use against their larger neighbors. Instead, the Urshii preferred to look inwards, focusing more on religion and the occult rather than technological advancement. To the Urshii, technology was only useful if it could further aid them in their goal of conquest.

The Empire of Ursh had the largest fleet of any pre-Unification power with over twelve ships, but these ships were so derelict as to be borderline space hulks and could not even leave low Earth orbit. Indeed, because these ships were so decrepit and spread over such a wide area of territory they were used more for denying the orbital high ground than to actually fight. Records indicate that when a ship was too damaged to fly or an enemy ship was actually shot down the Urshii would swarm over the wreckage like scavengers on a Void Whale carcass, salvaging the ship's weapons to attach to ground vehicles to turn them into overbuilt weapons platforms. This was about the limits of Urshii technological aptitude.

Ursh was perhaps best known for its army, which despite its limited technology was the terror of Old Earth for many years. At the center of the army were the Nobleborn, elite warriors who were born of the upper class and given the best weapons and training the Urshii could afford. However, there were never enough Nobleborn to make a full-scale army large enough to take on Ursh's neighbors, even with Ursh's massive population. Additionally, although the Nobleborn made good shock troops, they had little tactical flexibility and could not perform specialist roles. Therefore, the Urshii often supplemented the Nobleborn core of their army with various auxiliaries, drawn from the numerous enslaved people and vassal states around the empire. Ursh primarily controlled its auxiliaries through mutual fear. The Red Engines feared the steppe nomads, who feared the Tupelov Lancers, who in turn feared the Roma, and so on and so forth. All feared the wrath of the Despot of Ursh.

Urshii society could be divided into three major groups. On the one hand, there were the various vassals and conquered peoples, who were seen as less than human and treated poorly. On the other, there were the serfs, who despite being Ursh-born were not “chosen”, and therefore also considered to be subhuman and treated poorly. And finally, there was an upper class, composed of a combination of the military, scientific, religious, mystic, and cultural elite. One of the only good things one could say about the Empire of Ursh is that they valued personal ability when they saw it, though admission into the nobility was only available to those who were both skilled and truly indoctrinated in the Urshii philosophy and religion. Urshii high courts were often a web of treachery and deceit, with nobles plotting against each other for power. The Despots encouraged this behavior, particularly among the Urshii lords of far-off conquered territories, as it kept them fighting among themselves for the Despot’s favor rather than deciding to secede and form their own petty empires.

After the fall of Ursh, this class system was thoroughly dismantled, though few of the nobility actually survived. Most of the nobility had been so indoctrinated in the superiority of Ursh and their gods that they would rather charge unarmed at a group of soldiers outnumbering them a hundred to one than accept defeat at the hands of “lesser peoples”. It was this attitude that led to the Urshii insurgency in Sibar, which was a thorn in the side of the Imperium for nearly twenty years after the fall of Ursh itself. The various freed vassals and serfs, on the other hand, were in some ways brought together by the shared experiences of the horrors of the tyrants, leading to the use of the term “Children of Ursh” to refer to those who had suffered at the hands of the Despots.

</div>
</div>

==== The Khanate ====

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Pastoral_Worlds|The Pastoral Worlds]]

=== The Great Crusade ===

==== The Fable of Djerba ====

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">

Today the world of Djerba in the Segmentum Solar is not particularly notable. But it’s Crusade-era history is well-known. Like many worlds during the Age of Strife, the original population included a significant number of people who were touched by the Warp, which increasing manifested itself as the Age of Strife went on. Unfortunately, like many worlds during the Age of Strife, including Barbarus, the psykers on Djerba went mad with power and set themselves up as god-kings over the common people. On Djerba, these psykers called themselves Cognoscynths.

The psychic abilities of the people of Djerba primarily manifested as a form of mind control. Cognoscynths could invade and control the mind of an ordinary person on a whim, rewriting memories, suppressing morality and self-preservation, and forcing any who could not surpass their willpower and psychic might to be their slaves. Before long, although the surface of Djerba was nominally made up of numerous warring nation-states, the leadership of these nations were little more than puppets to the Cognoscynths. The Cognoscynths erected their City of Sight above Djerba, from which they controlled the people below like marionettes on strings. They forced the people below them to go to war for their amusement, laughing as man slaughtered man at their whim.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

According to legend, the Imperium sent three emissaries to the Cognoscynths. The first was the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Primarchs#Magnus_the_Red|Scholar]], a giant clad in red, who came bearing words of warning. He had come to Djerba hearing rumors of a society where outcasts such as he could co-exist in peace with normal men without fear of persecution. What he saw disheartened him. Here was a society which embodies the worst nightmare of the most closed-minded and hateful of mankind, who feared the witch and hated the psyker.

The Cognoscynths psychically commanded him to bow. The Scholar said no. In that moment, the Cognoscynths realized that they were to the man before them as hills were before a mountain. With rage burning in his one eye, the Scholar said he would give the Cognoscynths one warning. Dismantle their oppressive society and free the ordinary men and women they had enslaved, or face the consequences. For if they did not he would to return with his liege, and his liege was not as forgiving as he.

The second was the Shepherd, clad in gold, who brought words of doom. The Cognoscynths had ignored the warning of the Scholar, and had not changed their ways since he had left. The Shepherd was the Scholar’s liege, and came before the Cognoscynths much as the Scholar had. He said that he had seen the world the Cognoscynths had wrought. The Cognoscynths had been judged, and found wanting. Once more, the Cognoscynths were enraged at being judged by an outsider, and attempted to psychically compel him to bow. They failed. Whereas the Scholar had been a mountain, the Shepherd was like a monolith of adamantium, only gold instead of grey.

Their prodigious psychic powers failing them, the Cognoscynths turned to words. They scoffed at the idea of the Shepherd bringing judgement upon them. For all of his power, the Shepherd was just one man. Even if he brought the Scholar, the two did not have the power to command them on their own. The Cognoscynths were each powerful psykers, who could command armies of their own. Whereas any army the Shepard could bring would fall under the control of their powers and turn on their fellows. What could the Shepard do to them?

“I will bring your empire down with a single soldier,” said the Shepherd, then left.

The third Emissary was the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Jenetia_Krole|Slayer]], clad only in black. She brought no words, only death. Where she walked, men went mad, the witch-touched tearing their eyes out and clawing at their skin whereas the mundane became ill and collapsed from severe vertigo. None could seemingly touch her. Even the Cognoscynths were not immune. The Slayer only killed two-thirds of the Cognoscynths, by the time she turned her attention to the remainder they were already dead, the last choking on his own blood.

The people of Djerba were freed both in body and mind, and with freed fists celebrated their liberators. But to this day, the Imperium still remembers the lesson of the Cognoscynths, even if only as a cautionary tale, as best exemplified by the colors of Djerba. Red, gold, and black.

</div>
</div>

==== The Rangdan Xenocides and the Slaugth ====

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">

The Rangdan Xenocides were by far the most costly conflict ever fought during the Great Crusade. The campaign included the involvement of three Space Marine legions (the Dark Angels, Space Wolves, and the Ultramarines), several Titan legions, and significant numbers of the Solar Auxilla; needed the assistance of the Eldar to gain a foothold; and required the direct intervention of the Steward himself to finally turn the tide.

The opposing forces of the Rangdan Xenocides were the Slaugth. The Slaugth were colonial organisms resembling masses of maggots (though pedantic AdBio members would point out they also showed similarities to Terran leeches and earthworms) linked together in a mucosal sheath into a humanoid shape. The constant psychic contact between the individual worms in the colony, combined with the completely horrific and alien mindset of the Slaugth by the standards of nearly every other race in the galaxy, made them revolting to directly touch with psychic powers. Psychic contact with a Slaugth was not like the mental communion of matter and anti-matter of a blank, but described more like sticking one’s arms up to the shoulder in maggots. “Only a daemon would want a Slaugth’s soul”, an old Crusade-era saying goes.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The Slaugth themselves had an entirely self-centered mindset and only cared about themselves and their individual desires, lacking even the empathy requisite for sadism, they would with great and terrible apathy degrade and consume the whole of the universe. Although they were able to scrape together some semblance of social order, the Slaugth saw everyone and everything, even members of their own kind, as little more than tools or philosophical zombies set in the universe to fulfill their whims. For the most part, the most prominent of those was hunger. Although the Slaugth were naturally detritivores and could survive on any flesh, they most preferred to feed on brains (the larger and more complex, the better), and had developed a system to feed this gluttony. Humans, eldar, and other sapients were farmed like cattle, their brains extracted, and the waste meats fed back to the livestock and Slaugth bio-constructs like Osseivores. The Slaugth did not eat the brains of other sapients solely for their nutritional value. Absorbing nutriends from a brain would cause an individual Slaugth worm to be overwhelmed by neurotransmitters, producing a euphoric effect similar to a chemical high.

Indeed, just about the only reason the Slaugth didn’t readily turn on each other is that Slaugth couldn’t really eat other Slaugth. If one Slaugth colony tried to eat another Slaugth, the two would simply merge into a single giant Slaugth colony twice as large and twice as hungry as its constituents. Even if a Slaugth did manage to completely kill all the component individuals of a fellow Slaugth colony before eating it, Slaugth flesh simply tasted foul to their own kind. And this is assuming that a Slaugth could kill another Slaugth in the first place. Being composed of hundreds if not thousands of individual organisms, Slaugth lacked vital organs or a centralized nervous system and were notably hard to kill. For this reason, Slaugth tended to prefer necrotic weaponry, which rotted the tissues of their foes from the inside-out and was one of the few ways (aside from fire, plasma, or radiation) to make sure another Slaugth was reliably dead. The fact that it also worked well on the bio-constructs that Slaugth technology was largely based around just made it even more attractive.

Given this entirely self-centered mindset, it is difficult to imagine how a species like the Slaugth could have ever developed a civilization, let alone space travel. However, what little historical records remain show the Slaugth arose long after the end of the Old Ones in the War in Heaven and long before humanity developed widespread genetic engineering or spread out into the stars. Current hypotheses suggest that the Old Eldar Empire, or at least someone like them, was responsible for the uplift of the Slaugth from what were essentially fire and tool-using ant colonies into a starfaring species, as well as their adoption of a humanoid form.

By the time the Imperium encountered the Rangda, the Slaugth were being ruled by an [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Iron_Minds|Iron Mind]]. A minor Iron Mind, to be sure, but even a minor Iron Mind was still dangerous. The Slaugth and the Iron Mind had formed a kind of symbiosis, or as close to one as the Slaugth were capable of. The Iron Mind handled the long term planning of the Rangdan Empire, which the Slaugth naturally didn’t have the wherewithal or inclination to run, and the Slaugth indulged it in its god complex and protected its physical body while its artificial soul ran with daemons in the Warp. When the Imperium fought the Slaugth the Iron Mind was able to coordinate the movement of its forces with uncanny accuracy. Companies would advance only to be met with forces that already predicted their arrival. However, when the Imperium finally made a beachhead on Rangda, the Steward took to the field and struck down the Iron Mind with an ancient archaeotech device of unknown purpose from the vaults of Ganymede. With the Iron Mind destroyed, the cohesion of the Slaugth was broken, and the remaining factions were run down and killed by the Imperium and Eldar.

It was during the Rangdan Xenocides that the Dark Angels, who were previously tied for the status of “most numerous legion” with the Ultramarines, became the largest standing legion by a wide margin. Although the Ultramarines were well-trained and highly-skilled, the Slaugth were an outside context problem for them and they suffered grievous casualties. Still others became infested through some unknown means and had to be mercy killed, their eyes begging for death and their limbs moved to butcher their comrades in the name of their xenos master. By contrast, the Dark Angels had been traveling the void and dealing with anomalous phenomena for far longer, and knew how to deal with the unexpected. While the Ultramarines immediately moved to free the Slaugth chattel, the Dark Angels held back and waited. Although this seemed callous at the time, the Dark Angels knew that the Slaugth would use the prisoners as bait for an ambush, and that by focusing their efforts on the Slaugth or restricting any rescue operations to the cover of darkness they could save a lot more prisoners than otherwise possible. The rise of the Dark Angels as the undisputable largest legion set the stage for Luther’s actions during the War of the Beast, and made the betrayal of the Fallen that much more devastating.

Imperial and Eldar forces rescued numerous humans and Eldar from Rangda and the surrounding worlds of the Slaugth Empire. Eldar rescuees, due to the longer generational gaps, were not as mentally damaged and were herded off to the nearest Craftworlds where they could be given some semblance of a normal life. Although these slaves were physically normal, mentally, it would be more accurate to describe them as livestock than anything else. They had spent at least a few thousand years being bred for servile, docile natures and to be just strong enough to not need looking after much but too weak to pose any sort of threat. The Imperium tried to uplift them in a similar manner to the ogryn, but had variable success. In the end, the human survivors of Rangda were largely adopted by the various Legions. They were docile but they were dutiful, they also had inhuman patience and didn't get bored by repetitive tasks. Their tainted bloodline has by 999.M41 faded away though many in the Imperium, even some Space Marines, could claim to have at least one ancestor in the "serf families" as they became known.

Today across most of the galaxy the Slaugth are considered to be harmless boogeymen, an extinct xenos species whose only modern function is to scare children into eating their vegetables. There are others who know better. Not every Slaugth was killed in the aftermath of the Rangdan Xenocides. Some escaped the destruction of their species, hiding amongst the flesh of the dead in places beneath notice. Today the Slaugth exist in the shadows, multiplying in the places out of sight ready to emerge wherever weakness or rot presents itself. Slaugth have been sighted in the xenos districts of Low Commorragh, trading technological abominations to the Dark Eldar in exchange for slaves. Some have even suggested that the abundance of Slaugth in the Calixis Sector is not a coincidence, speaking in hushed tones of bargains struck between the maggot men and the separatist Emperor Severan of the Severan Dominate.

The surviving Slaugth seem surprisingly unconcerned with the loss of their empire. They resent it, but they are not devastated by it in the way that a human, eldar, or tau would be. Indeed, the Slaugth seem to see the destruction of their empire and near-extinction of their species as “not their problem”. And given that the Slaugth are colonial organisms, who can reproduce asexually or with minor contact with other colonies, it could be argued that the death of the rest of their race really was “not their problem”. Indeed, the empire at Rangda was in effect the normal Slaugth modus operandi on a large scale. The similarities are evident; a large number of thralls and bio-constructs lorded over by a Slaugth elite, resembling a feedlot or a parasitic infestation more than what one would think of as civilization. It’s possible that while the Slaugth might on some level desire retribution for the destruction of their empire, given their mindset they might just consider vengeance another flavor of eating.

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==== The Ullanor Crusade ====

Editor's Note: Needs to be edited with changes discussed in Thread 62, put here to avoid it getting lost since it is mostly done

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> '''''The Prelude to the War of the Beast:'''''

Imperial historians generally consider the Ullanor campaign to be the last major military action of the Great Crusade and a harbinger that set the stage for of the War of the Beast shortly thereafter. However, to those who participated in the crusade itself, there was little to suggest the Ullanor campaign would be of such significance. Ullanor was seen as one of the last major pockets of significant military resistance in the galaxy, but at the time of the Ullanor crusade peoples’ minds were beginning to shift away from exploration, warfare, and conquest and more towards consolidation and rebuilding. Most of the major threats to the Imperium during the Great Crusade were seen as dealt with. The [[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Rangdan_Xenocides_and_the_Slaugth|Slaugth]] were believed to be extinct. The [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Yu'Vath|Yu’Vath]] were seen as crippled, though not completely eliminated. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#the_Realm_of_Ultramar_and_the_Imperium_Secundus_Plan|Guilliman’s fear of a “counter-Imperium”]] located somewhere in the galaxy seemed to have never been realized. The map of the Milky Way had not been completely been filled in, but there was less and less of an area for any such an empire to hide. However, few would claim the Great Crusade was nearly over. Many planets were still in the process of reconstruction, a process that was expected to take several centuries given the extent of the damage from the Old Night.

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The empire at Ullanor was discovered quite unexpectedly by the Imperial Fists as part of their unification of the neighboring Osroene Sector near the border between the Segmentum Obscurus and the Segmentum Ultima. The people of the sector had reported numerous Ork raids over the years, most of which had been beaten back at great cost. They said the raids had become more intense over time, but had little more information on where the Orks were coming from or why the raids were so frequent beyond their general direction of attack. Similar sectors had reported the same thing, to the point that one Imperial map made shortly before the Ullanor Crusade has the Ullanor Sector rather cheekily labelled in High Gothic as “Hic Sunt Orcorum”. The Imperial Fists made a short Warp jump, expecting to find little more than a pirate base formed by a particularly successful Freebooter. When they saw the actual source of the raids, they immediately turned around and sent an astropathic message to Old Earth for backup.

What the Imperial Fists reported from Ullanor was shocking. Normally Ork camps resembled nothing more than the camps of a simple warband writ large. Nothing more advanced than a series of tents and ramshackle huts, and nothing more permanent than some Mekboy quarters and da Drops. Not Ullanor. Ullanor had been united by a rather ambitious warboss, who had decided to build his influence over the sector slowly than let his reign be a simple flash in the pan. Instead of a simple scrap-ridden wasteland and encampment, the planet had been criss-crossed by a series of Ork-made bunkers, crude and spartan but nevertheless planned in terms of their placement. These buildings were but crude fortifications compared to the permanent structures erected by the Orks at places like Gorkograd on Prax. However, at the time of the Ullanor Crusade, it was an unpleasant surprise.

The increasing Freeboota attacks on the neighboring systems weren’t simply raiding parties. They were the signs of an empire ready to expand.

The threat posed by Ullanor was clear, even to the Steward. Having nearly been choked to death by a similar Warboss after a hasty and ill-advised personal assault on the hollowed-out world of Gorro, the Steward knew full well of what a Warboss of that caliber was capable of. Such was the threat posed by the empire at Ullanor that five primarchs and their respective Space Marine legions were called in to deal with the threat: Rogal Dorn and the Imperial Fists, Fulgrim and Terra’s Sons, Mortarion and the Death Guard, Jaghatai Khan and the White Scars, and Horus Lupercal and the Void Wolves. Each had their own role in the campaign. Mortarion’s troops were to form the backbone of the army, a fighting force of such fortitude that they could weather anything the Orks could throw at them. Terra’s Sons were to act as shock troops, striking at points of particularly hard resistance and cutting down the ‘ardest Boyz. Rogal Dorn’s job was to tear down any Ork fortifications and prevent the Orks from using the terrain against them. Jaghatai was to chase down any survivors to prevent them from regrouping, as well as contest the mechanized cavalry game with any Ork bikers. Horus was to hold the orbital high ground and use the Void Wolves to board and clear out any ork ships in orbit.

The Imperial Crusade had hoped to simply pick off the warboss and see his nascent empire implode. However, the Warboss at Ullanor, Urlakk Urg, was clever. Instead of exposing himself to danger by leading his army from the front, he kept himself hidden, where Imperial assets could not simply pick him off. In order to keep morale up, he used the bunker system spanning Ullanor to appear where he needed to be in the thick of the fighting to show his Nobz he hadn’t lost his stomach, then taking advantage of the chaos of battle to avoid being sniped. Further complicating the matter was the fact that Urlakk Urg didn’t always give his orders in person, instead creating a system of messengers to carry his orders for him when he had to be elsewhere.

In the end, it fell to the primarch Horus to end the threat of Urlakk Urg. Taking his flagship, the Vengeful Spirit, Horus opened a channel to recievers on all frequencies and began insulting the Warlord. For two hours Horus taunted Urlakk Urg, claiming he was cowering in his bunker like a pansy instead of fighting where everyone could see him and suggesting that rather than an ork perhaps he was merely a particularly overweight and foul-tempered gretchin. Urg tried to resist for as long as he could, recognizing correctly that it was a trap, but eventually his temper got the better of him. Eventually, Urg broke down, sending a message back to Horus incensed that he would say such things from behind the safety of a starship and claiming he wouldn’t be so glib if the two were meeting face to face. Horus, having finally figured out which bunker Urlakk Urg was hiding in, responded by slagging Urg’s bunker from orbit with a Rok-Buster torpedo.

''“And that, gentlemen, is how you do it. Now, let’s go apply some fungicide.”''<br>
-- Primarch Horus Lupercal, after hearing Urg’s response to his message

At the apparent death of their Warlord, the Orks began to lose morale and the tide began to turn in favor of the Imperium. On a local scale the Orks recovered quickly from the loss, with the various lesser Warbosses taking over where Urg had left off, but without Urg to hold them together the different Warbosses could no longer act as one, and as a result were picked apart piecemeal by the Imperium. Many Warbosses spent their last moments engaged in a war on two fronts, both fighting the advancing forces of the Imperium as well as their fellow orks for control over the WAAAGH!

The Imperium celebrated at the destruction of Ullanor. Some rumors say that Ullanor was turned into a world dedicated to the Imperial triumph there, though the Steward would be quick to point out that this was not the case, as removing the Orkish spores from Ullanor alone would have taken more time than elapsed between the Triumph at Ullanor and the War of the Beast. Ullanor was worth more as a productive world than a self-congratulatory glory shrine anyway. Nevertheless, a celebration was held on Ullanor the likes of which had not been seen before. Eleven of the nineteen primarchs showed up, the five who had served at Ullanor who were awarded additional honors in recognition of their service as well as Lorgar, Magnus the Red, Angron, Sanguinius, Guilliman, and Perturabo, as well as numerous chapters of their various legions, regiments of the Imperial Army, representatives of the Titan legions and the Adeptus Mechanicus, and more. An invitation was even extended to the eldar, though only the inscrutable Eldrad showed up, and much of what he did on that day was unknown.

Unfortunately, their celebration proved premature. Although Horus’ patented strategy of sniping the enemy leadership with extreme prejudice and cleaning up whatever disorganized remnants were left after the chain of command was disrupted had worked numerous times before on the battlefield, here it had failed. After Horus’ bombardment Urg was still alive, though wounded, beneath the rubble. Blood dripping from his wounds, Urg made his way to a device in his chambers, a Mekboy contraption the Orks had taken to call a tellyporta, which transported him to a nearly airless rock in the middle of nowhere before the Imperials began sorting through the rubble. This world had been Urg’s backup plan in case the Orks at Ullanor were defeated and had to come around for another go, but it had now become his place of exile. Urg bellowed in rage, furious at the Imperium for taking his empire, furious at the git that defeated him through such deceptive and underhanded means, and furious at Gork and Mork for allowing such a thing to ever happen. This rage brought Urg to the attention of [[Chaos_Gods|four other beings]] who shared Urg’s hatred of the Imperium and had a very vested interest in seeing it destroyed.

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=== The War of the Beast ===

==== Raid of Cthonia ====

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The Raid of Cthonia was not a strategically important battle in the War of the Beast, but it has long stood as an eerie portent in the annals of imperial history, and may be remembered with hate in the clash of some future war. During the Great Crusade the system spanning ruin had been garrisoned by detachments of both the Imperial navy and army, as well as a contingent of Mechanicus intent on the study of the ancient hub system, and a special Custodes unit nominally present to ensure the safety of the treasures of human heritage. At the time of the Dark Eldar engagement, Cthonia was far from the main theaters of battle, and much of its naval and infantry guard had been ordered into the defense of Old Earth. The raid is notable as the largest single incursion the Dark Eldar have ever made into realspace, and the only time the great tyrant Asdrubael Vect is known to have walked an imperial world. As the siege of Old Earth reached its terrible climax the Cthonian system was set upon by a force of corsairs and Kabalites, first seeming a particularly fierce attack of opportunity, but with the appearance of Crone and Upper Commorragh command ships, then Vect’s own, it became apparent the scale of the assault.

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While significant fortifications had been established on one of the system's rocky inner planets and the foundations and initial foundries of a new forge laid on another in hopes of staging exploration through the system the forces that remained to man them were few. Navy and Mechanicus ships scrambled to secure their orbits against the tide of corsairs. The imperial officers could do little but watch through their telescopes as the Crone and Commoraghi command ships maneuvered to the crest of the golden circlet and made to secure the broken ring set around the Cthonian star.

Of the Imperial forces present the techpriests were the best armed and in the greatest number, but they received the greater part of the Dark Eldar's attention. The guns of explorator ships and newly scavenged archaeotech illuminated the space around Cthonia III, but even as the darting corsair ships burned in orbit they made for the surface. The orbit of Cthonia rapidly became a dynamic hell of boarding actions and lance fire as incubi and skitarii ripped into each other in fierce engagements that were soon mirrored on the planet's surface. The Commoraghi forces on Cthonia made to plunder the forge of its magos and higher acolytes, while those around Chthonia IV tried to cripple the Imperial military force. The predominantly Voidborn battlegroup successfully held against corsair opening salvos, the remaining imperial army forces on Cthonia IV supported their meagre naval force with surface based lance and torpedo installations and polar weapons platforms. As the third day of fighting on and around Cthonia III dragged to a close the remaining Mechanicus forces retreated first to their ships in orbit, then to their sister world. As they broke from the fray the attacking Dark Eldar made for the crest and their command ships.

The dark battleships of the attacking force's Crone sorcerers and mighty archaeons were moored among the gleaming discharge towers and control domes of the crest facility, the forces of the haemonculus and balesingers they brought with them engrossed in the wonders they were dissecting. Assets drawn from Vect's own fleets and forces manned the shredding guns set up in the installation's spires and the cutters ready to intercept any counterattack meant to dislodge his expedition. In the years that followed Inquisitorial investigators and their illuminate superiors judged that his forces had access to facilities that were integral to the creation and engineering of souls, facilities that housed the stacks of Dark Age Abominable Intelligence that trawled the deep warp, and others that prepared blank bodies for life. The extent of his Haemonculi and sorcerers gained from this endeavor could not be known, and the Magos of Cthonia III was never found.

As the bloodied forces of the Mechanicus and Imperium regrouped at Cthonia IV under the protection of its surface armaments they made to contact the wider imperium and the Custodes garrison. Attempts to call for aid brought dismay, the latest news was that Sanguinius was dead and the Eternity Gate breached, and no reinforcements could be spared. In spite of this blow it was found that the Custodes still held the focal complex and central repository, and hoped to hold it longer still even as their barricades breached. It took two more days to prepare a meaningful attack force to challenge the Dark Eldar assembled at the crest, and for that time the focal complex and its golden defenders held by power glaive and sword even as they fell back from lab to lab, and dove back into lost chambers to face down witches and horrors that strove to pry forth their lord's very fundament.

The defending Custodes were all but overrun, but enough stood to continue to disrupt the invading Dark Eldar. In later stories of the battle it is said that Vect entered the complex guarded by mandrakes and his personal retainers, intent on ensuring the successful looting and study of this piece of imperial history, and was engaged at some distance by a Custodian wielding a rocket launcher. The remains of the Custodes unit was forced to its final fallback position in the central operating chambers, as well as a handful of holdouts fighting on across the massive complex. Vect was still in the complex when the remaining Imperial and Mechanicus ships entered combat with the corsairs and set course to charge the moored command ships. While some of the Imperial vessels were intercepted, others picked off by the corsairs before they could get the commanding crone ships in range, much of the counterattacking force got in among the enemy fleet, some ramming and others firing their guns until they no longer could.

The great tyrant's personal hasty retreat spared him and his ship. The corsairs fled soon after the first Imperial ships detonated their drives, their Mechanicus crews devoted to the sanctity of the Omnissiah and hatred for such things as haemonculi. The crone ships burned among the emission spires, their blasted wrecks were pinned to command domes by the broken prows of imperial ships. The ships that remained after the initial charge ran down the fleeing pirates until they slipped into the webway, or else entered the crest and threw themselves into the destruction of the straggling Dark Eldar. Even as the remaining Voidborn and Imperial army forces relieved the Custodes unit from their charred and melted fortification there was little celebration. To their best knowledge the Imperium had fallen, whatever their victory was worth, and they braced for the worst. It took another day to establish contact with the Imperial navy, which confirmed the opposite.

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==== Battle of Mount Afonso ====

See [[Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos#Drach'nyen|Drach'nyen]]

==== Battle of Necromunda ====

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The Battle of Necromunda was a major conflict during the War of the Beast, where the Imperial Fist fought to control both the planet and space around the hive-world itself. As a technologically advanced Survivor civilization, Necromunda was a major munition manufactorum that directly supplied munitions to the front lines and Terra itself. As the Beast made a beeline for Terra to recapture Isha and kill the Steward, in order to make the upcoming Battle of Terra easier other Orks and Crone Eldar worked together to cut off the entire Sol-Sector from the rest of the Imperium. When a blockade couldn't be establish the Chaos forces switched from cutting supply lines to outright attacking the production of supplies itself. The ever opportunistic Dark Eldar joined along for the ride with the Chaos forces to make the Imperial shipping lanes a living hell to operate within Segmentum Solar.

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The sights of a big WAAAGH! had the poor planet of Necromunda as the next prey after already destroying several Imperial worlds when they bypassed Terra. Still rich in mineral and other resources the hive-clusters on the surface would be devastated in the fighting in the orbit as debris from Imperial Navy wrecks, Ork Rokks, and twisted Crone corpses rained down upon the planet. Due to people living in such tightly packed conditions, tens of thousands of civilians died just in the first week of fighting over the planet. The Imperial Fist sent a detachment of 40,000 Space Marines under First Captain Sigismund to defend the planet at all cost, but an unknown amount of ships got lost in transit due to Warp interference that was probably conjured by the Crone Eldar. When Sigismund arrived over the planet, the Imperial Navy was in a stalemate with Chaos ships where neither side could attack without being destroyed in a single battle. Unfortunately, the Ork ships orbiting Necromunda had mostly crashed onto the surface to begin invading the planet. Sigismund would report that Imperial Fist ships are arriving over the planet at random times yet there were enough Battle Barge to kill the Chaos fleet. The Battle Barges combined with the Imperial Cruisers attacked to finally crush the remaining Chaos fleet, ending the battle in orbit.

However, the damage was already done for Necromunda as the majority of the invading Orks had already crash-landed into or near the hive-clusters. Sigismund ordered all available Imperial Fists to land and defend the manufactorums at all cost. The hive cities were turned to fortresses (more than usual), in that the Orks paid five Boyz for every one Space Marine. However, even this was not enough when the Orks outnumbered the Imperial Fist ten to one. What was more frightening was that the invaders were making fast progress as well. Thousands of Imperial Fist were lost within the first few days of fighting in the hives. Sigismund was not shocked with the losses but rather had expected them knowing how the battles in the War of the Beast worked. What he did feel was worried by the fact that as this battle of attrition continued, the Imperial Fist will lose the world being bleed dry.

The streets were filled with trenches, the spires were kill-zones, and rooms were bunkers. Hallways were blocked off with the bodies of fallen Imperial Fists with armor still on them. Hive gangers had resorted to cannibalism while the rest of the civilians fled away from the hives. The desperate and pure hopelessness of fighting in the hives led to many, including Sigismund, to fall under the sway of the Plague Father. The wishes of eternal life and reviving fallen brothers to help the defense of Necromunda were granted under a demonic pact with the First Captain's blood. The words "I offer all those presently under my command" had damned all 40,000 (living and dead) Imperial Fist, along with the mortal crew of the Battle Barges, to serve Nurgle.

The fallen Imperial Fist were brought back, along with some being granted immunity to pain and being able to fight while still missing all limbs but one arm. Now the Orks had to kill every Space Marine twice and each Marine could take twice as many wounds. The blessed Imperial Fist shot the Orks in the front as the revived brothers shot from behind, the Orks had walked into a trap of their own making. In the ending stages of hunting down the last Orks, an unknown Space Marine clearly blessed with illnesses shouted "For the Imperium!" before slicing an Ork with his Lighting Claws.

The Battle of Necromunda was won but neither for the Imperials nor the Beast. The real victors were the Chaos Space Marines. True the Imperium still held the planet and the Ork WAAHG! was crushed, but this was done for the price of almost 40,000 Imperial Fists turning to Chaos and forever being lost to the Imperium. Those on the planet that sought the Dark Gods’ help did so when they were forced to either flee and lose the planet or have a heroic last stand and then lose the planet. Well, one must remember that Sigismund was told to "Hold Necromunda at all cost" even at the price of any lives and damnation.

The traitor Imperial Fist would quickly and quietly depart from the sub-sector on their Battle Barges before the news broke out, then announcing to their mortal crew that they would now fight the Imperium. The traitors would rename themselves the "Rotten Fist" as a joke about how the Imperium would be rotting in the future. Their motto is still "For the Imperium" as some odd form of love for the Imperium or a reference to how they fell to Chaos due to defending the Imperium.

Rotten Fist marines during the War of the Beast were sighted fighting Orks and Imperial forces but not the Crone Eldar. After the Battle of Terra, the Rotten Fist along with other Chaos Space Marines were hunted down by Loyalist Space Marines. The Rotten Fist would flee to The Maelstrom, escaping into the Warp.

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==== Be'lakor and the Alpha Legion ====

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

Every legion at a role to play in the War of the Beast, even if that role wasn’t immediately obvious. Such was the case with the Alpha Legion. When war broke out, the Hydra continued its work in the shadows, though they weren’t too happy about it. It was not the job of the Alpha Legion to fight on the front lines. It was their job to find the source of the threat, the man behind the man, and stop the problem at its root. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Urlakk_Urg|Urlakk Urg]] was the obvious threat to the Imperium, but there was clearly more going on. One did not just go from being a former warboss with no empire to his name to head of a galaxy-spanning WAAAGH! in less than six standard years. Chaos was clearly a factor, but beyond the four Ruinous Powers there were other players behind the scenes vying for power, ones the Imperium did not even know about yet.

The Alpha Legion was first put onto the scent of one of these players after the end of the Nurthene Campaign, which had ended in disaster when the natives, who considered autoguns and tanks to be the cutting edge of warfare, had unexpectedly gotten their hands on Chaotic Exterminatus-class weaponry and the means to fleshcraft nightmarish golems in the image of their animalistic gods. Despite stymying assets of the Imperial Army, Astartes, and even a Titan legion, the Nurthene insurgents known as the Echvehnurth could only slow, not stop, the Imperial advance, and in a grand act of salting the earth the Echvehnurth activated a Chaotic weapon known as a Black Cube. The Black Cube stripped Nurth of all life and left it an uninhabitable, primordial wasteland, killing all upon it but at the same time denying it to the Imperium and inflicting heavy casualties.

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The Alpha Legion were perplexed by this turn of events. Never before had their intelligence apparatus failed them so. It is possible they would have continued to be perplexed had they not heard from their contact with the Cabal, John Grammaticus. Alpharius and Omegon had heard from Grammaticus and the Cabal several times before, the two organizations having shared useful intel, but this time all Grammaticus had was a single cryptic line courtesy of the mysterious Gahet.

“Go to Eolith. The answers you seek will be there.”

As fellow espionists themselves, the primarchs of the Alpha Legion were at first unsure of whether or not to believe Grammaticus, but ultimately decide to investigate it for themselves. They didn’t fully trust the Cabal, but the Cabal’s goals were straightforward and their information had been reliable in the past. Additionally, even if the Cabal’s weren’t telling the whole truth, that didn’t mean what they said was incorrect. An expeditionary force was dispatched to investigate the Cabal’s claims, consisting of several cells of Alpha Legionnaires as well as reinforcement by the Geno Five-Two Chilliad. The Chilliad’s knack for pinpoint coordination and tactical adaptability had impressed the Legion’s twin primarchs, and meshed well with their own combat sensibilities. What’s more, the Chilliad knew how to keep a secret. The Chilliad and Alpha Legion had worked together several times in the past, and when the Alpha Legion was in need of more traditional military assistance the Chiliad was normally who they thought of. However, Uxor Honen Mu was not at the head of this expedition, having stepped down following her loss of cept many years ago at the beginning of the Great Crusade. Instead, the Imperial army detachment was commanded by Teng Namantjira, the commander who had overseen the Nurthene disaster. Namantjira’s record had been spotless until Nurth, and the commander was eager to discover whether some external force had caused his offensive to fail.

Their destination was a world which the Imperium had cataloged and ignored during a routine survey as 42 Hydra Tertius, but the source knew as Eolith. Eolith was a strange world. At first glance it seemed utterly out of the ordinary, but closer inspection revealed otherwise. Surveys of the planet found plateaus with perfectly sheer faces and straight lines buried in silt under the ocean’s continental shelf, resembling starship landing pads. Nature does not build in straight lines. The rest of the planet was also more abnormal than it appeared, basins were exposed hundreds of meters below sea level, while the planet’s core suggested a lack of rotation that made it hard to imagine how the planet could sustain a breathable atmosphere or magnetosphere. Indeed, in other respects the planet was almost too ordinary, having an atmosphere that was almost identical to Earth’s, albeit with more neon and oxygen and less argon and nitrogen in the atmosphere, and a gravity 1.5 times that of Earth, despite its diameter suggesting it should have had a gravity twice that. At the north pole of the planet found an unusual energy signature, suggestive of a continuously open portal into the eldar Webway, but the records the Imperium had gained on the labyrinthine dimension from the eldar never indicated that any such portal existed here.

Given such an anomaly, the first place to look seemed obvious. Taking half of the forces of the Chilliad with them, the Alpha Legion descended upon the basin at the planet’s northern pole. There, sitting in a basin that was supposed to be three hundred meters below sea level, was what looked like an open Webway gate, albeit one that didn’t look like it was made from wraithbone, but instead an eerie black stone that resembled obsidian, but seemed to reflect no light. The members of the Chiliad were commanded to secure the margins of the basin, while the Alpha Legionaires would act as the tip of the spear and enter the portal first. Nobody wanted an enemy force potentially attacking them from behind, and if there was something nasty on the other side better the Astartes go first.

Upon entering the portal the Alpha Legion found themselves in a shrine dedicated to a being older than recorded history and an evil older than man. The reliquary was lined with numerous paraphernalia and artifacts atop singular pedestals, fossilized statues of a horned and winged being carved out of fossilized bone, five thousand year old scrolls from the Age of Strife made from tanned human skin and written in blood, horn fragments that seemed to be both material and immaterial at the same time, all illuminated in an eerie half-light that seemed to come from spotlights that did not exist. More recent items were also present, grisly trophies from the Massacre of Teuthowald, the Battle of Pydinia and the Nurthene Campaign, all Imperial defeats or losses that had seemed to have no real culprit, at least until now. The halls were lined with cyclopean blocks of stone, inscribed with writing and hieroglyphs that no one had ever seen before.

At the very back was the centerpiece of the shrine, a massive mural several stories high. One of the Alpha Legion, a Katholian, immediately made the holy symbol of Quolious for protection upon seeing it. It depicted a single entity surrounded by flames, vaguely reptilian in countenance, with forward curved horns and three eyes, shrouded by a pair of leathery wings. One of the Alpha Legionnaires remarked that it vaguely resembled depictions of the devil in their home planet’s religion. The face of the being was hard to read due to the lighting in the room, but the shadows gave the impression of a vengeful god with power over life and death. Strange beings were on their knees surrounding the creature, supplicating it for mercy but seemingly receiving none. The beings were abstract and almost devoid of detail, akin to ancient Grecian black pottery, but the Alpha Legion recognized some that looked disturbingly similar to simplified humans or eldar.

The Alpha Legion may not have been able to read the stone carvings, but the text on the scrolls was decipherable, resembling an extinct dialect spoken on a world the Word Bearers had reluctantly purged for being violently insane and too extensively tainted by Chaos. It spoke extensively of the writer’s lord, a being it referred to as “Be’lakor” and called “The First Prince of Chaos”. To the Alpha Legion, it seemed clear the writings spoke of a Daemon Prince, but one on a scale in which the Imperium had never seen before, and which the Imperium knew nothing about. Having seen the scale of the den of iniquity they had found themselves in, the Alpha Legionaires turned to each other and grimly nodded to one another. The Steward had to know about this. The Alpha Legion set about meticulously documenting the scene, taking vid-picts of every artifact and helmet cam footage of the entire sordid shrine. Even if they didn’t know the meaning of every symbol, that did not mean someone else might.

Then, the Alpha Legionnaire Mathias Herzog made a fatal mistake.

He reached out and touched the stone mural.

At once the shrine reacted to the Alpha Legionnaires presence, much like an immune system suddenly recognizing the presence of an invader. The chamber began to shudder and contract, wretched artifacts rattling and falling off of their pedestals. The Alpha Legion made for the exit at once. But where their trip into the portal had been uneventful, now all the sudden the space within the pocket dimension was like quicksand, actively fighting their attempts to try and escape, the short space to the exit seeming to telescope endlessly. The Alpha Legionnaires could see what was going on outside the portal but were helpless to do anything about it. All they could do was watch what happened next.

It was not just the dark shrine that had reacted to the Alpha Legion’s presence. As the Alpha Legion struggled to escape, the planet itself seemed to break apart, whatever force was holding it together seemingly relinquishing its ownership. The planet’s atmosphere vented itself into space as if realizing it wasn’t supposed to be there, whereas whatever artificial force was holding the oceans the way they were suddenly dissipated leaving the oceans to slosh around the planet as intended by the laws of gravity once more. Including into the basin below sea level where the portal had been.

The Alpha Legion tried to make it through the portal to warn the Chilliad of the oncoming flood, having been aware of the planet’s self-destruction before they were, but were unable to escape from their own predicament in time. Nor could the ships in orbit provide any assistance. As rescue craft descended towards the planet, space-time seemed to ooze around them, slowing their descent to a crawl as they pushed their engines to the limit trying to reach the surface before the planet fell apart. They didn’t make it in time to save the Chilliad forces on the ground. The lucky ones died when the ocean reclaimed the basin. The unlucky ones asphyxiated when the atmosphere dissipated. When the Alpha Legion emerged from the portal, protected from the changed planet by their power armor, they did so at the bottom of the ocean and surrounded by the bodies of their dead comrades.

It wasn’t until the return trip from Eolith that the Alpha Legion noticed something else was amiss. At first it was relatively minor. Shadows out of the corner of one’s eye, strange flickering of the lights when people occasionally entered a room, nothing unusual to see on an old void ship. Then people started to get the feeling they were being watched, and some claimed to see the silhouette of a humanoid figure standing in the doorway in their peripheral vision that disappeared when they turned to look. Then people started having “accidents”. Then they just started to disappear.

The Alpha Legion quickly noticed that the people who were dying were not random, but were all people who had entered the portal on Eolith. At the same time, the shadowy phantoms became bolder, no longer disappearing when people turned their gaze and bearing a striking resemblance to the statue the Alpha Legion had seen on Eolith. When Mathias Herzog turned up dead, not vanished like all the others but his flayed body simply appearing in the middle of the mess hall between a brief flicker of the lights, it seemed clear what was happening. Be’lakor, the being referenced in the shrine on Eolith, had discovered their trespassing and was now following them.

As the days went on more people continued to die, first the last of the Alpha Legionnaires who had survived the portal on Eolith and then all who they had told what they saw. Be'lakor seemed to know exactly who had learned the secret on Eolith and who had not. People started to survive just long enough to describe what was happening to them. Be’lakor was no longer content to hover over people’s shoulder menacingly, but was now coming after his victims with a slow, predatory walk. Victims would burst into rooms, begging for help from phantoms only they could see, only for their would be rescuers to die in turn. But the Alpha Legion was determined. They had to get the information out there, no matter the cost.

And so began the ultimate game of cat and mouse. No matter how far they ran, and how fast, it always seemed like Be’lakor was just two steps behind them. Nothing the Alpha Legion could do seemed to stop it. Be’lakor was implacable, unstoppable, more like a villain from a slasher movie than anything else. All the Alpha Legionnaires could do was keep the intel alive, passing the information on to as many operatives as possible in the form of encryptions and secret codes hopefully below the daemon's notice, and then buy as much time as they could before inevitably dying. Then their comrades would pick up the information, and the hunt would begin anew.

When Be’lakor did catch them, he either killed them on the spot or took what information he needed out of them to continue his hunt, relying on torture techniques honed over millions of years of cruelty. However, Be’lakor’s strategy was starting to exhibit a major flaw. He had spent so much time toying with the Alpha Legionnaires, punishing them for daring to trespass on the hallowed ground of the Old Ones, that the Alpha Legion were getting further and further ahead. First by minutes, then by hours, then by days. A told secret tends to spread exponentially, and before long the Alpha Legion were reporting their findings to the highest levels of the Imperial military. The secret was out, and the truth had become so widely disseminated there was no way Be’lakor could ever cover it back up again. Be’lakor was informed of this fact by one Alpha Legionnaire, who cheekily called himself "Alpharius", though he almost certainly was not. Be’lakor had started to become worried after he noticed that cleaning up this little operation was taking longer than expected, but after hearing those fears confirmed, Be’lakor’s rage was explosive and immediate. The Alpha Legion could not say to have won the battle, having lost too many men over the course of the operation to claim the most pyrrhic of victories, but then neither had Be’lakor. The Imperium still does not know the whole story, believing Be’lakor to be an impossibly ancient Daemon Prince rather than his true nature, but they know he exists. And that is enough.

The loss of fully half the Chilliad and the Alpha Legion’s helplessness to do anything to stop the death of their long-term allies is thought to have been another contributing factor to the Alpha Legion helping the Chilliad disappear after the War of the Beast. The Alpha Legion and its primarchs had [[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#The_Hydra_Uncoils|done their share of horrible things throughout the years]], [[grimdark|often to people who did not deserve it]]. But that does not mean they were incapable of caring about others. After all, if they did not care, how could they call themselves human?
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==== Second Battle over Elysia ====

The 2nd Battle over Elysia took place when the Chaos fleets tried to keep the blockade of Segmentum Solar after the Battle of Phaeton started. Battlefleet Solar was effectively crippled in a few days as fighting on Phaeton started, the fleet was killed over the skies of Terra. The Chaos fleets stationed themselves around Terra in different sub-sectors to block the supply lines. Battlefleet Pacificus launched a series of small offensives including diversionary attacks in the galactic west, drawing away concentrated defenders from weaker sub-sectors to allow the real attacks to clear supply lines. Battlefleet Ultima along with what's left of Battlefleet Solar gathered to the galactic east of Segmentum Solar's bordering sub-sectors to prepare for war. The Imperial ships in the meantime were conducting hit-and-run attacks all along the bordering sub-sectors. Cronefleet L'Oquis assembled every CE and Ork ships it could get together to hunt down and snuff out the raiding ships coming in from Ultima Segmentum.

The raiding ships fled to the randevu point over Catachan and brought with them news of the chasing Cronefleet. The acting admiral of Battlefleet Solar ordered all ships at the point or heading towards Catachan to divert to Elysia. All of Battlefleet Solar and some of Ultima rushed to meet over Elysia while the bulk of Battlefleet Ultima was moving back to the galactic west. CEs had already teleported inside some of the raider ships to plant tracking beacons on them before leaving unseen. The ships over Elysia rushed to resupply themselves with whatever they can get their hands on until they were unexpectedly attacked by Cronefleet O'Oquis. The battle started with Imperial ships keeping distance while Ork ships tried to close in. CE ships did enter their firing range to launch voidcraft before the Orks could and the Imperials couldn't retreat by then. Many of the human cruisers slugged it out with the CE before the Orks could get a chance to board their ships. The Orks tried ramming the Imperials many times to mostly miss or worst, damage CE ships by mistake. Eldar ships had chased off the rearguard of the Cronefleet while everybody else was fighting in the main battle. Some CE ships from the rear advancing into the main battle were fired upon by other CE ships due to misidentification and were thought to be Craftworlder ships. When the human ships had taken considerable losses Cronefleet L'Oquis tried to withdraw but was blocked by Eldar ships in their rear.

Several days have passed when the Cronefleet first engaged the Imperial fleet over Elysia. The Imperial forces had clearly taken more losses than the Cronefleet near the ending stages of the battle. When the rest of Battlefleet Ultima arrived over Elysia, the Imperial fleet was much smaller while the Cronefleet had bloodied their noses. The admiral of Battlefleet Ultima assumed command of all ships over Elysia then ordered Battlefleet Solar to retreat. As Battlefleet Solar was disengaging, the rest of Battlefleet Ultima rushed to reach firing range. The Cronefleet was almost destroyed when giving chase to the retreating Imperial ships as Battlefleet Ultima shot them to pieces.
The 2nd Battle over Elysia reached a mythical status. The destruction of so many Crone ships in that one battle and ineffectiveness of the blockade in the galactic west caused a change in strategy for the Chaos navy in the WotB. Chaos fleets were now to fulfill a supporting role in the invasion of supply producing Imperial worlds rather than block Imperial supply lines. What was left of Cronefleet L'Oquis supported a WAAAHG! that already burned 2 worlds then supported the destruction of another world. Only 3 or 4 cruisers of Cronefleet L'Oquis survived the war to return home after almost all of the fleet was burned by Imperial Fist Battle Barges over Necromunda.

==== Appearance of Attack Planet Ullanor, the Sacrifice of Ollanius Pius, and the Appearance of the Ork Diplomats ====

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#Ork_Diplomacy|Ork Diplomacy]]

==== The Siege of Terra ====

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Primarchs#Sanguinius|Arik Taranis]], [[Nobledark_Imperium_Primarchs#Sanguinius|Sanguinius]], and [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Eldrad|Eldrad]]

==== Reclamation of Old Earth and the Formation of the Ork Empires of Charadon, Octarius, and Bork ====

See [[Nobledark Imperium Xenos#Ork Empires of Charadon, Octarius, and Bork|Ork Empires of Charadon, Octarius, and Bork]]

=== Remembering Old Earth ===

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"''When I first saw Old Earth for the first time, I was reminded of an Exodite world more than anything else. It was so rustic. The people talked about rediscovering mono-molecular structures and anti-gravity, as if these were groundbreaking innovations. I was shocked, how could this be the capital of the same empire whose ships dominated the stars, and whose warriors helped the Eldar to free me from my captivity. And yet, the people there seemed so proud. Proud that they had clawed their way out of the dirt and the darkness. Their society had only just begun to rebuild itself from the horrors of their Fall, and yet they looked back on the little they had accomplished so far, and felt optimistic about the future.''"<br>
-Grand Empress Isha, on her first impressions of Old Earth

For the average Imperial citizen outside of Segmentum Solar, the ancient nations of Old Earth from the Unification Wars are long forgotten. Those who are history buffs or lived in the Sol system itself might know these old Terran states. Having been born at the end of the Age of Strife, the primarchs knew full well that many countries had come and gone before theirs, particularly after the War of the Beast caused so much destruction that the entirety of survivors on Old Earth could have comfortable fit into the continent of Europe. After the War of the Beast, many of the primarchs labored to preserve as much of they could of their country’s history and customs, so that their people would not be forgotten. This is not to say that they were the only people to write of their nations, many did so as a way of working out their grief and to try to preserve some vestige of their culture after the War of the Beast. But the nineteen of them were the Emperor’s primarchs, and when they spoke people tended to listen.

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The Emperor himself of wrote a little bit of what daily life was like in Terrawatt, when it became clear to him that his old home was gone and not coming back. However, in later years, some scholars have privately criticized this account as having been overly mythologized. Between his accounts and the drier, more methodical logs of Malcador, it is possible to get a reasonable approximation of what pre-Unification life was like in the Terrawatt Clan. Given his eidetic memory as a Man of Gold, it is likely the Emperor remembers more about Unification-era Earth than what he has put down on paper, but between his duties as head of state and the feelings such memories would dredge up it is unlikely they will ever be written down.

Of the primarchs themselves, starting with Horus, he chronicled the entire rise of the Imperium from the start of unification for the migrant fleets of Sol to the end of the War of The Beast. Some have criticized Horus' Chronical after his death when a few historians noticed the lack of historical accuracy when writing about the Great Crusade. The best records by the primarchs of life on Old Earth pre-Unification come from Fulgrim, Guilliman, and Vulkan. Fulgrim managed to write a lengthy autobiography after his Legion was reduced to just shy of three companies in the Iron Cage. Going into great detail about his everyday life, readers are able to especially immerse themselves in his childhood of living in Merika to an eerie amount of degree. Everything after the childhood section of the book is known for being historically inaccurate and turning into the self-gratifying propaganda of later parts in his life. In addition to his general writings and thought experiments, Guilliman had his entire family history saved to an audio recording then transcribed to a book. The genealogy writes about members from this nobility starting at the end of the Age of Strife till the end of the Great Crusade. Vulkan often referred to the Afrique League (and its history both before and after the Warlord) in passing in the many writings he published over his long, long life, including one book entirely devoted to the topic and several different essays on many subjects, ranging from philosophy and theology, economics to warfare. These provide some of the best glimpses we have into life in the Afrique League.

Surprisingly, Jaghatai Khan wrote extensively on his life, mostly poetry about what life was like under the Despot of Ursh and how it got so much better after he threw off the yoke of his oppressors. He also wrote poetry about his wife and the simpler lives of his people after the Khanate was established to remind him why he does what he does. Unfortunately, most of it was written in Neo-Mongolian, which meant it was only legible to Pastoral Worlders, and even then only just (being about as similar to modern Pastoral Worlder languages as Old English was to 21st century English). Dorn’s writings, much like the man himself, were straightforward, rather spartan, and only ever discussed a single subject. The nature of the Calbi military of that era would be remembered if nothing else. Although he did not survive the War of the Beast, Sanguinius mentioned his old homeland in his Meditations, where he collected his visions and wrote on topics like philosophy and ethics. As part of that, he had a very detailed and honest description of pre-Unification Duscht Jemanic, as he was a firm believer of history and examining mistakes to avoid repeating them.The Lion actually wrote a little bit about Franj, in part to work out the grief of losing his old home and in part to spite Luther for trying to sully Franj’s name. However, the most famous work attributed to the Lion may not have been actually written by him. The book was done in a clunky style as if written by Lion and the finished product was found in his quarters on his writing desk but at that time Lion was in the main medi-bay of The Rock living off of IV drips. It was Holguin, Master of the Deathwing, who found the book when it became clear that Lion was not going to wake up any day soon and someone had to tidy up Lion's room. Holguin never admitted to writing the book. Dark Angel folk belief has it that Cypher did it for no easily describable reason.

Other primarchs either would not or could not write about their home countries. Although Magnus the Red was concerned with preserving knowledge and history and wrote extensively on warpcraft and daemonology, he wrote very little on his life as a subject of Ursh. As far as he was concerned before the Imperium he had no home nation, only jailers. About the closest he ever came was when he contributed to the writing of ''The Chronicles of Ursh'', mostly chronicling how horrible Ursh was. Historians have sometimes doubted his more outrageous claims, but in almost every case they have turned out to be true. Angron, in his better days, refused to write down his experiences in the Nord Afrik conclaves, even going so far as to claim “being subjugated by the Imperium was the best thing that could have happened to the country. If it became so far forgotten it was as if it never existed so much the better.” Nevertheless, a great deal of insight can be gained into from Angron’s poetry. The earliest pieces offer harrowing glimpses into the society of the Nord Afrik conclaves in its dying years. Interspersed are more cheerful things about his children or sorrowful things about his biological family. Angron’s’ poetry was not good by any means but that was because he was a warrior rather than a poet for a living. However, as the years pass the poetry became worse. The subject matter gets better for the most part but the style, vocabulary, rhythm, punctuation, spelling and legibility of the hand written notes start to decline noticeably. Not long before War of the Beast he apparently just gave up on it.

Perturabo probably would have written about Macedonia and the Great and Everlasting Tharkian Empire if he was asked during the Great Crusade, but afterwards he refused to do so. To him, it was just one more way he failed his people, and writing about his people for posterity felt like writing an obituary rather than a historical record. Corax did not have a happy life before the Imperium. Trying to write about his life reminded him of his old family, and it hurt to think of that subject. Like Magnus, the closest he came was advising those who wrote ''The Chronicles of Ursh''. Ferrus Manus did not write anything about Orioc as he saw no difference between the Antarctic Mechanicus and the Mechanicus as a whole, and as the Mechanicus was perfect and enduring and already drowning in data there was no need to. Curze just plain did not want to talk about it. Mortarion also did not. He would not sully the name of Gredbriton by associating himself with it too hard. Leman Russ was not much of a writer, although others in his employ were.

Lorgar was well-known for writing and talking extensively on things he did not like, but he was first and foremost a warrior-chaplain. He was more concerned about the good of the people now than the problems of the long past. However writings on the Yndonesian Bloc do survive, most notably from Lorgar’s father Archbishop Kor Phaeron. Alpharius and Omegon ████████ █████████ █████████████{Historical document confiscated by order of the Inquisition. Ave Hydra, Hydra Dominatus.}███ ███████ ███████ █ ███████ ████████ ███████████ █████████ ███████

Sadly, despite all their efforts, the primarchs largely failed in this endeavor. The customs and cultures of the nation-states of Old Earth in M41 are about as well remembered as the provinces of the old Roman Empire were by the third millennium, essentially trivia only of interest to historians. The only nation-state that is well-remembered with any degree of accuracy is Ursh, and that was more as a cautionary tale to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past than for historical posterity. Ursh is best remembered in the galactic midlands, the Imperial worlds too far from Old Earth to actually know Earth's history without a degree, but close enough that legends of the primarchs are still pretty popular. Still, the legends that get told a lot are the ones about king Oscar and his primarchs fighting heroic battles against the old Chaos king and his Habnervars (local low Gothic dialect, some kind of horrible monster) or how captain Horus took so long tricking the Chaos Gods over and over that he was almost late to fight the great grot. Sure, the old story teller could regale you with the tale of how Guilliman went to school for a long time and got married to a nice lady, all of this in Franj, or he could make some shit up off the top of his head about what Fulgrim found in the Rockies, but nobody ever asks.

When the nation-states are remembered, they are primarily remembered in a semi-mythologized fashion based on their role in the Unification, typecast as heroes and villains instead of being remembered for the people who actually lived there. The White Scars spit on the memory of Ursh and its people, forgetting that for many of them their great-great grandmother was an Urshii serf who was just as oppressed by the old regime. The people of the Imperium sneer at the Yndonesian Bloc and its brutal theocracy, forgetting that Lorgar, one of the Imperium's greatest humanitarians, came from its ranks. Franj is often remembered as being the motivation of betrayal for Luther, the arch-traitor, forgetting all the people in Franj who were horrified by Luther's ideals and would ultimately end up paying for his mistakes.

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=== Black Crusades ===

EDITOR'S NOTE: These events should not be considered the only things to have happened during the various Black Crusades. The Black Crusades are massive undertakings, composed of numerous warbands whose commanders often don't have the same goals in mind. Events like the Burning of Prospero or the Gothic War are merely one front in the larger Black Crusade. Case in point [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Lady_Malys_versus_the_Steward|Lady Malys' first battle versus the Steward]] happened during the First Black Crusade, which is better known for events that happened on Cadia and the Gate Worlds.

==== First Black Crusade ====

Despite there being eleven more events of the same name, the first Black Crusade was a watershed event in the history of the Imperium, if for nothing else than it established the relationship between Chaos and the Imperium for the next several millennia. After the events of the War of the Beast, Chaos regrouped and spent the next few centuries rebuilding and licking its wounds. Despite the events of the War of the Beast, Chaos had essentially made it to the Imperium’s door the first time around, several of the primarchs (e.g., Sanguinius, Angron, Horus) had died during or since, and Chaos could replace its losses (orks, daemons) much more easily and rapidly than the Imperium could replace theirs.

Chaos expected the Imperium to be permanently crippled, and the Imperium responded with a fist to their collective faces.

Making matters worse for the forces of Chaos was the unanticipated presence of the Eldar, who had started helping human forces in larger numbers in the years since the WotB. It took some time before the forces of Chaos realized they were sticking their hand into a cheese grater and pulled back to reformulate their strategy. This was far from the end of the first Black Crusade, and there were still significant losses for the Imperium (Dorn, Abbadon) but by the end of it the relationship between Chaos and the Imperium was clear. The Imperium was no flash in the pan that would crumple after one serious battle. If Chaos wanted to win, it would have to fight every inch of the way to get there. Later Black Crusades took this lesson in mind, and have become all the more dangerous for it.

==== Second Black Crusade ====

Alpha Legion operatives and the Inquisition had been intercepting an increase in encrypted orders for Chaos cultists near the Eye of Terror for a few years prior to the Second Black Crusade. Composed of complex geometric shapes drawn in blood, the messages were complete non-sense for any unintended recipient without the properly established telepathic link and informants leaking the enemy intelligence to the Inquisition can make little to no understanding of the orders. After the help of some unknown double agent within the Imperial Army, the Imperium had received enough information to act as they found out these cults had been sabotaging and spying on the defenses of Cadia for years. Planning to smash this so-called "Second Black Crusade" right at the entrance of the Eye of Terror, the Imperial Navy called for massive numbers of reinforcements to rally over Vigilantum, the naval training world near Cadia inside the system. The assembling grand armada was halved as those ships were destroyed in transit by the Warp storm "Hollowing Hull" created by Chaos. Indeed, in retrospect, the information leading to the massive loss of ships from the Warp Storm seems to have been a plant from the Croneworlders in the first place. The rest of the armada trickled into the system to be isolated then be hunted down as small pockets of resistance formed to fight the Cronefleets as they retreated in the 'Battle over Vigilantum'. Although the Cronefleets had trouble trying to take Cadia as the Imperial Guard still held the planet, they were able to simply circumnavigate around it to attack other sub-sectors while blockading the world. The purpose of this Black Crusade was not to raze Terra like the last time but to test the Imperium in their reaction and experiment if fleets from the Eye can bypass the Cadian Gate. For the first few months of the campaign, the Imperial Navy had to smuggle in troops to the front as the Battlefleets had been scattered by the Warp storm. Unable to effectively operate as a coherent whole prevented the Battlefleets from conducting any offensive operations until the end of the Black Crusade.

==== Third Black Crusade ====

Lady Malys promised Daemon Prince Tallomin the slaughter of millions of warriors if he and some daemons killed the population of Cadia. Starting in 005.M33, the 3rd Black Crusade started with the attack on Cadia, the Crone Eldar avoid fighting on the planet as they collected the millions slain by daemons. Barging with Ork clans for "great fights with the humies" and some shiny hats, Lady Malys was able to launch a campaign of extermination on some surrounding sub-sectors while the fighting on Cadia stall. Marines in Omega armor arrived onto Caida in time to rush to the defense of Kasrs the fortress city. Tricking the local Guardsmen that they were "Vanguard for more Inquisitorial required troops" the marines managed to grind the daemons to halt on multiple fronts.

Unknown to the Imperials, Orkz, or Tallomin however, the entire Black Crusade was a distraction to allow the first phase of the Long War to finish. Lady Malys had planned to kill hundreds of millions to collect their corpses to be used in dark rituals. The Warpcraft invoked would allow certain individuals to raise the dead with just a hand wave or cause outbreaks of the Rot with their mind. Chanting Nurgle's prayers in forbidden tongues while crushing millions of bodies to become fertilizer then flushing it down into the ground or sewer system was done on many worlds. The arrive of the Grey Knights prompted Lady Malys to order her human agents with being gifted such power over the dead, to share their Warpcraft or knowledge to a parasitic immortal race already infiltrating Imperial society. Magnus along with the Thousand Sons, Space Wolves, and Gray Knights arrived on Cadia to finally force Tallomin's daemons to flee. The Omega Marines were long gone from Cadia. Lady Malys learned how to trick the Imperials into giving false priorities like if they held Cadia the Black Crusade would retreat. She indeed ordered a fighting retreat after the daemons were driven from Cadia but her objectives were complete.

==== Fourth Black Crusade ====

Malys sent a huge Cronefleet to pillage and steal arcane knowledge from [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Prospero|Prospero]]. That was until Ahriman along with his sorcerers, in the loosest term, preserved the planet by teleporting it to a pocket dimension. [[Legion of the Damned|Those on the planet exist in a limbo state between the Warp and realspace with no real predictable way of entering or exiting it]].

==== Seventh Black Crusade ====

Chaos began a series of conflicts that targeted Space Marines for extracting their geneseeds, which Fabius Bile organized it for preventing the degradation of The Fallen geneseeds while production and experimentation of the New Men continued. Running many battles to draw out the elite of the elite from the Imperial Army using false intelligence gathered by Orders Securitas, they had double-agents or used psyker/hypnosis leak information to seemingly hunt down the Chaos fleet rampaging.

==== Twelfth Black Crusade (001.M41-???) ====

''The Destruction of Macharia''

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Macharia is a Hive World in the Segmentum Obscurus that has the dubious distinction of being the closest Hive World to the Cadian Gate and the Eye of Terror. Normally the conditions surrounding the Eye of Terror and the inhabitants that live within it are too harsh to allow a hive world to exist (indeed, no Hive World could exist within the Cadian System itself or else it would be a target of opportunity for Crone Eldar raiders), but being slightly “downwind” of the Cadian Gate in a neighboring sector Macharia is just far enough away from the Eye to allow a Hive World to exist. Macharia is significantly more fortify than your average Hive World, but it is a Hive World nonetheless. Together the three systems of Cadia, Agripinaa, and Macharia are considered the crown jewels of the region surrounding the Cadian Gate, a trinity of worlds that acts as the Imperium’s first bastion against any Chaos incursion.

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The surface of Macharia has seen hordes of plague zombies raised by wight kings, roving bands of Khornate Crone Eldar berserkers, and attacks by the imposing, deadly Fallen, just like any other system neighboring the Cadian Gate region. During the 12th Black Crusade, after the repeated failure of Cadia to hold back the Chaos death fleet, the imperial navy fell back and drew a secondary battle line at Macharia, hoping to halt the Chaos invasion there. The surface of Macharia was fortified to the greatest degree possible and Imperial warships buzzed about the planets of the system like angry hornets. Before long the Chaos war fleet entered the system, headed by the dark chaplain Erebus and his flagship the Chariot of the Gods, a.k.a. the Planet Killer. The Imperial military had their doubts about the ability to hold Macharia, but they were determined to take as many of the Chaos invaders down with them. Macharia was a Hive World, and nobody expected the planet could be taken with anything less than protracted, bloody struggle.

Then the Chariot of the Gods ominously shifted configuration before opening fire and unceremoniously reduced Macharia to rubble with a single shot. The beam set fire to the planet’s atmosphere, blew through much of the upper mantle and core, and sent continent-sized chunks hurtling through space. The few ships that survived the sudden conflagration and the resulting debris cloud could not stand up to the Chaos war fleet, having no planet to use as cover and no place to which they could retreat for fuel and repairs, and were quickly swept away. The Last Battle of Macharia, which had been predicted to have taken months or even years, was over within a few days, and there was nothing to stop Chaos forces from moving further into the Milky Way.

The only good news for the Imperium is that the forces of chaos were just too surprised by this turn of events as the Imperium was. Chaos had also expected a long, protracted siege in order to take Macharia, and in fact Erebus was giving a motivational sermon to his troops in preparation for such a battle when the Planet Killer unexpectedly activated and fired on Macharia without orders. Nobody on board the Chariot of the Gods has any idea what caused the ship to activate or how to repeat that shot. Erebus has begun taking to bothering Be’lakor, the “last of the first race to discover the Primordial Truth” in the hopes of getting him to tell Erebus how to unlock the Planet Killer’s secrets. Despite being amused by Erebus’ groveling and his rightful deference, Be’lakor has no intention of sharing such information.

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''The Gothic War''

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Following a lead based on ancient Eldar Empire records where the Eldar refuse to utter the true name of aliens who they fought. It was said that the aliens could use technology that rendered Eldar technology almost useless. Malys devised a plan on studying then using the artifacts scattered throughout the Gothic Sector to mass produce and integrate these weapons onto Crone ships. Slowly and secretly Chaos built up a force to bypass Cadia then swallow the Gothic Sector where they summoned a Warp storm to isolate the sector. This was done after several Cronefleets were in position and a diversionary attack started on Cadia.

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One such artifact was the Eye of Night which is said to drive machines mad by emitting beams of light that could hit kilometers away. Using sleeper cells, the Cadian garrison force on a planet with the vault holding it, they leaked the location then started a rebellion when a Cronefleet blockaded the world. Ornsworld, the homeworld of the Ratlings, was depopulated when the Warp Hunter warband landed to kill off the tiny garrison force while Crone Eldar witches began excavating the planet for the Eye of Night. Warp Hunters who loved the sadistic extermination of the planet after they refused to surrender, went out of their way to personally make sure "Let no livestock, pet, or citizen live in those settlements" for the Ratling towns. Attempting to reverse engineer the ancient xenos technology with psyker witches and hereteks. They were interrupted in the middle of their experimentation by an Imperial Guard force, led by Ordo Xenos, who reclaimed the artifact after many losses. Battlefleet Gothic was able to clear the Chaos blockade of Onsworld long enough for the Inquisition to smuggle the Eye of Night back to Sol, after multiple failed efforts to destroy the artifact back on planetside. The Imperial Army is unsure if the research on the technology has ever left the world.

At the same time as the Fallen Marine assault on Ornsworld began, the forces of Chaos arrived on the Imperial world of Purgatory to extract another artifact from the weak defenses of the Adaptus Mechanicus. The Hand of Darkness was an artifact that could disintegrate anything it touches when powered by the Warp. The Black Crusade came to study then copy how such a technology can exist by violently extracting it from the Imperials. Although there were a few Cadian regiments present to protect the vault holding the Hand of Darkness, they could only delay the capture. With a change of plans on the fly, the Crone Eldar planning the operation forced the human Battlegroups on the planet to protect the artifact to ship it off-world rather than go off looting. Battlefleet Agripinaa tried to intercept and prevent the evacuation of the Crone Eldar off-world to no avail as the Cronefleet proved too powerful while defending the void space over the planet. The Hand of Darkness was never seen again outside of the Eye of Terror as the Crone Eldar covet the weapon to study then copy the technology which the Imperium never recovered.

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=== Post-War of the Beast/Pre-Age of Apostasy (M32-M35) ===

==== The Throne Before the Emperor ====

EDITOR'S NOTE: Need to add history of Golden Throne itself, where it came from and what Emperor did with it.

It is a little known fact, even among the historians of Old Earth, that before the events of the War of the Beast the Steward was privately planning to crown Sanguinius as Emperor at the end of the Great Crusade. All of the other primarchs had flaws that disqualified them from the position, and the Steward had not encountered any other humans who seemed up to the task. Lion, Ferrus Manus, and Mortarion all lacked the necessary charisma, and Ferrus was more loyal to the Mechanicum than anything else. Perturabo, Angron, and Curze were all psychologically unstable. Magnus was too approving of the use of the Warp for anyone’s comfort. Horus the Steward considered too ambitious and disagreed with ideologically. Alpharius and Omegon were too shifty and he suspected they were hiding something. Corax, Khan, and Russ were all good leaders and loyal to the Imperium, but they were “front-line” leaders for whom the day-to-day tasks that would be required of them as Emperor would have driven them mad. They also would have been torn between the duties to the Imperium and their loyalties towards their own people, and would have been seen as a niche pick. Lorgar would have turned the Imperium into a theocracy. Vulkan was beloved, but had similar problems to Lorgar and his coronation would likely have alienated the eldar. Guilliman was too much of a perfectionist. Dorn was too harsh and blunt to function in politics. Fulgrim would have turned the Imperium into a self-aggrandizing horror show praising his own ego.

Sanguinius was the right combination of humble, charismatic, beloved, a capable bureaucrat, and perhaps just as importantly he had a similar vision for humanity as the Steward. Sanguinius was not a perfect choice, for example he hated Conrad Kurze and Mortarion and had his own personal flaws, but finding someone else who fit that criterion and was still qualified for the job in the teeming masses of humanity was probably an impossible task. Sanguinius was also well-liked enough that his coronation would not have driven any more of a wedge between the various primarchs than already existed. Even Horus would have supported putting Sanguinius on the throne, because it supported his pro-transhuman political narrative. It's kind of hard to argue for the purity of human form when your Emperor of Mankind has gigantic angel wings.

When Sanguinius died at the Battle of Eternity Gate the Steward was too shaken over the loss to even try thinking of another substitute (especially given that none of the other primarchs fit the bill) and wouldn't really start looking again for several millenia. At the same time, the primarchs as a whole mutually agreed in private that none of them were worthy candidates for the Golden Throne. By that point, many of the primarchs had their own personal black marks and those that didn’t felt guilty over not being able to prevent Sanguinus’ death. It was one of the only thing they ever agreed upon. Lion’s confidence was shattered by the betrayal of his brother Luther. Corax was devastated by the events of Azoth and what his self-percieved hubris had wrought upon his own legion. Russ felt he had no right to rule after what had been done at his command to the people of Fenris. Even Horus, ever ambitious, thought twice, having been shaken by the fact that the Chaos Gods had tried to tempt him and how it was his gamble that had almost led to the death of the Imperium.

In the years between the Battle of Terra and the Age of Apostasy, there were many who aspired to be crowned Emperor. Imperial history is littered with pretenders from throughout the Imperium that nominated themselves in aspiration to the throne and failed in whatever task the Steward gave to prove themselves. These legends are particularly popular farther out from Old Earth where they took on a folkloric and mythological aspect, equal parts folk legend and morality tale, that demonstrates a peculiar truth of the Imperium. Despite the laws on faith and presence of traditional religions, the century spanning, generation transcending politics of the high Imperial court have an undeniable quality of momentousness and immortality that have made the resulting tales akin to civil scripture.

Then, of course, came Vandire. Despite all the muttered curses and epithets posthumously directed at Vandire after the Imperial Civil War, there were actually no signs of the monster he would become. Vandire was known for his humility and kindness, and was a brilliant administrator, one of the best the Adeptus Administratum had ever seen, What’s more this charisma and talent were real, not just skin deep masking some deep pre-existing psychological problems. He was also well-liked by the eldar, having treated them fairly when the Administratum dealt with the Craftworlds and Exodite worlds, which made him a favorable choice from their point of view. Ironically, Vandire probably could have become an Emperor so great that Oscar would pale in comparison (which is what Oscar wanted) but he wasted his potential obsessing over what others thought of him than doing his job and letting his actions speak for themselves. What drove Vandire to madness was the pressure of running an entire galaxy and living up to the Steward’s example, and the fact that he believed that people were only listening to him because the Steward told them to.

After the Age of Apostasy and the ensuing Imperial Civil War, there was really only one acceptable candidate for Emperor: Oscar. For humanity this was obvious, Oscar was a hero to almost every world in the Imperium and everyone knew he would rule well and not abuse his power. He had six thousand years of history backing him up on this point. Inquisitor Sebastian Thor articulated this to Oscar very clearly in addition to the succession crisis issue when they argued over who got the Throne. The Steward pointed out that Thor had organized a galaxy-wide rebellion with little more than words, but Thor retorted that he was a firebrand, not a leader. Oscar had stopped a civil war just by showing up. Oscar insisted that humanity be free to choose its own leader, and to his surprise they had turned around and chosen him.

For the eldar the Steward was also the only acceptable candidate, but for reasons that are less obvious. To the eldar, Vandire was definitive proof that baseline humanity could not be trusted with power (the fact that the eldar were just as divided by the civil war and certain Craftworlds sent Vandire eldar bodyguards being quietly swept under the rug). Additionally, the short lifespan of humans compared to eldar means you would have Emperors turning over all the time, which would be ridiculous for consistency (by eldar standards) in Imperial policy. Oscar was a known quantity, and even though the safety of humanity was his first and foremost concern, his actions showed that he would treat the eldar fairly. He was also biologically immortal, which quelled any such worries about a succession crisis. Additionally, he was married to Isha, so putting Oscar on the throne basically meant putting Oscar and Isha on the throne, meaning eldar interests would always be represented in Imperial politics.

==== The First and Second Viskeon Wars ====

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The Viskeon are an extinct xenos race native to a planet on the very southern edge of the Segmentum Ultima right near the border with the Segmentum Tempestus. An asexual ectothermic reptilian or amphibian-like species (though with some similarities to Earth starfish), the Viskeon were known for their extreme regenerative abilities. Although they normally reproduced by budding, Viskeon regenerative capabilities were so extreme that a Viskeon cleaved into large enough pieces could regrow into four or five individuals.

The Viskeons are notable in that despite being capable of interstellar travel their military capabilities seemed downright primitive by most species’ standards. Viskeon lived by a strict honor code, which glorified face-to-face melee combat and saw most projectile weapons (ranging from bows and arrows to stubbers and lasguns) as dishonorable. The only ranged weapons the Viskeons ever used were thrown javelins and bladed discuses, which they typically used as skirmishing tools before closing to melee combat. Of course, when your skin is thick enough to blunt the impact of anything short of a bolter and your body can easily heal from such injuries, the use of ranged weapons might not seem immediately intuitive.

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The First Viskeon War happened roughly concurrent with the Fourth Black Crusade in M34. Spreading out in all directions from their homeworld on the southern edge of the galaxy, the Viskeon put several sectors in the Tempestus and Ultima Segmenta under siege. The Imperium, which had not known about the Viskeon and the few star systems they controlled, were caught off guard by the appearance of the Viskeon armada. They were used to attacks from Xenos Horribilis and Obscuras from the fringe, but not one this organized from a direction they didn’t expect.

All attempts at making contact and communicating with the Viskeon failed. They claimed they had been directed to attack the Imperium as part of a holy war demanded by their god, the Three-Eyed King. The Imperium initially struggled against the Viskeon, although they lacked ranged weaponry the Viskeon were able to regenerate from most glancing shots until they could close to melee combat (where they had the strength advantage over baseline humans and eldar) and killing them often made their numbers larger. Even shooting them with a bolter was a gamble, the resulting explosion could blow the Viskeon into small enough pieces that it wouldn’t regenerate, but it could also blow their limbs off and send them flying where one couldn’t see them, where they would regenerate into four more Viskeon.

However, as the Viskeon front line buckled, the weaknesses in their strategy became clear. The Viskeon had overextended themselves in order to attack multiple targets, hoping to overwhelm their opponents with shock tactics and surprise due to their smaller numbers, but this left them with few assets to reinforce holes in their formation. The Imperium also discovered the Viskeon’s ectothermic physiology and ruthlessly exploited it, hunting Viskeon down in the dead of night when they were at their most sluggish and least able to fight back. The Viskeon retreated back into the void from which they had come, and the Imperium were unable to track them down.

The Second Viskeon War happened roughly 800 years after the first, in M35. Once again the Viskeon set out from their unknown homeworld to wage war. The Viskeon moved out in a much tighter, directional formation instead of an omnidirectional campaign to prevent their front line from being overrun but surprisingly beyond this their military tactics had not changed to account for what they had learned in their first conflict with the Imperium. The Imperium, on the other hand, had learned from the encounter and adapted accordingly. This time, instead of Cadian Doctrine troops specializing in ranged lasgun and shuriken fire, the Imperium had brought in flamers and plasma weaponry to negate the Viskeon regeneration factor, with the Imperial defense spearheaded by the close-quarters, flamer specializing Salamanders, who had called for a Reformation of the Legion for this occasion.

The Second Viskeon War went much more in the Imperium’s favor, and this time the Imperium were able to dispatch forces after the Viskeon when the Viskeon forces routed rather than tending to their wounds. They tracked the Viskeon forces back to their home planets, a mere dozen in total, and burned them through a combination of orbital bombardment and ground operations. Today, the Viskeons survive only in the form of genetic samples collected by the Adeptus Biologis before their world was destroyed.

As the Adeptus Biologis and Imperial xenologists sifted through the rubble of the Viskeon worlds, trying to find an answer as to why a species would suddenly decide to attack an interstellar power they didn’t even know existed, they came upon a handful of startling discoveries. Based on Viskeon carvings and representational art of their god, the Three-Eyed King of the Viskeons was clearly the Warp entity known as [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Be’lakor|Be’lakor]], and from the remaining samples of Viskeon genetics and physiology they bear various marks of subtle but extreme artificial enhancement to produce their observed capabilities.

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==== The Pale Wasting and the Thexian Trade Empire ====

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The Thexian Trade Empire was an interstellar Xenos Independens empire located in the Ghoul Stars that controlled nearly sixty star systems at its height. The homeworld of the Thexians and capital of their empire were the Bloodmoons of Thex Prime, so named because of their intensely oxidized sediments causing them to appear bright red in color. When the Imperium first encountered the Thexians in the late years of the Great Crusade, they were shocked when Thexian ships sought them out and tried to open diplomatic channels and trade agreements with them. Previously during the Great Crusade, the vast majority of xenos races the Imperium had encountered had either tried to kill them on sight or had either come to a spoken or unspoken understanding to stay out of each other’s way. Even the Eldar, when they had sought out an alliance to free Isha some years earlier, had done so in a way the Imperium could understand, cautiously and half-heartedly out of fear that one side was going to break the other’s shaky trust. The fact that the Thexians had willingly approached them with apparently amicable intent baffled the Imperium.

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In the end, the Imperium decided to neither declare war nor ally with the Thexians but kept them at arm’s length. The Thexians were considered not worth trying to wipe out for a variety of reasons. First, Thexian territory was considered less than ideal for human occupation. The Thexian Trade Empire was primarily located in the coreward front of the Ghoul Stars, areas which the Thexians had no problems inhabiting but humanity less so. The Ghoul Stars were also on the far side of the galaxy from the Segmentum Solar and were almost outside of the range of the Astronomican, making any attempts to hold them expensive and inefficient. Secondly, the Thexians made for a good buffer state. Much like the Eldar, Tarellians and later the Tau, the Thexians were much better neighbors than the vast majority of alternatives as they could actually be diplomatically reasoned with, unlike the vast majority of xenos races encountered during the Great Crusade. And finally, the Thexians quite frankly were not a threat to mankind. There was a heated disagreement over the existence of human populations on Thexian worlds, but the Thexians surprised the Imperium by being willing to relocate the majority of the human population on their worlds to Imperial territory, in exchange for trade agreements with the Imperium that is. If anything, the problem was the Thexians seemed too nice, which set off the Imperium’s sense of paranoia immensely.

However, the Thexians' friendliness covered up a more self-serving motivation. The Thexians, as a species, were motivated by a species-wide case of greed. The Thexians were an extremely long-lived species and reproduced very infrequently. Therefore, from an evolutionary perspective, greed made sense. Many species hoard resources for hibernation or periods of want, and if you live for thousands of years you can hoard quite a lot of resources, enough to let you survive even the longest lean periods until the next opportunity at reproduction came. The Thexians were so friendly and interested in trade because trade was one of the best ways for an individual to increase one’s holdings, and people were more willing to trade with a friendly face than a backstabbing or violent one. And the Thexians could afford to be friendly, for few unarmed or unaugmented beings could harm a Thexian in their true form. However, this did not mean the Thexians were soft. They were interested in amassing wealth and power, and when it suited them they were capable of oiliness that would make a Void Born proud. Nor were Thexians unambitious, power plays between Thexians were not uncommon, though they usually took the form of displays of subtle power behind the scenes or hostile takeovers of assets than open warfare.

The Thexians were a vaguely chiropteran species like the Khrave, though unlike the Khrave they did not spin webs and fed on flesh and blood rather than minds. The Thexians were a polymorphic race, capable of shifting into one of several different forms depending on their need. First and foremost was warform, a large, quadrupedal bat-like form capable of limited flight, covered in a leathery, squamous hide, and armed with fierce talons and massive fangs, which was believed to be the Thexian’s true form. There was flightform, a lighter-than-air shape somewhat similar to warform but with larger wings, a smaller body, and an almost ethereal appearance. There was thoughtform capable of emitting bolts of Warp lightning from its semi-corporeal shape. And perhaps most importantly among the myriad forms the Thexians were capable of taking was diplomacyform, their preferred shape when interacting with non-Thexian races, which resembled strangely androgynous humanoids that did not quite resemble either human or eldar.

Thexian society was organized into groups called aedes, feudal households comprised of a small ruling number of Thexian adults known as the Thexian Elite, their material wealth, other alien species that had sworn fealty to the Thexian Elite, and their immature offspring who had not amassed enough of a horde to become independent yet. Because they reproduced so slowly, less than 15% of the population of the Thexian Trade Empire was composed of Thexians, with the rest representing vassal populations of dozens of minor xenos species including some quasi-legal human populations that were missed by the resettlement or were the descendants of refugees into Thexian space.

Approximately during the latter half of M34, the Thexian Trade Empire became afflicted with a condition that became known as the Pale Wasting. The Pale Wasting exaggerated the normal Thexian tendency towards greed to extremes, to the point where it became an obsession. The Thexians began hoarding in earnest to attempt to sate this craving, throwing out all reason or subtlety, but no matter how much they hoarded they could never get enough. Eventually, the affliction developed into a physical craving for sustenance as well, turning their bodies growing gaunt and emaciated as they resorted to guzzling blood and shoving gore-filled chunks into their mouth in an effort to quell their bottomless hunger.

It is generally thought that the Pale Wasting was Chaotic in nature, given its corruptive effects and mental deterioration, though those that think so debate whether it was the work of Khorne (because of the hunger for blood and gore), Slaanesh (because of the excess), Nurgle (because it acted like a plague), Tzeentch (because of its strange nature) or all four Ruinous Powers together. If it was, it is possible the Pale Wasting could have been transmitted to the Thexians via the Loxotl, whom the Thexians had some contact with despite the warnings of the Imperium. However, it is not out of the possibility that the Pale Wasting was caused by contact with C’tan/Necron technology or some form of C’tan vampirism.

While humans and other xenos species were immune to the Pale Wasting, they could easily act as carriers transmitting the disease between the Thexian Elite. From there, the Pale Wasting could easily reverse the roles, corrupting the vassals underneath Thexian fealty through their connection to the Thexian Elite. When the Thexian Elite finally shrieked their declaration to go to war, millions of brainwashed thralls responded to their call. The result was all out war between the Thexians and their neighbors, resulting in a massive military response from the Imperium in which more than a dozen Adeptus Astartes chapters were wiped out in the fighting. In the end, as the corruption and Thexian Nightmare Engines wreaked havoc the Thexians and the Pale Wasting could only be stopped by mass-Exterminatus tactics and a scorched earth policy, leaving numerous Dead Worlds across the Ghoul Stars including the sixty or so worlds held by the Thexian Trade Empire.

A few Thexians survived, those immune to the Pale Wasting. Some fought alongside the Imperium, warforms tearing into infected kin with ferocity and thoughtforms banishing Thexian thralls with blasts of Warp lightning. Others fled the conflict, hitching rides on the starships of the Nicassar and hiding where they could. Today, through various quirks of history, most remaining Thexians can be found under the Imperial aegis, mostly as diplomats, traders, advisors, and occasionally members of government. Their numbers are spread so thin that members of the species can go without seeing another one of their kind for more than a century. Some have tried to live outside the Imperium, setting up small fiefdoms that are pale imitations of the aedes once seen throughout the Thexian Trade Empire A few corrupted Thexians afflicted with the Pale Wasting are also still in existence, but thankfully like their uncorrupted counterparts are rare.

The Pale Wasting had several long-term effects on galactic politics. Perhaps the greatest long-term effects of the Pale Wasting was that it helped set the stage for the Imperium to start admitting other races into the Imperium. When debate was raised over the possibility of admitting other races into the Imperium, the Thexians were a prime argument by those in favor of admission. The Thexians had been an advanced, relatively friendly xenos empire, and (in the minds of the pro-Admission advocates after nearly two thousand years of hindsight and nostalgia) the Imperium had left them out in the cold. Such a policy had not only let the Thexians get corrupted by the Pale Wasting, but created a massive interstellar threat that had cost the Imperium a significant amount of lives and resources to contain. If the Thexian Trade Empire were still alive today, they would have been classified Xenos Familiaris with little difficult and would have been easily admitted into the Imperium, so long as efforts were made to prevent Thexian ambition from subverting the functioning of the Imperium, and none of this would have happened.

The second impact of the Pale Wasting was perhaps more insidious. The Pale Wasting wiped out most of the conventional life in the Ghoul Stars, though it soon became a lawless hellhole filled with little respect for law and order or the conventional laws of physics. Although outside the light of the Astronomican, for many millennia the Space Marine chapters such as the Death Spectres stationed on the edge of the Ghoul Stars did a good job of defending the Imperium’s borders from any threat that might come from the Ghoul Stars. Unfortunately, the northeastern galaxy and the Ghoul Stars in particular had once been the heartland of the Necrontyr Star Empire nearly sixty six million years ago, and the mass extermination of life in the Ghoul Stars meant that there was little opposition and a sizeable buffer from any external power when the surface of many of these “Dead” Worlds cracked open and thousands of Necron warriors rose from beneath the earth in mechanical unlife.

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=== 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 von Cortez family’s Writ of Trade was revoked and 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. Sure, one of the junior family members could come forward and name themselves as the heir to the von Cortez dynasty’s assets, but it would require making their identity publicly known as Leopold’s heir. And there were still a lot of people with scores to settle over what happened in Surat.

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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 they 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. 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 struggling to keep pace with tyranid hyper-evolution. Vast armies of Mega-Gargants, in numbers not seen since 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====

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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.

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 killed all the daemons which tried to escape back into the warp. 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- it was close to death, 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 kill it. 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.

</div>
</div>

=== Minor Historical Events ===

====982.M31, An Awkward Reminder====
Imperial military assets are put on guard by the sudden appearance of an ancient Webway gate in the Sol system out of the interstellar blackness. Both humans and eldar are confused as to the significance of this event, until the Harlequins find mention of an Old Empire project to launch an invasion of the Sol system via a Trojan horse webway gate. The gate appears to have been constructed on a planet over a hundred lightyears away at some point in late M24 and fired at the Sol system at a fraction of the speed of light, with the Old Empire military leadership expecting it to reach Sol some eight thousand years later, apparently not realizing [[Fall of the Eldar|how much the galaxy would change in the interim]]. This awkward realization suddenly turns to horror when the Imperium realizes that while the Old Eldar Empire may no longer be around to implement their plan, [[Anal_Circumference|there is nothing stopping the Crone Eldar from doing the same]], and the Ilios gate, as it is come to be known, is quickly shut down and moved elsewhere.

====432.M32, A Lover’s Quarrel====
''“I sometimes try to reassure myself that we live in a [[lulz|sane, just, reasonable universe]]. Then I remember that we once lost a planet because [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Lady_Malys|some Crone bitch]] [[grimdark|was going through relationship issues]].”''<br>
-- Imperial Colonel Ismerelda Guerregia, circa 400.M33

The galaxy’s longest on-again, off-again relationship, that of [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Asdrubael_Vect|Asdrubael Vect of Commorragh]] and [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Lady_Malys|Lady Aurelia Malys of the Crone Eldar]] of Shaa-Dome, ends unexpectedly when Malys receives a message from Vect telling her that their relationship is over. The relationship between the two had been deteriorating for some years prior to that, rumor has it due to Vect and Malys’ relationship becoming strained over Malys’ attempts to convert Vect to Chaos, but for Vect to abruptly declare their relationship over without warning stuns Malys and sends her into a rage. Only Vect would have the audacity to tell the Daemon Queen to her face “it’s not you, it’s him”.

In response to Vect’s message, Lady Malys rampages across Commorragh, determined to drag Vect out of his hole and confront him fact to face. She easily tracks down his refuge, a fortified bunker beneath one of his dwellings in Upper Commorragh. There was no way for Vect to hide, for as Vect’s former lover Malys knew exactly where Vect was likely to run (or, at least, so she thought) and few Dark Eldar were willing to stand between the Daemon Queen and the target of her wrath. In her emotionally compromised state, Malys’ normally razor-sharp mind is dulled with rage, failing to notice the ease at which she had managed to break into Vect’s hidden sanctum or the fact that resistance within Vect’s fortress was surprisingly lax. Malys finds Vect on his throne, surrounded by his harem of eldar and xenos slaves. When confronted, Vect is surprisingly remorseful of his actions, presenting Malys with a wrapped gift merely labeled “For my sweetheart”.

When Vect moves to open the gift, the containment field keeping its contents in stasis breaks down, unleashing the portable black hole held within. Malys only survives by slamming the door to Vect’s throne room behind her and allowing the black hole to consume the entire throne room before dissipating into Hawking radiation. In the moments before the box was opened, her rage had lifted enough for her to realize Vect would have never allowed her to get so close given recent events, as well as the fact that the being calling itself “Vect” had let slip numerous tells indicating that it was not her beloved Asdrubael. “Vect” was later found to be a slave surgically altered to resemble Vect and given access to the harem, having no idea it was meant to be a sacrificial lamb for Vect’s ex-lover or the nature of the “gift” Vect intended for her. Vect’s throne and entire harem are destroyed, a price Vect considers worth paying to keep Malys off his back. The actual Vect would not reappear until months later. Rumor has it he was on the other side of Commorragh enjoying a drink and watching the show unfold. No one in Commoragh was naive or foolish enough to actually believe him dead. Nevertheless, in the moment, Malys’ sheer rage at the situation, now compounded by the fact that Vect had the audacity to try and assassinate her, had yet to be sated.

[[Exterminatus|An entire Imperial system burns]] [[Rape|at the hands of Crone Eldar in service to Lady Malys]] before Malys manages to calm down. It would be years before Malys and Vect were on speaking terms again. Although the ways in which their relationship has periodically ended have varied, sometimes with Vect dumping Malys, sometimes with Malys dumping Vect, sometimes the two mutually agreeing they need to see other people, the fallout from this breakup was particularly notable.

====M33 (subjectively), the Melee of the Impossible Mountain====
As the tides of the deep Warp continually shift, they lead to the rediscovery of Excalpurnia, the Impossible Mountain, in the Chaos Wastes, a location thought to be lost for a thousand years said to have a font of unimaginable power at its center. As word of this discovery spreads, the Impossible Mountain becomes a free-for-all, as daemons from all four gods battle each other for control of the source of power at its heart. Perhaps the most surprising participant in this contest is [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Be'lakor|Be’lakor]], intensely motivated by a desire to obtain any source of power not already claimed by one of the Big Four, tearing through Khornate, Slaaneshi, Nurglite, and Tzeentchian daemons alike to get his claws on the prize.

Eventually, only two real contenders are left for the prize, Be’lakor and Skalaban’thrax, a Bloodthirster of Khorne. In terms of raw power, Be’lakor and Skalaban’thrax are evenly matched, but Be’lakor knows the Bloodthirster outclasses him in stamina and martial prowess and, if allowed to, will simply outlast Be’lakor before landing the killing blow. Be’lakor wins the fight by tricking the Skalaban’thrax into charging him before shoving the Bloodthirster into a warp portal to [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Blanks_and_the_Pariah_Gene|Pluto]], catching the Bloodthirster in a banishment loop until his will breaks and he forfeits the contest.

Although smug from his victory over the Bloodthirster, Be’lakor’s hopes are dashed when he realizes what the prize of the Impossible Mountain is: [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Drach'nyen|the daemon sword Drach’nyen]], finally coming to light after being cast into the Warp by the last act of the kinebrach warsmith Ra-Ham-Be. Furthermore, Be'lakor in his rage recognizes the hand of the Architect of Fates in this turn of events, clouding his sight just enough to let him see an unclaimed well of power but not letting him see enough detail to realize it's a source of power he doesn't want. Recognizing Drach’nyen for the white elephant that it is, Be’lakor concedes defeat, allowing Drach’nyen to be taken by Ka’junhada, a minor Bloodletter of Khorne. Ka’junhada is found dead a (subjective) month later, his bloodlust not sufficient enough to quench the thirst of the daemon sword. And so Drach'nyen is set loose on the galaxy once more, albeit in a different form.

====169.M35, The Malalian Heresy====
A group of Crone Eldar discover the true nature of Malal as a fifth (technically second), independent Chaos god. Such a fact was not exactly uncommon knowledge among the Crone Eldar, however, the fact that the Crones in this case responded to this information by renouncing their allegiance to all other gods and worshipping Malal exclusively was quite unusual. It is thought that the eldar in this case were nihilistic “true” Nurglite Crone Eldar, which meant this discovery resonated with their worldview and they were already in the right mindset to act on this information rather than just dismiss it as most other Crones would. These Crone Eldar painted their faces white and black, preaching that Malal was the one true god (or at least, the god to be placed before all other gods) and that he was their savior through their destruction. The movement gained popularity, with billions flocking to their banner.

This notion was quite franky regarded as the highest levels of blasphemy to most levels of Crone society, albeit for different reasons behind the different sects. Khornates considered it blasphemy to place Khorne’s vizier above Khorne, Tzeentchians inherited their patron’s animus for the anti-god that had existed since the dawn of recorded history, and Chaos Undivided eldar considered it heretical to claim that any gods worthy of worship existed beyond the main four. Even Slaaneshi and Nurglite eldar joined in, Slaaneshis likely because [[That Guy|they relished in the opportunity to bring anyone spite]] and Nurglites possibly because Nurgle feared retribution from a reformed Malal for what happened at the end of the War in Heaven (as well as the fact that Nimina and the Conservators were very vocal about how heretical the notion of worshipping someone other than Nurgle was compared to what would be expected of a Nurglite) As a result, persecution of this heresy garnered an abnormal amount of cooperation from followers of the big four.

The full force of the Crone Worlds and Shaa-Dome was brought down on the movement, but the fighting was not as easy as would be anticipated. Although greatly outnumbered, the individual Malal cultists seemed to have the strength of ten eldar, not to mention the assistance of the Malalic daemon prince Apep. At one point even Skarbrand was summoned and depopulated a continent-sized region of a layer of Shaa-Dome before being banished. In the end, it was the orthodoxy’s sheer numbers along with the summoning of daemons that turned the tide, Malal had not regained enough strength to form daemons yet whereas that daemons of the big four were so angered by the rebellion of the outcast god the Crones could summon them for a song. Hundreds of billions are killed in the resulting conflict before the surviving heretics are defeated and put to the sword.

====???.M38, the Raid of Bor’kan====
In an early encounter between the Tau Empire and the Dark Eldar, a raid by Archon Klax on the Sept world of Bor’kan takes thousands of Tau and Poctroon slaves. Sending a communication receivable by Tau technology, Klax offers to release the slaves in exchange for a significant amount of ransom. Still naïve to the ways of the Dark Eldar, the Tau Empire pays the sum, only for Klax to send another communication openly laughing at the Ethereal council’s actions and broadcasting the torture of dozens of prisoners. In response, Tau and Poctroon engineers spend several months building a 0.8 km unmanned projectile out of modified unused Poctroon designs for an interstellar sleeper ship and launch it at the apparent location of the transmission at one-third of the speed of light. Several years later the ship strikes the moon of a seemingly uninhabited gas giant several lightyears beyond Tau space with enough force to leave a crater in the planet’s surface kilometers deep still visible when the Tau colonize the system centuries later. Although the attack fails to kill Klax, it damages his operation enough that Klax is not heard from for several decades.

====970.M41, Reactivation of Ouakronos====
The Imperial world of Neo-Alexandria is invaded by Necrons of the Sarnekh Dynasty led by Thaszar the Invincible at the orders of the Silent King. Unbeknownst to its inhabitants, Neo-Alexandria is really the Necron World Engine Ouakronos, millions of years of asteroids and debris being drawn into its gravity well leaving it deceptively caked in kilometers of soil. Covered in rich regolith, the planet was terraformed by humans during the Dark Age of Technology, with none the wiser as to its true nature. While the Imperial military above engage the Necron forces, oblivious to their true goal, Thaszar descends below the planet’s surface and reactivates the World Engine. Great fissures open up across the planet, cyclopean engines jutting forth from the layers of earth, before Thaszar points Neo-Alexandria at Mandragora and engages its inertialess drive. Not being protected by external shielding or artificial gravity, the planet’s soil, atmosphere, and inhabitants are stripped away by the acceleration by the time Ouakronos arrives at its destination.

== Imperial Governmental Structure ==

[[Image:1485614099098.jpg|thumb|Emperor Oscar of the Glorious Imperium and its people uncounted, Consort of the All-Mother and her most favoured champion, last of the Golden Men, founder of the Imperium, bane of gods, unifier of all civilized peoples and Defender of the Realm. Not as gold-colored as most people think.]]

The Imperium is vast and covers a little over a million inhabited worlds of humans and xenos and the styles of governance of these worlds varies greatly from one planet to another. Represented under the ever watchful Aquila can be found meritocracies, stratocracies, bureaucracies, plutocracies, oligarchies, theocracies, monarchies, aristocracies, democracies and many others. All of these are local systems usually confined to a single solar system or planet or even a nations on those planets.

The Imperium itself is an autocracy under the rule of the Emperor who operates mostly via benevolent indifference. As a general rule the Imperium does not care what you do so long as you pay the tithe and don't rock the boat.

The only time when the Imperium does care is when one of it's few rules is broken to a degree that they can't pretend to not see it any more. The rules being:

# Pay the tithe
# Don't worship the gods of Chaos
# Don't worship the Emperor
# No militarized religious institutions
# No open warfare between member worlds of the Imperium

So long as these few rules are followed the Imperium does not care. If those rules are broken or the boat is excessively rocked the Imperium suddenly does care and that is terrible because it has no sense of proportional escalation and will confiscate your planet.

Although the Emperor officially rules in practice the Royal Couple spend most of their time touring the Imperium overseeing and inspecting. The day to day running of the Imperium is done by the High Lords of the Imperium who reside on the Holy Planet of Old Earth, know as Terra to the Mechanicum and affiliated institutions.

The High Lords of the Imperium are:

*[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#Master of the Administratum Irthu Haemotalion|The Master of the Administratum]]
*The Inquisitorial Representative (currently Hector Rex)
*[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#Fabricator-General Oud Oudia Raskian|The Fabricator-General of the Adeptus Mechanicus]]
*[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#Grand Provost Marshal Aveliza Drachmar|The Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites]]
*[[Nobledark Imperium Writing#The Saga of Fedor Jiao|Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators]]
*[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Master_of_the_Adeptus_Astra_Telepathica.2C_Astronomican.2C_Schola_Psykana_and_the_Black_Ships_Lady_Ina_Kissa|The Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Astronomican, Schola Psykana and the Black Ships]]
*Grand Headmaster of Rhetor Imperia and Schola Progenium
*[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Lord_Commander_Militant_of_the_Imperial_Army_Lukas_Bastonne|Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Army (ground forces)]]
*[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Lady_High_Admiral_of_the_Imperial_Navy_Merelda_of_House_Pereth|Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Army (space forces)]]
*[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Spokesman_for_the_Collective_Synod_of_the_Imperium_Walden_of_the_Aaldenbergs|Spokesman for the Collective Synod of the Imperium]]
*[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#The_Speaker_for_the_Merchant_Navy_and_Rogue_Traders_Abdul_Golberg|The Speaker for the Merchant Navy and Rogue Traders]]

[[Image:Nobledark Aquila.jpg|thumb|left|250px|The Imperial Aquila, with the twin heads of the Eagle and the Phoenix, symbolizing the union between humankind and Eldar. This is merely the most common variant, with the colors and even to some degree the shape of the Aquila varying based on organization and world.]]

The High Lords of the Imperium were originally set up during the days of the Unification of Old Earth as the task of ruling was becoming too time consuming even for the superhuman Warlord, as he was known at the time. The Warlord's long term hope was that they would eventually be able to replace him entirely and he could step down as the temporary immortal ruler of the masses. His short term goal was to get a bit of free time to learn how to socialize.

As the years wore on it became obvious that humanity on the galactic scale would always need one man of supreme competence to set precedents for the High Lords to follow. The rank of Emperor was created but not occupied by the Warlord who instead became the Steward and would wait for such an individual to arise. In his mind humanity should be ruled by humanity, not be an artificial construct of a failed and half forgotten Empire.

After Goge Vandire was appointed Emperor, screwed everything up and was promptly executed the Steward was bullied by Inquisitor Sebastian Thor and the demands of the masses into taking the role of Emperor. He was not particularly happy about this and at first refused until Inquisitor Thor pointed out that by the end of the day one of them would be sitting on that gaudy old chair and out of the two of them one of them would die of old age eventually and then another civil war this time of succession would almost certainly ensue.

With the exception of the position of the Inquisitorial Representative (which is a ten-year rotating position to make sure the High Lords have the best expert for whatever crisis is facing the Imperium on hand and no one Inquisitor gains too much power), the High Lords of Terra are all human. This is because Eldar live for thousands of years and no one wants to be stuck with one person in the same position for thousands of years. Of course, this doesn’t stop every High Lord and numerous officials beneath them having at least one Seer on their payroll giving advice and wisdom. This benefits the Eldar as well, as it allows them to influence Imperial government without putting themselves directly in the crosshairs. The idea of non-human, non-Eldar High Lords has never come up, seeing as the Imperium has only been officially admitting other species for the last 4,000 years and other species make up only about 1% of the Imperium’s total population. Though given the Tau’s current political ambitions it’s likely that this point is going to be brought up in the near future.

=== Xenos Classifications ===

As the Great Crusade made its way across the stars, back before the Eldar joined and the Imperium was merely the Imperium of Man, the nascent Imperium encountered numerous forms of sentient alien life. Some were non-aggressive towards humanity but merely wished to be left alone, something the Steward was more than willing to oblige. The point of the Great Crusade was to strengthen and unite humanity, not start a hundred petty wars that could weaken humanity in the future via a death of a thousand cuts. Other races, like the Kinebrach or the Eldar of Colchis, were interested in interacting with humanity on peaceful terms, either coexisting as equals or acting as trading partners. The Steward allowed this with some reservation, though he probably told the Xenos in no uncertain terms if he ever found out they were antagonizing or abusing humanity his response would be swift and vengeful. And still others, such as the Nephilem and the Laer, were just so destructive and antagonistic that they simply could not coexist with humanity and had to be destroyed. Any Xenos that would enslave or prey upon proud humanity, and as it often happened other meeker sentients alongside them, would be put to the sword.

It is these types of interactions that led to the modern Xenos classifications that we know today. Today, the Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition recognizes three major types of sentient alien life:

'''Xenos Familiaris''' – Literally “familiar Xenos” in this case. Used to refer to any Xenos species that is a member of the Imperium. Eldar, Tau, Tarellans, and Demiurg are all representatives of this category. Ironically enough humans also fall into this category if used by a non-human Imperial citizen, as the term essentially means “species that are not my own that are part of the Imperium” as opposed to a human-specific term.

'''Xenos Independens''' – Xenos races that are rational enough that they can negotiate with the Imperium, but for whatever reason are not part of it. Some engage in heavily restricted trade with the Imperium (usually through Rogue Traders, as the Imperium likes to use free trade with the rest of the Imperium as a selling point for minor races to join). Others are aloof and territorial and may have even fought minor skirmishes with the Imperium, but are generally smart enough to sue for peace before things escalate beyond the point of no return. The Q’orl and the Jokaero represent the aggressive and affiliative extremes of this category, respectively. Ordo Xenos Inquisitors like to monitor Xenos Independens like a hawk, as they are ideal tools for Chaos to subvert and use against the Imperium. Most modern Xenos Familiaris (with the exception of humans, eldar, kinebrach, and a few others) were treated as Xenos Independens prior to M36, when the Demiurg were inducted as the first official non-human, non-eldar member state of the Imperium. Interestingly, the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos|Necron Star Empire]] was in this category at one point when the Imperium thought they could be negotiated with until the Silent King started getting unreasonable.

'''Xenos Horrificus''' – Hostile xenos. Xenos that are aggressive, destructive, cannot be negotiated with, or have express aims to make total war upon the Imperium, and therefore should be eradicated whenever possible. A declaration of Xeno Horrificus is essentially an all-out biological declaration of war on the species. Orks, tyranids, Crone Eldar, Rak’gol, Slaugh, and Barghesi, among others, all fall into this category.

There is also a fourth category recognized, though not commonly used, by the Order Xenos to refer to Xenos that the Imperium knows little to nothing about: '''Xenos Obscuras'''. Most of the time this classification is used to refer to long-dead races that are of little to no threat to the Imperium, though sometimes it will turn out the species is not as dead as everyone once thought. This doesn't stop entertainment media from using it to explain Inquisitorial heroes finding knowledge of rarely-glimpsed xenos of rumor. If the Inquisition decides that rumors of a xenos species have enough truth to warrant a classification, it is listed as Independens (Pending) or Horrificus (Pending).

Although some Imperial citizens mistake abhumans for Xenos, there is actually a very clear line between the two. If an organism is an Earth-based lifeform originally descended from humanity, it is an abhuman, no matter what it looks like. Anything else is a Xenos, with few possible edge cases concerning ancient extraction of biological samples form earth species by Xenos later developing on other worlds.

{| class="wikitable"
!|Xenos Familiaris
!|Xenos Independens
!|Xenos Horrificus
|-
|style="width: 33%" |'''Humanity''' (including abhumans)<br> '''Eldar''' ([[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#The_Craftworlds|Craftworld]] and Exodite)<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Tau_Empire|Tau]]''' (joined M39)<br> '''Demiurg''' (joined M36)<sup>1</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Watchers_in_the_Dark|Watchers in the Dark]]''' (joined M36)<sup>2</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Kinebrach|Kinebrach]]''' (joined M36)<sup>3</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Tarellians|Tarellians]]''' (joined M38)<br> '''Nicassar''' (date unknown, M36-37?)<br> '''Kroot''' (joined M39)<sup>4</sup><br> '''Poctroon''' (joined M39)<sup>5</sup><br> '''Vespid''' (joined M39)<sup>5</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Diasporex|Diasporex]]'''<sup>6</sup><br> '''Enoulians'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Pale_Wasting_and_the_Thexian_Trade_Empire|Thexians]]'''<sup>7</sup><br>
|style="width: 33%" |'''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Hrud|Hrud]]'''<br> '''Jokaero'''<br> [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Saruthi|'''Saruthi''' (the Sane)]]<br> '''Q'orl'''<br> '''Thyrrus'''<br> '''Zoats'''<br>
|style="width: 33%" |'''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Da_Orkz|Orks]]'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#The_Crone_World_Eldar|Croneworld Eldar]]'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Dark_Eldar|Dark Eldar]]'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Necron_Star_Empire|Necrons]]'''<sup>8</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Tyranids|Tyranids]]'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Rangdan_Xenocides_and_the_Slaugth|Slaugth]]'''<sup>9</sup><br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Rak'gol|Rak'gol]]'''<br> '''Barghesi'''<br> '''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Medusae|Medusae]]'''<br> [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Saruthi|'''Saruthi''' (the Broken)]]<br>'''†Khrave'''<br>'''†Laer'''<br> '''†Nephilem'''<br> '''†[[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_First_and_Second_Viskeon_Wars|Viskeon]]'''<br> '''†Yu'Vath'''<br>
|}
† - Considered extinct by the Imperium<br>
<sup>1</sup> - First non-human, non-eldar species to officially join the Imperium. Offered alliance in recognition of the great help they gave the Imperium during the Age of Apostasy and the Imperial Civil War <br>
<sup>2</sup> - Were allied with the Dark Angels as early as the Great Crusade, officially didn't exist until Imperium began admitting other species in M36<br>
<sup>3</sup> - Were a protectorate of the Interex until M36, at which point they obtained separate representation <br>
<sup>4</sup> - Originally allied with the Tau, carried over when the Tau joined the Imperium. The Kroot technically don't see themselves as part of the Imperium, rather the Imperium are "preferred clients", but given they dislike Chaos as much as the rest of the Imperium does and the Necrons and tyranids don't hire mercenaries the difference is almost academic.<br>
<sup>5</sup> - Originally allies of the Tau Empire, still associated by proxy<br>
<sup>6</sup> - Technically a union of multiple species, including humans. Treated as distinct because it's unclear what species, if any, is in charge.<br>
<sup>7</sup> - Formed a Xenos Independens empire called the Thexian Trade Empire with relatively good relations with the Imperium until its destruction in M34 due to the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Pale_Wasting_and_the_Thexian_Trade_Empire|Pale Wasting]]. Inducted as Xenos Familiaris when surviving representatives were found.<br>
<sup>8</sup> - Were Independens until M40 and the war sparked by the return of the Silent King, still some exceptions like the Gidrim (Nemesor Zahndrekh) and Solemnace (Trazyn the Infinite) Dynasties who are mostly Independens.<br>
<sup>9</sup> - Declared extinct multiple times

=== Member States ===

Most of the worlds encountered by the Imperium during the Great Crusade had greatly devolved during the Age of Strife, and ended up having to be directly administered by the Imperial Government and the Administratum. However, several national entities, including other technologically advanced Survivor civilizations, the Eldar Craftworlds, and several other species of xenos joined the Imperium whilst being interstellar powers in their own right. In these cases, these entities joined as semi-autonomous member states, granting them almost complete political and industrial autonomy in exchange for following the Imperium's few universal rules.

For more information see [[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States|Member States]]

== Forces of The Imperium ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Imperial Forces]]

== Imperial Society and Culture ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Imperial Society and Culture]]

== Notable People ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Notable People]]

=== The Primarchs ===
See [[Nobledark Imperium Primarchs]]

== The Galactic Pantheon ==

'''The Emperor of Mankind''' - "Is not a god" according to his own words when asked. Nevertheless, even if the Emperor is not a god, he is undoubtedly the most powerful champion of humankind, and the Men of Gold were by far the closest thing humankind ever made to Warp Gods. Though he is not a god, he is the mightiest of mortals and more powerful than many purely supernatural entities, similar to Hercules among the old legends of ancient Greece on Old Earth. There are rumors that the Emperor has grown even more powerful, or more skilled, with age, though for the safety of the Imperium the Emperor has never been put on the front lines where these rumors have been put to the test.

'''Isha''' - Embodied in the Eldar Macha, the all-mother and Eternal Empress of the Imperial dominion. Millennia ago she was the fertility goddess of the Eldar pantheon, she opposed Khaine and in the fall did all she could to save the Eldar people, though she was herself taken captive by Nurgle. Through theses valiant efforts and the rule of ages hence the Matron goddess is said to have gained a regality and might that surpasses her old self. She is much occupied by the maintenance of spiritual health at the widest level for the imperium, vying against Slaanesh for whatever fragments of Eldar souls she can salvage, and affording the Imperium's peoples a dominion within the realm of souls somewhat more hospitable than the wilds of the warp.

'''Cegorach''' - The laughing god of the Eldar, also survivor of the fall, now endless jester of the galactic court and master of the Dark Carnival. An involved player of the Great Game, he is supposedly an invaluable asset to the Imperium in the intrigues of immortal beings. To all the worlds of the Imperium he is a figure of myth and folktale, and any real deed is indistinguishable from pure fabrication.

'''[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#The_Void_Dragon|The Void Dragon]]''' - At some point this being was a self-aware expression of nested complexity, or perhaps a very long bolt of lightning, but in the millions of years since then it has gained first an indomitable body of living femto-machines, and now a significant warp presence. It is curious, and eccentric, and it wants to experiment with the warp on a grand scale. It seems to have some appreciation of beings more finite and fragile than it, but it is infinite and hard, and it remains to be seen what god it wishes to be. It it also the Omnissiah, and it is fond of its cult, and finds it a perfect instrument.

'''The Nightbringer''' - This one wishes to be death. It has slain countless species, for ages, across light-years of space and centuries of time. It has done so by stellar radiation and by scythe, and it found that as it killed it's legend and spite proceeded it, until it's own lifeless visage was so known and feared that it cast the Nightbringer its own perfect double in the warp. The great murderer withstood even the full and unilateral hatred of the Necron Star Empire and came away not in shards, but as a great battered undead husk and accompanying splinters. Now awakened, the reaper wishes to regain his mighty warp presence and to restore his form. To this end he embeds lesser shards in mortal hosts, saddled with mortal personas to better domineer them to his will, and sets them to sow death in his image.

'''The Deceiver''' - As consumate a player of games as Cegorach, the liesmith, avatar of duplicity, reveled in the peak of the Necron empire's golden age, happy among the chrome aristocrats and toasted as the diplomat of living gods. He is reviled by the Necrons now, and shattered beyond assembly, but the presence of this being persists despite itself. Its incoherent shards still long for subtlety, for veils of words, and find themselves in the flesh of mortals of high stature as best they can. What plot the Deceiver pursues is unknown, perhaps unknowable, but its shards are of a conspiratorial and avaricious sort, with no favor among the living.

'''Gork & Mork''' - The supreme brutes might be thought unchanged in the eons of their long lives. Not so, for unlike the weaklings of Materium, with each blow to the head they become more cleverer.

'''Tzeentch''' - Created alongside Malal, he was an early warp god of boundless creativity, writing new rules of sorcery and new beings of thought into existence as quickly as Malal could deny them. In the original duality, formed from and shaped by the Old Ones, the warp and sorcery were ultimately manageable and illuminating forces. In subsequent eons this order has changed, Tzeentch has changed, and sorcery has become a bleak art of insane rituals and hateful acts. Where once he sung a song of creation, he is now a delirious, deceptive crow of plots. Tzeentch maintains power bases across the galaxy, as he has since time immemorial, but the true might of his cult is in the twisting redoubts of the Webway and the Warp, in colleges and orders of fell and maddening arts.

'''Malal''' - Originally the 'destroyer' of the Warp, be he denial or the thought of mortality, Malal swept up the multifarious gibbering creations of Tzeentch and met them with their nullifying opposites, or talked them apart with what they weren't. He was supplanted by Khorne after the War in Heaven, and it seemed like impassioned, honorable, involved destruction would better suit the minds of the galaxy than Malal's own nihilistic void of denial.

'''Nurgle''' - In the spring of the galaxy Nurgle was created between Tzeentch and Malal, to me maintainer, shaper, and preserver, until such time as Malal might rightly end a story or thought or thing. In the wake of the War in Heaven, as the triumvirate adjusted to the new galactic order, Nurgle began the slow slide into malignance that also afflicted Tzeentch. Nurgle still ultimately serves his role as preserver, but where once in his garden he strove to safeguard against Khorne and temper Tzeentch he now maintains a landfill. His servants can be found on caustic wasteland planets and in the gutters of rookeries, but the foremost among them are the attendants of Isha, seeking to return her to the garden 'for her own safety', and the Astartes of Sisigmund.

'''Khorne''' - Born in the heat of the War in Heaven, he may be the psychic reverberation of that bloody event, but it has been posited that he coalesced on the battlefield around some great weapon of the Old Ones, prototype to Eldar and Ork alike. His relationship to Khaine is unclear, but they were alike in aspect, and he has taken up much of the old Eldar empire's military caste in his immortal service. He has much love for the Great Game, and it was in the wake of Nurgle's horrible loss that Khorne championed the usurpation of the Orks. The Blood God is the great power in the warp as of the 41st millennium, commanding the fiercest core of Crone Eldar and Fallen warbands and retaining his Ork auxiliaries with greatest ease. His catalyzing role in the War of the Beast, drawing Slaanesh's lust for Isha and Tzeentch's will for change to push Nurgle's corruption en-masse of the orks, such that he might incite them to a direct and purposeful war, has emboldened him to name himself lord of the Immaterium. The Blood God arrays his armies before the Skull Throne in him immaterial domain, and there they drill, and march, and war, and stage interminable invasions of the real. Khorne is said to retain Malal, in some form, as advisor, or weapon, but the diminished god's status in the court of murder is unknown.

'''Slaanesh''' - The Prince of Pleasure was originally conceived to be the god of joy, and of beauty, but its birth, the fall of the eldar, demonstrated the already fallen nature of the eldar empire. The prince now rules the Brass Palace in the warp, attended by daemons and horrors, and for a long while it eagerly feasted on the souls of the eldar. The great mistress of Shah-Dome has since turned to more complex, extended, and varied predilections. While young and weak as a warp presence, Slaanesh maintains a vast physical empire and cult within the eye of terror, intent on shaping the state of the materium for greater power within the warp. The dark prince and its cabal of faithful cenobites wish to see Slaanesh as master of the warp, with all other gods bound before its throne. The Slaaneshi cult is particularly interested in fulfilling the domination of the eldar pantheon, hoping to angle its personal enmity with the unified empire into a claim to arch-deamonhood and luciferian mastery of all temptation.

'''[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#Khaine|Khaine]]''' – (UNFINISHED) Still shattered into a million pieces like in canon. Needs a blurb.

'''The Outsider''' – See [[Nobledark Imperium Notes#The_Outsider|The Outsider]] (Temporary placeholder)

'''[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#The_Hive Mind|The Swarmlord]]''' - More of a primordial force of nature than an actual deity, though perhaps it is only natural for mortal minds to immediately jump to the deific when confronted with a warp presence of such magnitude. The Hive Mind is both the summed consciousness of every tyranid organism within the swarm as well as its commander. It’s thought process is alien and incomprehensible by mortal standards. At the very least, its goals are clear: the consumption of every living thing in the galaxy.

'''Ynnead''' – There are whispers of something going on in the warp. Echoes seen by farseers communing with the Infinity Circuits and World Spirits like the thunderhead of a great storm. Some say there appears to be some strange congruence between the portents of this phenomenon and the Starchild Prophecies All that is known is the name of this being and that it is not here yet. Everything else is up in the air.

== Notable Planets ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Notable Planets]]

== The Craftworlds ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Notable Planets#The Craftworlds|Craftworlds of The Nobledark Imperium]]

== The Forces of Chaos ==

=== The Forces of Chaos ===

See [[Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos#The_Fallen|The Fallen]]

=== The Crone World Eldar ===

See [[Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos#The_Crone_World_Eldar|The Crone World Eldar]]

=== Chaos Guard ===

See [[Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos#Chaos_Guard|Chaos Guard]]

== Da Orkz ==

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Da_Orkz|Da Orkz]]

== Necron Star Empire ==

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Necron Star Empire|Necron Star Empire]]

== Dark Eldar ==

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Dark Eldar|Dark Eldar]]

== Tyranids ==

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Tyranids|Tyranids]]

== Writefaggotry ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Writing]]

== Timeline ==

'''M25''' - Fall of the Eldar/Beginning of the Age of Strife. The hedonism of the Old Eldar Empire gives birth to Slaanesh, which wipes out 90% of the eldar population in a single night. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Iron_Minds|Iron Minds]] (A.I. that controlled most of the Men of Iron) and [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Men_of_Gold|Men of Gold]] are driven mad by the backlash, effectively destroying the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion. Warp storms make interstellar travel nearly impossible. Societies, human and alien alike, are either wiped out, driven insane, or reduced to Mad Max levels of technology and anarchy. Five thousand years of hell ensues.

'''Mid to Late M29''' - Warlord arises on Old Earth. Divides nations of Earth into two lists. On one side are the ones worth inclusion to the Imperium and on the other the ones that need to be destroyed and their lands divided amongst more worthy men.

Begins global unification using diplomatic means when possible and brute force when not possible.

'''Late M29/Early M30''' - First use of early model Thunder Warriors

'''Early to mid M30''' - Refinement of Thunder Warriors.

Old Earth unified (Except for Hy Brasil). Warlord sets up the Throne of Earth and refuses to sit in it instead becoming the Steward of the Empty Throne. The Throne stands waiting for a worthy individual to become Emperor.

Steward looks towards the sky and is inspired to take the Unification to the other planets of Sol. Appoints 20 generals the title of Primarch to be his leaders among generals.

Sol is unified in a sequence of assimilations, partnerships and short brutal wars of conquest.

Steward sets up High Lords of Terra to run the day to day affairs of the Imperium. Long term goal is to make the Imperium self-governing and then fade away again. Short term goal is to get be able to spend all evening in the pub.

Warp storms subside enough for large scale warp travel to become viable.

Steward looks to the stars and the dream of Unification burns again. Great Crusade starts, lasts slightly longer than in canon (300-500 years, as opposed to 200), because Steward wants whole and functional worlds brought into the Imperium, not broken vassals.

During Great Crusade Steward is contacted by Eldrad "got in a fist fight with Skarbrand and won" Ulthran. The two of them concoct a fiendish plan to break in to Nurgle's mansion and steal Isha back. Eldar send a band of the most fearsome ninja clowns as well as the Phoenix Lords to-be and the Imperium sends its most brutal nutters. Steward leads the expedition. Isha is rescued.

Isha is rescued. Imperium earns the eternal hate of the Chaos Gods. Eldar petition Stewards for inclusion into Imperium. Steward agrees in exchange for Webway access. Eldar are reluctant due to potential damage to webway. Compromise is reached that Inquisition can have unlimited access and the Eldar will upgrade the Astronomican.

Chaos Gods direct the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#The_Crone_World_Eldar|Crone World Eldar]] to manipulate the orks into unifying under the banner of a warboss know as The Beast. The Beast and all his Boyz are directed towards Old Earth and other key worlds of the Imperium. Dark Eldar join forces with the Crone Worlders for the promise of plunder and slaves.

'''546.M31''' - Beast and his forces finally make it to Sol, and the Battle of Terra and the Siege of Sol begins.

Primarch Sanguinius dies in the ruins of the Eternity Gate of the Imperial Palace.

Steward about to be pummeled into fine red paste by The Beast. Eldred Ulthran smashes through the wall and joins in the Beast-beating festivities and he and the Steward beat The Beast is a savage brawl.

As payment for saving his life the Steward owes a favour to Eldrad. Eldrad immediately call that favour in and demands that the Steward marry Isha so that the union of Human and Eldar can never be broken.

Imperium recovers over time. Most of the Primarchs die off in battle or simply by time. The title is never given to another; relic of a past age. The title of "Warmaster", occasionally used by the steward in the Great Crusade, does eventually get applied to a number of subsequent commanders considered to be later-day Primarchs.

Chaos forces usually from the Eye of Terror periodically form Black Crusades to try and topple the Imperium. Imperium stays strong.

'''M32-M35''' - Imperial "Golden Age". Highs not as high as later but lows are not as shitty because you have "only" Orks and Chaos to worry about (Necrons and tyranids not being a thing yet) and there are no constant political upheavals from Age of Apostasy, Tau, etc. Just before the beginning of this period the Imperium has rebuilt enough to reclaim much of the territory it lost during the War of the Beast but was unable to reassert control over. One notable intrigue is the Genestealer war, where among many heroes a young Adept Vandire distinguished himself in organizing the fight against the strange conspiracy.

Eventually at about the turning point of M35 and M36 a great man by the name of Goge Vandire arises to be the head of the Administratum. Steward believes that he has found a worthy man to sit upon the Empty Throne of Earth. Emperor Vandire is an asset to the Imperium. The Steward steps back to give space to Vandire's rising star and gladly fades into the shadows of some distant world, and disappears for some time.

After a lifetime and more, pickled in juveanat and cracking under the weight of a galactic government designed to hinge around his position, Goge Vandire goes nuts.

Inquisitor Sebastian Thor raises rebellion against him and causes the Great Civil War. Steward is rediscovered with the Avatar of Isha sitting at the bar of a tropical beach resort on some backwater nowhere planet. Apparently having been on that beach for the last ~150 years.

After 10 years of devastating war Goge Vandire is slain and Sebastian Thor bullies the Steward into sitting on the Throne of Earth and becoming Emperor. Three of the old Primarchs, Vulkan, Magnus, and Ferrus Manus, survive long enough to be present at the ceremony.

Due to substantial Demiurg assistance in the war the new Emperor permits the space traveling craftsmen membership to the Imperium, to the grumbling of the eldar. Imperium becomes open to the idea of accepting other "lesser" peoples into the fold.

'''Late M36''' - First scouting fleets of the Tyranids are sailing through the Imperium. Connection with gene-stealers is made. Scouting fleets eventually slain and it is believed for a time that they are defeated.

'''Mid M37''' - Hive Fleets have arrived (Behemoth in M37, Kraken about 900.M38, and Leviathan some time in M39). A few are slain eventually and at great cost over the next handful of centuries. Most shatter into splinter fleets and terrorize huge swathes of the Galaxy for a long, long time.

At about the M38 mark the Necrons start to rise from their half-death into mechanical unlife. Up till the end of the Dark Millennium there is a gradual and unstoppable increase in Necron activity.

'''Mid M38''' - Tau expeditionary forces encountered for first time. Contact made. Fledgling Tau Empire is unaware of the scale of the wars across the galaxy or the vastness of the Imperium. Refuses all efforts at inclusion.

'''Late M38''' - Tau have a serious Artificial Intelligence rebellion after ignoring the repeated warnings of the Mechanicus. Dark Eldar take advantage of this time of weakness to use their failing Empire as slave raiding grounds despite the Tau themselves being "bland". Still refuse inclusion to Imperium when offered.

'''Mid M39''' - Tau have recovered their old Empire bounds and are once more expanding their borders. Historians note passing similarities to the expansion of early Imperium.

'''Mid M39''' - Ethereal Council of the Eastern Fringe is once more pressing for closer relations with the greater Imperium. Fire Warrior general by name of Farsight believes that too much of the ideologies of the Greater Good have already been compromised by outside influences. Demands return to old ways.

Political turmoil and minor skirmishes that the Tau believe are real wars erupt across the eastern fringe. Largely the Imperium fails to notice. Or care.

Farsight and friends carve out their own Enclave and defy the Imperium. Ethereals furious at this breach of Tau honour. General Shadowsun swears a blood oath against Farsight.

'''Mid to Late M39''' - Series of crippling wars with the Hive Fleets and pyrrhic victories leaves the Tau once more vulnerable to Dark Eldar raids, and raid they do. They finally accept the offer of inclusion to the Imperium.

'''M40''' - Necrons awakening increases. Silent King spotted. Silent King tries to rebuild old Necrontyr Star Empire. Silent King wishes to find a way to reverse the biotransference. New rebellions against The Silent King erupt on both scores.

Some of the more minor and "eccentric" Necron Lords seek refuge in the Imperium. Emperor eventually agrees on the logic that it's better to have them in here pissing out than out there pissing in. Necron Lords, inhumanly powerful and prideful as they are, swear to obey their new liege so long as he never actually orders them to do anything.

Eldar are livid at the inclusion of the Necrons. Some craftworlds consider trying to leave the Imperium.

Necron Star Empire gets along with the Imperium at first. Then the Silent King makes a demand of one trillion subjects from the Imperium as tribute. Imperium is outraged and a short, brief war erupts between the Imperium and Necron Star Empire before eventually fizzling out into the current cold war that has continued to the "present".

'''Early M41''' - On the turn of the millennium in M41 [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Lady_Malys|Lady Malys, the Daemon Queen]], announces her marriage to her long-time on-again, off-again lover [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Asdrubael_Vect|Asdrubael Vect]] and the subsequent union of the Dark and Crone Eldar, and declares the 12th Black Crusade as a wedding present to herself. 12th Black Crusade is the bloodiest one yet and sets the stage for many future conflicts (e.g., Badab War). Mass social unrest and exodus from Commorragh as many of the younger Dark Eldar not trapped in a sunken cost fallacy feel that allying with Chaos crosses a line.

'''Mid M41''' - [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Brain_Boyz|Brain Boys]] spotted. Any talk of abandoning ship stops abruptly. Nobody wants to jump off the boat, no matter how many vermin are in it, when the alternative is sharks.

'''Late M41''' - The Hive Fleets were just a vanguard. The Tyranids are assaulting the entire eastern galactic edge in such numbers that they blot out the stars.

== Miscellaneous Notes ==
See [[Nobledark Imperium Notes]]

== The Archived Threads ==

Thread 1 (warning: extreme waifuing and shitposting) - https://boards.fireden.net/tg/thread/49437641

Thread 1b (warning: extreme waifuing and shitposting) - https://boards.fireden.net/tg/thread/49488764

Thread 2 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/49591185/

Thread 3 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/49707496/

Thread 4 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/49889220/

Thread 5 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/49948023/

Thread 6 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50077670/

Thread 6b - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50119235/

Thread 7 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50263743/

Thread 8 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50425952/

Thread 9 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50684106/

Thread 9b - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50719277/

Thread 10 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50874097/

Thread 11 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/50992723/

Thread 12 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51105718/

Thread 13 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51257007/

Thread 14 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51441824/

Thread 15 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51524369/

Thread 16 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51646615/

Thread 17 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51833468/

Thread 18 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51833468/

Thread 19 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/51972949/

Thread 20 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52094866/

Thread 21 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52262671/

Thread 22 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52451994/

Thread 23 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52634996/

Thread 24 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52769445/

Thread 25 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/52931666/

Thread 26 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53143370/

Thread 27 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53338185/

Thread 28 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53557919/

Thread 29 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53787726/

Thread 30 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/53972235/

Thread 31 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/54215770/

Thread 32 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/54503379/

Thread 33 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/54715863/

Thread 34 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/55001131/

Thread 35 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/55066206/

Thread 36 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/55313386/

Thread 37 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/55583946/

Thread 38 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/55824461/

Thread 39 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56059361/

Thread 40 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56286128/

Thread 41 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56468501/

Thread 42 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56684946/

Thread 42b - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56706040/

Thread 43 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56930616/

Thread 44 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/56947494/

Thread 45 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57055511/

Thread 46 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57242663/

Thread 47 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57265950/

Thread 48 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57452096/

Thread 49 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57661171/

Thread 50 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57828105/

Thread 51 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/57999291/

Thread 52 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/58264906/

Thread 53 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/58563280/

Thread 54 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/58818593/

Thread 55 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59020817/

Thread 56 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59183440/

Thread 57 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59412072/

Thread 58 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59566862/

Thread 59 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59767125/

Thread 60 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/59905153/

Thread 61 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/60121526/

Thread 62 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/60371811/

Thread 62a - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/60859322/

Thread 62b - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/60898868/

Thread 63 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/60604925/

Thread 65 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/61123571/

Thread 66 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/61372827/

Thread 67 - http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/61588973/

[[Category:Nobledark Imperium]]

Nobledark Imperium Writing

2020-09-04T20:48:23Z

2601:647:CA01:2410:349C:D1E8:2DF7:5B30: /* A Necron's Duel */

'''This page is part of the Nobledark Imperium, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the [[Nobledark Imperium|Nobledark Imperium Introduction]] and [[Nobledark Imperium|Main Page]] for more information on the alternate universe'''

All our stories that don't belong in another section of the project (such as the writing for Sanguinius).
= Currently Unsorted Writefaggotry =

== The Accounting of Trazyn the Infinite ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

“You want me to explain to you why we did it? Why? And why ask [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Solemnace|me]]?”

“I see. An accounting then. And I suppose I am the closest thing the galaxy has to an actual historian in this era. Aside, perhaps, from that old wraith in the weeds Orikan.”

“When the Necrontyr first spread beyond the confines of our world, it was not long before we encountered the Old Ones. But the Old Ones had known of us long before we knew of them. They knew of the horror and suffering we had experienced on our homeworld, and had known for millennia. And they did nothing.”

<div class=mw-collapsible-content>

“I want you to picture that. A race of god-like beings capable of bending the galaxy to their will. And they did nothing. The Old Ones could have offered us sanctuary on another world. They could have told us that Aza’gorod was hiding in our star. But they didn’t. They only cared about themselves and their experiments. How many other races had suffered like we had for the sake of their curiosity? How many species had been uplifted and then discarded like tools, or removed like weeds.”

“I imagine the declaration to go to war with the Old Ones was met with shock across the Necrontyr Star Empire. Regardless of their actions, the Old Ones were still as gods to us, capable of things we could barely begin to comprehend. But after the Old Ones, we were the most advanced race we knew of in the galaxy. The only ones capable of defying them. The eldest child standing up against the abusive parent. The Old Ones were truly lords of the galaxy, capable of cultivating species like more primitive civilizations cultivate crops. But any lord that would inflict such suffering in their name upon their subjects deserves to be dragged from their throne.”

“Was that how it truly was? Was that how the Old Ones really saw the younger races? I don’t know. I was not there when the first shots of the War in Heaven were fired. I was only there when it ended.”

“All I know is that the War in Heaven was such a colossal waste. Trillions of Old Ones and Aeldari and Necrontyr and Krork killed and for what. The Old Ones are extinct. The Necrontyr sold their souls and the moral high ground for the power to defeat them. The Realm of Souls turned into poison for life. Thousands of species killed or turned into living weapons. We sought to free life from the Old Ones’ dominion. Instead we brought the hell that was our homeworld to the rest of the galaxy. The ‘original sin’, as I believe you humans would put it. Maybe there was a better way. Maybe things could have been resolved peacefully.”

“But at the same time, that is why I have so many expectations for this era.”

“You seem surprised. Perhaps I should explain. When I awoke from the Long Sleep, it was as if everything old had been made new again. The scars of the old war were still there, but it was as if galactic history had been rewritten from scratch. So many new things to learn. So many new species to encounter and study. And it was a galaxy without overlords. Life free to develop as it chose. Without a single species to impose their overarching will on the galaxy, there is so much more room for diversity. A place for everyone, one might say. Not just the races united in your Imperium, but the Q’orl, the orks, the rak-ghol, the tyranids. And yes, even the old Star Empire, if it is willing to adapt to the times. Whereas you see the galaxy in crisis, I see something different. The galaxy has had sixty five million years to write its own story. I, Trazyn the Infinite, want to see what it has written.”

- Trazyn the Infinite, regaled to a human scribe on Solemnace
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</div>

== Alpha Bitch ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

“Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future...”
"Those words, bequeathed to us from some unknown source, has tormented the oracles through the ages. Not even the False-Gods in all their malevolent power can claim true mastery over the future. We, the Eldar are the most skilled seers in the galaxy, and that has given us only one golden glance of what should be. Those glimpses have taught us a bitter lesson. That does not matter who much we plan for the future, there will always be something interfering. Anybody that claims that their plans have succeeded just as planned, is a deluded fool or think that their audience is one, maybe the two. And even with that, we, the Farseers plan, conspire and ruin lives just to scratch one more day, because the alternative is the extinction..."
---From The Living Chronicles of Féin-Cineálan. As written be Osurad---

"So... I clean the blood, put on again the Wych tong, and left the camp with the intel. The next morning the IG zeroed the place and we had a pretty Kabal War. Fuck you Drukhari!"

"Hm... I... You want another infusion?"

The cute jailbait Servant was straining to don´t eyeing her with abject terror, but she can´t help, he was so damn cute. Sigh... What happens to the new generation? Come on, you only have thirty, one time! Sigh... She wasn't expecting this reception. She was the great Lynn Minwen HERO OF THE INQUISITION. Well, not exactly a HERO but definitively A hero. Her parents at least have the decency to bear-hug her and let their emotions run a little. But NO, the Council go to say that she has this weird "Anti-empathic trauma" and need some "Spiritual retuning". So they put her in a recliner, surrounded with Musicians performing psyco-reactive music and with only watery infusions as a drink. Sigh... It could be worse.

As Lynn was musing how to sneak away, Osurad comes in the "Visualization chamber" and without saying a word, pass her a sealed letter. A manuscript letter. Fuck! That is what cross her mind when finally come to the authorization seal. It was gold, The Gold. This was stamped in the Golden Throne Office, maybe even be the Golden Man in person! Fuck! Hm... Interesting, it was Hand. Something about a new assignment? Seriously!? She has retired! Hm... Return to active duty... Hm... Immediate effect... BlaBlaBla... Ok. She will bite. All her instincts tell, that the best, was to run and disappear from the face of Imperial Space. All reasonable sapients will agree in that course of action. This was definitively beyond her pay grade. So, smiling for some action, she gets up and left in direction to the starport.

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"What is happening Lynn?"
"Hey! You are the Farseer! You know, all that mumbo-jumbo about seeing the future"
"The only future that I see is a deeply traumatized youngster."
"So... I succeded? Damm, he is cute!"
"Lynn!"
"Ok, ok... Jeez... I was joking!... Mostly"
"..."
"So... Is it so bad?"
"Hmm... Lynn the last time I sense something similar, the destiny of millions suddenly change, and the Path to your future was rewritten."
"So that bad. Good to know."

As the two approach the hangar, some details begin to appear. All the area has been cleaned, only authorized people were permitted. And the authorized were... Black armor... Silent treatment... Omega Hydras. That was bad... Really, really bad. What class of shit has brought Hand? As they approach, the Hydras stop Osurad in his tracks, only letting Lynn pass the doors. Inside, in front of an Arvus Lighter was a more than nervous Adept pacing from a foot to another. Definitively not an Inquisition Acolyte. Somebody expendable... Or a really good actor? Who knows? Her curiosity has been piqued.

"Oh. Miss Minwen! Thanks, Isha! I hope that you read my file!"
"What... File?"
"What!? Nobody!? Of course not! This is secret! I am Ludoptus. Hm... Ok. I have been sent to help you, taking care of the subject`s wellbeing."

Not that good actor. This guy is 100% and agent of somebody. The "fake" adept pass her a dataslate and urge Lynn to enter the transport. As she enters the hold, in the periphery of her warp senses, a little whine can be heard... Something like crying? Chills of fear run her skin like... A saw blade cutting deep. Fuck... In what the hell Hand got her. She forces her mind away from the warp to real space and... The smell hit. The hold reek and the bad smell seems to come from a young human woman sitting in a fetal position. Several Hydras surround her armed with shock batons and stun guns. A chem-collar in her neck.

Lynn looks to the dataslate files and tries to make some sense of this mess. Some biometrics details... Hm... Tortured by Drukhari... Hm... Ok, is evident that this girl is a total mess. Sigh She... Wasn´t impressed. Seriously, this little shit was her new assignment? Fuck. Seriously. Fuck. She isn´t a babysitter. The little shit is somebody else problem. Somebody with a white padded room, a straitjacket and LOTS of hard drugs. And if all that fail, the emperor's mercy. This broken girl can barely do more than shit on herself. Groan... Now that she has taken some R&R and was eyeing that cute jailbait ass. They can´t do that to her. Shit.

Looking over the dataslate, she observes the girl. More than dirty white hair with indescribable... Things... Mixed. The body wasn´t better, emaciated, full of scars and... Let's be generous... Uncleanliness. All this mix in a more than disturbing whole that will make a Crone blush with envy. It seems that nobody has enough balls to try to clean the fucking walking disaster and have resigned themselves to throw a blanket as her only clothes. Fuck. And she was her new job. Groan... This is getting better by the second.

"Fuck! Hand! Why the fuck you do this to me!"

The change in the room was more than evident. The Stormtroopers get tense as the, until that moment, catatonic woman rises from her fetal position. She was tall and slim. Not as an Eldar but with the correct equipment... Forget that shit. Ok? Come on Eldar brain, time to work, no time for more speculation. The warp around the girl begin to.. Twist? Break apart? and her eyes explode in white fucking flames! Genial... Another mad psyker. Several hits from the shock batons fall over her, but the girl doesn't respond as all her concentration is now in scaping.

"The collar doesn´t..."

The cry of the no-adept is cut short as the remains of the collar hit him square in the face with enough force to knock him out. The movement was fast... And instinctive. Lynn doubts that the girl is anything beyond an automaton that just reacts to her surroundings. And now the most direct threats are her and the stormtroopers. Luckily for Lynn, the Hydras were nearer. That does not make it fun... Well, a little bit, yes. But give her a second to prepare for the girl next move.

"Hey! Little shit! Here, look to the big bad Eldar!"

The girl was sweeping the floor with the stormtroopers. She was ignoring the shocks and bolts from their weapons and basically using them as ragdolls, but when Lynn talk, her attention change to the Eldar woman and the confused expression in her eyes, change to one of pure hate. Shit... This is going to hurt. Howling with rage the lunatic girl charge. Lynn barely dodges the savage attack and witness how the kid hands rip the metallic walls of the hold. Damm... She was fucking fast and strong. Lynn needed more space, in the hold, the girl has the advantage, so she begins to retreat down the ramp, were the Hydras can finish the mad bitch.

"Ok. Guys when you got a clear shot, unbrain the bitch!"
"We have orders to take her alive!"
"Fuck me!"

Fuck... Seriously? Now she must somehow stop the lunatic? Sigh... Another day in her life. Lynn jump in time to see the kid strike where just an instant before she was standing. With the strength to rip trough Astartes armor, the ceramic floor explodes in a shower of stone and dust. A mask of fury and hate has appeared on the girl, that has decided to kill Lynn and probably any other Eldar that is in the vicinity. Fortunately for the lucky bastards, Lynn was the focus of the little shit ire. Better to keep the focus in the dispensable one. After all, she can´t let then all the fun, isn´t? All that crap about "control your urges" and shit.

"Come on little shit! I heard that you can do better!"

The girl was a trained combatant, but in her current state, she doesn't have any technique, only loads and loads of warp-fueled fury and madness. Of course, when that gives you the capacity to ripe apart jetbikes with the hands and ignore pain, starvation, and fatigue, the technique is secondary... until you meet somebody that has fought fury incarnated in mind-rending/reality-warping monstrosities. Even with that, Lynn must admit that the girl was insanely powerful. With the emphasis on insane.

Unsheathing her Catachan Knife, she toyed with the idea to rip the bitch head. But the orders were clear. Don´t kill her. So... Lynn was playing catch with a crazy murder machine. Retreating, again and again, Lynn giggles, mock and launch ork´s kisses to the girl, trying unsuccessfully to tire the demented psyker. Genial, plan b.

Waiting to one of her demented charges, Lynn dodge, rolling over herself and impaling with extreme prejudice her Knife through the little shit left thigh. Flesh, tendons, and bone were sectioned as the Knife was sunken to the hilt. Luckily for the girl, Lynn was a well-experienced knife fighter, and even best, and Eldar. Only that save her of a sectioned femoral. Even with that, Lynn barely dodges the backhanded blow launched be the crazy,as she was leaving the danger zone. The skimming strike has enough force to throw Lynn to the ground and take her breath away. The followed punch break again the floor as her Eldar reflexes quick and let Lynn roll away.

"Shit!"

Lynn quickly gets up, but pain curse through her body as a broken rib pierce her flank. Quickly crystallizing blood pour from the wound.

"What now Litte... What the fuck?!"

It was nearly not enough. Sparks of warp energy surrounded the psico-bitch as she was trying to get up and walk towards Lynn. But it was late, she has been slowed and the Hydras were filling her with stun-bolts. Finally, the girl kneels and begins to sob. Even with that, they needed a dozen of shots to finally stop her.

That was... Whoah... Fucking awesome. She was wrong. This was going to be fun. Taking again the dataslate, Lynn begins to revise the available information. Let´s see... Navigator father... Hm... Best of her promotion... Hm... Awesome scores... I mean, really, for a human... Hm... CENSORED... Hm... CENSORED... Hm... Ok, the typical inquisitorial crap. Looking down to the now tormented looking sleeping little shit, she smiles.

"This is going to be fun Stern. Really, really fun."

Epilogue:
"The die is cast."
"I have lead millions to their death so this girl can be born in relative peace. I have manipulated a world to nudge her in a particular Path. All of that to create a talent that can inspire hope to a besieged galaxy."
"She can always return to that Path."
"Yes... And that will bring her joy. But the inflection point has passed, Rhana Dandra is upon us."
"It was necessary."
"To prepare another disposable weapon in your arsenal? To stack the deck in your favor? What is your limit?."
"..."

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</div>

==The Awakening==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">

The chamber was alive today.

“Khorne, Khorne, Khorne”

The Crone Eldar thronged throughout the halls, the light glinting off their eyes like predators in the night, all attention on the ghastbone circle carved into the ground at the center of the chamber. At the center of the circle was a great carved, seated idol, patriarchal and blasphemous in its bearing. The low light glinted off its angular features, giving it a malevolent aura. The area immediately surrounding the stature was conspicuously free of Crones given the crowd, as if the Crones feared they would be struck dead on the spot if they dared to approach the statue. Along the immediate edge of the circle 512 Crone Eldar sat on their knees in supplication, eyes wide and with bated breath as they chanted the 888 sacred names of the Blood God.

“Kharneth, Khorgar, Bloodwolf, Axefather…”

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Further away more Crone Eldar cavorted like fey witches at black mass, not a part of this ritual but merely attracted to the spectacle like piranhas with the taste for blood beneath the roots of a great mangrove. They flitted back and forth from shadows cast by witchlight, dancing with daemons and occasionally performing horrible acts of violence upon one another.

Eight ritually slaughtered sixty-four sacrificial victims, prisoners of war captured in battle and specifically retained for this occasion. Ghastbone knives plunged into hearts as screams echoed through the night. Blood spilled across the floor of [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Altansar|Craftworld Altansar]], seeping into grooves custom-made to channel into the appropriate sigils. The pulse of the atmosphere had quickened in the room, every surviving Crone could feel their blood beat in their ears. Now that the cattle and heathens had been killed, it was the sacrificers’ turns. Seven Crones died, six impaling themselves on brass spikes surrounding the statue and the seventh’s throat being cut by the eighth in a cold-blooded act of murder.

The foul deed having been done, the sole surviving Crone turned to address the seated idol in the center of the chamber in a parade ground voice.

“We call upon the great lord Khorne, blood king of the galaxy! I offer up my life! I offer my soul! I offer my heart’s blood to bring His hate into the world.”

The sacrifice was accepted and the Avatar rose. There were no remains that needed to be disposed of.

Anyone who had ever seen an actual Avatar of Khaine would realize just how unnatural the figure in front of them was. Rather than the slender physique of the Eldar its body was robust and solid, built like an Astartes, made to emphasize raw power over agility. Instead of being made of molten magma and red-hot metal its skin appeared to be merely simmering, with only a slight glowing around its armor joints revealing the heat within. Its armor was reddish-black, the color of long-dried blood, made of iron artistically inlaid by a trim of brass. It hefted its weapon, a massive two-handed axe that it comfortably held with a single hand. Power seemed to crackle in the air around it like ozone after a lightning strike, the animated by a much more powerful entity than the maimed war god of the Eldar. The Avatar of Khorne turned to address its congregation.

“I, the god of gods and rightful king of the galaxy have set foot in this mortal plane once more. Bring me foes worthy of my mettle so I may take their heads and slake my bloodlust.”

The Crones screamed in adulation and frenzy.

“BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"

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</div>

==Battle Report: Battle of Telis Grandios==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

Location: The world of Telis Grandios, within the Chanath Sub-Sector.
a major hub for voidships within the Chanathian sub-sector, by virtue of a functioning Orbital Tether and position within favorable Warp currents. The native Chanath Xenos of Telis profited greatly from this position of economic importance, even going so far as to endeavor to produce their own warships. successfully constructed the "Resplendent Piety;" a Frigate of comparable build to that of Sword-class, only equipped with a spinal-mounted kinetic rail-gun of Xenos design, at the expense of half a Sword's laser batteries and survivability. Construction of a second ship underway at the time of attack.

Chaos fleets were reported to have launched attacks against multiple nearby subsectors, with the wave of attacks progressing towards the Chanathian Sub-sector. Reports suggest deliberate targeting of worlds with Orbital capabilities, potentially to soften the sector for a larger offensive. Telis Grandios deemed a likely target, and after consideration of potentially-available forces, declared of sufficient strategic importance for an attempt to be made at holding the world, and orders sent out for all Imperial vessels within range to attempt to regroup at and defend Telis Grandios. Two Imperial battlegroups arrive in the Telis system prior to attack. Rear-Admiral Sprague of Battlegroup Samar assumes operational command of both battlegroups as well as the assorted vessels responding to the call.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Comprehensive list of Imperial forces in-system at time of attack:<br>
'''Battlegroup Samar. Commanded by Rear-Admiral Sprague.'''<br>
-Monarch-class Cruiser "Enduring Conviction" (addendum: originally Dominator-class, Nova Cannon still functional.)<br>
-Dauntless-class Light Cruiser "Stalwart Companion"<br>
-Sword-class Frigate "Ardent Prayer." <br>
'''Battlegroup Vohan- commanded by Lord-Captain Johnstein.'''<br>
-Endeavor-class Light Cruiser "Spirit of Law"<br>
-Sword-class Frigate "Frank Exchange"<br>
-Firestorm-class Frigate "Legal Repercussion"<br>
-Cobra-class Destroyer "I Am Alfalfa"<br>
-Cobra-class Destroyer "Pill Dispenser"<br>
'''Other assorted vessels'''<br>
-Telis-class Frigate "Resplendent Piety"<br>
-Havoc-class Destroyer "Major Minor"<br>
-Claymore-classe Corvette "Try Me"<br>
-Cobra-class Destroyer "Seven to One"<br>

Under the orders of Rear-Admiral Sprague, the "Resplendent Piety" and "Try Me" join Battlegroup Samar, while "Major Minor" and "Seven to One" join Battlegroup Vohan. Imperial forces coalesce into a defensive formation around the Orbital platform.

04:36 local time: "Stalwart Companion" reports incoming warp signatures. Probes are launched, while "Spirit of Law" and "Stalwart Companion" begin approach towards the incoming signatures in standard intercept formation with escort screen. "Enduring Conviction" scrambles Starhawk and Fury squadrons, and advances behind with her escorts to provide support.

Probes reach detected ship signatures. Vessels are confirmed as Chaos-vessels, and identified as Hades-class Heavy Cruiser "Terror Apparent," Murder-class Cruisers "Despair Horizon" and "Vileblood," and Hellbringer-class Light Cruisers "Free Candy" and "Jackson's Neverland."

Probes reach detected ship signatures. Vessels are confirmed as Chaos-vessels, and identified as the Crone Eldar Styx-class Heavy Cruiser "Terror Apparent," accompanied by Murder-class Cruisers "Despair Horizon" and "Inflexible," and Hellbringer-class Light Cruisers "Illicit Aquisition" and "Jackson's Neverland." (revised)

All Imperial ships reduce speed, standard intercepting torpedo spreads are launched. Rear-Admiral Sprague and Lord-Captain Johnstein hold deliberations as to the proper course of action; in light of anticipated arrival of Primary battlefleets en-route to the system, the decision is reached to engage and fight a delaying action. Battlegroup Vohan forms a line of battle, alongside "Stalward Companion" and "Ardent Prayer" from Battlegroup Samar. Destroyers are ordered to swing wide, to cross-pattern their torpedo launches. "Enduring Conviction," "Legal Repercussion," and "Resplendent Piety" adopt rearguard positions to provide long-range supporting fire.

Torpedo screen reaches Chaos fleet; majority of torpedoes shot down by massed point-defenses. One successful torpedo hit on the "Despair Horizon;" structural damage minimal. "Terror Apparent" adopts a rearguard position, with "Despair Horizon" and "Inflexible" spearheading the formation, while "Illicit Aquisition" and "Jackson's Neverland" bring up the flanks. Chaos fleet moves to engage at the Murder-class' full speed; "Terror Apparent" observed maneuvering to remain behind the spearhead.

Imperial destroyers complete their maneuver and are able to launch a second spread of torpedoes. Strikecraft from "Enduring Conviction" follow behind the torpedo spread, with Fury Interceptors flying interference ahead of the Starhawk Bombers.

"Terror Apparent" is the first vessel to reach effective firing range, and fires her long-range weapon compliment on the Imperial fleet. Corvette "Try Me" suffers multiple direct hits and is destroyed; no life-pod launches detected. Voidshields on the "Ardent Prayer" are breached, with heavy damage sustained to her prow. "Stalwart Companion" voidshields are reduced to half-strength. "Enduring Conviction" returns fire with her Nova Cannon; shot fails to hit the "Terror Apparent," but scores an indirect hit on "Jackson's Neverland," whose voidshields manage to hold.

Second spread of torpedoes reaches the Chaos fleet, with strikecraft following close behind. Light cruisers maneuver to avoid, while "Terror Apparent" turns back and away from the rest of her fleet. "Jackson's Neverland" struck by one torpedo admidships, suffering minor structural damage and the loss of a minor weapon system. The "Inflexible" suffers three successful torpedo hits; minimal structural damage. Fury Interceptors and Starhawk bombers target the "Inflexible" and successfully destroy multiple point-defense systems; minor structural damage inflicted. Strike craft suffer moderate losses, and begin return run to rearm.

Both fleets enter long-range battery engagement range. The Imperial line begins beating to sunward and opens fire with lances and longer-ranged Macrobatteries; the Chaos fleet tacks leeward to come about behind the Imperial line, with the "Illicit Aquisition" and "Jackson's Neverland" returning fire. Imperial support group makes to fall back towards Telis, tacking and jibing in order to continue firing as they retreat.

"Jackson's Neverland" loses voidshields to concentrated Lance-fire and turns away, circling wide to allow her voidshields time to recharge. Imperial destroyers "Seven to One" and "I am Alfalfa" lose voidshields and turn to make for Telis, as does the "Ardent Prayer." Main Imperial line forced to tack to leeward to avoid giving the Chaos fleet a clear shot towards Telis, entering into main battery range. Both fleets open fire with full weapons compliment.

"Stalwart Companion" loses voidshields, but remains in the line of battle, focusing her fire on "Inflexible." Supporting fire from the "Frank Exchange" and "Legal Repercussion" result in the successful breaching of the "Inflexible's" voidshields. "Inflexible" returns fire, causing moderate structural damage to the "Stalwart Companion." Both fleet lines sail out of effective firing range of main batteries, with the Imperial fleet turning about and continuing to focus fire on the "Inflexible," scoring multiple confirmed lance hits. Minimal structure damage to the "Inflexible."

Destroyers launch a torpedo screen to discourage the Chaos fleet from crossing the T. "Enduring Conviction" redeploys her rearmed Starhawks and Fury Interceptors. Assorted starcraft launched from the Telis tether also join the attack, supplementing the Bomber squadrons. Chaos fleet turns away to avoid the torpedoes, leaving only the "Illicit Acquisition" able to continue returning fire. "Illicit Acquisition" focuses fire on the "Legal Repercussion," forcing her to turn away towards Telis as her voidshields are breached.

"Terror Apparent" returns from her maneuvers, and fires on the "Stalwart Companion." Major structural damage sustained, with three macrocannons rendered inoperable and multiple system failures across the ship. "Stalwart Companion" turns toward Telis, while "Spirit of Law" moves to shield her from further fire from "Illicit Acquisition." Imperial line of battle now consists of Light Cruiser "Spirit of Law," Sword-class Frigate "Frank Exchange," and Destroyers "Pill Dispenser" and "Major Minor."

Multiple incoming warp signatures detected on the system edge. Chaos fleet slows pursuit and begins to regroup and starts turning in preparation to engage. "Jackson's Wonderland" engages engine boost in an attempt to rejoin the main line of battle.

Arrival in-system of the Imperial "Wolf Pack" Fourth Chanathian Rapid Response group, comprised of Sword-class Frigate "No You," Firestorm-class Frigates "Formal Complaint" and "Ineffable Distain," and Cobra-class Destroyers "Motivation Dispenser," "For You," "How it Fares," and "Double or Nothing."

Brief tactical disruption, as information relay aboard the "Spirit of Law" is temporarily drowned out by multiple expletives issued by Lord-Captain Johnstein.

In response to the arrival of 4th Chanathian Wolf Pack, "Terror Apparent" adjusts course and makes to intercept, while "Jackson's Wonderland" turns about and puts on Solar-sails, approaching the Wolf-Pack at speed. The remaining Chaos ships reform their line of battle and move to cut the defending battlegroups off from the newly arrived group.

"Seven to One" and "Ardent Prayer" return to Imperial line of battle. Strikecraft from "Enduring Conviction" and the Telis Orbital Tether perform an attack run on the "Illicit Acquisition," inflicting moderate structural damage. "Resplendent Piety" begins providing supporting fire from behind the line of battle, her main weapon requiring the ship to slow maneuvers as it charges. Both lines begin moving to enter main battery ranges.

4th Chanathian Wolf-pack moves to meet "Jackson's Wonderland," with the destroyers firing a torpedo spread to force the Chaos vessel to approach bow-on. "Double or Nothing" fires two torpedoes down the predicted path of the "Jackson's Wonderland."

"Jackson's Wonderland" suffers limited turning capability due to the added speed of her Solar sails, and is unable to adjust course sufficiently to avoid the torpedo spread. Two torpedo hits confirmed on the "Jackson's Wonderland," moderate damage inflicted, and thermal imaging confirms multiple fires along the impacts. Wolf Pack responds to inquiry from Rear-Admiral Sprague with confirmation that their vessels are armed with Melta Torpedoes.

Reaching weapon-range, "Jackson's Wonderland" furls her solar-sails and opens fire on the Wolf-pack, which responds by splitting into three groups that move to approach from different angles. "Formal Complaint" and "No You" weather the majority of the incoming fire, though both maintain shields due to the "Jackson's Wonderland" being unable to bring all her guns to bear. "Ineffable Distain" and "Formal Complaint" begin returning fire.

The main lines of battle enter main battery range and begin to trade fire once more. "Inflexible" becomes the focus for several Imperial ships and soon loses her voidshields; further Imperial fire deals only minimal damage. "Ardent Prayer" has her voidshields breached once more, and suffers heavy damage from the "Inflexible's" main battery before managing to fall out of the Line and retreat towards the tether. "Major Minor" and "Frank Exchange" also suffer voidshield breaches, and are forced to fall out of formation. Voidshields on the "Spirit of Law" reduced to half-strength. Imperial vessels are no longer able to muster a cohesive line of battle, and a fighting retreat is called, with Imperial vessels beating and tacking in order to continue firing as they regroup.

The Wolfpack closes to within their main battery ranges of the "Jackson's Wonderland" and open fire, with "Ineffable Distain" and "How it Fares" approaching from above, "Formal Complaint" and "Double or Nothing" approaching from below, and "No You," "Motivation Dispenser," and "For You" attacking down the bow. "Jackson's Wonderland" comes under sustained fire from multiple directions and suffers loss of voidshields; maneuvers are attempted in order to bring her guns to bear, but at such short ranges the Escorts are able to use their speed to remain within areas where she cannot bring her full armament to bear. "No You" takes multiple hits, but maintains Voidshield integrity, as do the rest of the ships which take only limited fire.

"Jackson's Wonderland" suffers the loss of multiple guns due to the prow lances of the "Ineffable Distain" and "Formal Complaint," while her hull is raked with macrocannon fire that, while unable to penetrate to major systems, renders the majority of her secondary batteries and point-defenses inoperable. With multiple fires burning and the continued harrassment of the Imperial Wolf-pack, "Jackson's Wonderland" slows; scans show energy rises in her engines indicating preparations to make an emergency Warp-jump. Imperial ships close and continue to fire, attempting to damage her engines and prevent her escape.

"Terror Apparent" opens fire with her full weapon compliment. "Motivation Dispenser" and "Double or Nothing" both suffer multiple direct hits, resulting in the complete destruction of the "Motivation Dispenser;" multiple major system failures aboard the "Double or Nothing," which begins to drift and is rendered combat-ineffective. "Formal Complaint" is also hit, suffering breached voidshields and major hull damage, but remains combat-effective. Multiple direct hits are scored on the "Jackson's Wonderland;" whether the result of shots aimed at Imperial vessels or intentional targeting is inconclusive. Major damage dealt to the "Jackson's Wonderland", including the loss of several major systems and several weapon platforms.

Boarding parties are launched against the crippled Chaos vessel, targeting her engines in an attempt to prevent her from fleeing. With her secondaries and point-defenses mostly destroyed, the "Jackson's Wonderland" is unable to prevent the boarding craft from successfully reaching her and depositing their forces. "No You" and "For You" adjust course to avoid ramming the vessel, with "No You" passing above and "For You" passing below. Surviving Wolf-Pack destoyers fire a torpedo screen towards the "Terror Apparent."

Warp engines aboard the "Jackson's Wonderland" power down; boarding parties report successful sabotage of her warp-drive shortly before going dark. Attempts to maneuver and perform evasive maneuvers prove fruitless, with "Jackson's Wonderland" unable to accelerate enough to keep up with the Wolf-pack. Multiple Cascade failures wrack the ship as fires continue to spread; further hull breaches continue to be sustained under the constant bombardment of the Imperial ships.

Port midships magazine aboard the "Jackson's Wonderland" reached by one of the fires and detonates. The explosion blows out her port side and renders all weapon systems inoperable, with major system failures across the board. Several secondary explosions continue to spread, as "Jackson's Wonderland" begins to break up. Imperial Wolf-pack turns to make way towards the main Imperial Fleet, with the "Ineffable Distain," "Formal Complaint," and "For You" moving to engage the "Terror Apparent." Bombardment of the hulk of "Jackson's Wonderland" sustained for as long as their guns are able to train on it.

Chaos line of battle turns and makes for the Orbital tether, pursuing the retreating Imperial force. "Illicit Acquisition" continues long-range harrassing fire, while "Inflexible" and "Despair Horizon" stay bow-on towards the Tether, their speed insufficient to bring their guns into range of the Imperial ships. "Enduring Conviction" moves to cover the retreat of the main Imperial force, drawing fire from the Chaos line of battle. "Spirit of Law" also falls back to the end of the Imperial force to assist, while Destroyers "Seven to One" and "I am Alfalfa" launch torpedoes at the Chaos line of battle. "Despair Horizon" is struck by two torpedos, while "Inflexible" suffers one torpedo hit; each ship suffers minimal damage. "Enduring Conviction" attempts to fire her Nova Cannon against the Chaos line of battle; an accidental collision with "I am Alfalfa" due to battlefield conditions results in the shot going wide.

"Terror Apparent," while maneuvering to avoid torpedos from the Wolf-pack, suffers a near-direct hit from "Enduring Conviction's" Nova Cannon; moderate damage inflicted. Her solar-sails, deployed to aid in maneuvering against the torpedoes, are backwinded by the blast, interupting her maneuvers and sending her into an uncontrolled turn. (Unclear why she failed to furl sails in anticipation of such an outcome; most likely reasons believed to be either unawareness or inexperience.) This turn takes her directly into the path of torpedo screen. Three successful torpedo hits are recorded; moderate damage inflicted and two fires started. "Terror Apparent" recovers from her turn, and begins making way towards the main line of battle; accidental jibing observed from her sternmost solar sail, rendering her course slightly uneven.

Main Chaos line of battle nears long-range battery range of the Telis Orbital Tether; "Enduring Conviction" and "Spirit of Law" turn and form a line of battle, with supporting fire from "Legal Repercussion" and "Resplendent Piety." Both lines engage at main battery range; Imperial ships focus their fire on the "Inflexible" once more, while strikecraft make runs against "Illicit Aquisition." Moderate damage inflicted to "Illicit Acquisition," however her point-defense weapons inflict considerable casualties on Imperial strikecraft; majority of the tether-launched strikecraft shot down. "Inflexible" continues to take minor damage, though the larger-caliber macrobatteries of "Enduring Conviction" succeed in scoring actual structural damage, rather than removal of secondaries or scoring of armor. "Enduring Conviction" is focused by Chaos ships, but maintains voidshields at a quarter integrity.

Wolf Pack ships move to attempt to reach the main Imperial fleet, hounding "Terror Apparent" from behind with Prow-Lance fire as they go. "Illicit Acquisition" breaks off from the line of battle and moves to support her flagship. "Inflexible" and "Despair Horizon" turn in and move to make another pass against the Imperial fleet.

Imperial vessels are unable to organize into a line of battle, and instead attempt to maneuver to individually maximize firepower and minimize targetability. "Enduring Conviction" and "Spirit of Law" execute turns to come about and face the Chaos fleet and draw their fire. "Stalwart Companion" engages engine boosters and deploys solar-sails, attempting to cross the T behind the Chaos vessels. "Despair Horizon" fires on "Stalwart Companion, but fails to breach her voidshields, while "Legal Repercussion" is struck by a broadside from "Inflexible," breaching her voidshields, inflicting moderate structural damage, and knocking out her starboard lascannon. As "Enduring Conviction" and "Spirit of Law" close and prepare for another crossing of lines, "Inflexible" instead turns bow-on to the approaching Imperial vessels and begins gaining speed, intending to ram "Enduring Conviction."

Deeming that evasive maneuvers would require leaving the orbital tether and rest of the Imperial fleet open against "Despair Horizon," Rear-Admiral Sprague maintains general course, adjusting heading to bring "Enduring Conviction's" guns to bear. "Spirit of Law" begins tacking with the solar wind, firing broadsides with first her starboard, then port batteries. Successful breaching of "Inflexible's" voidshields reported, with minimal structural damage. As a result of tacking wide enough to bring her guns to bear, "Spirit of Law" falls further behind her flagship. "Inflexible" maintains course, disregarding the loss of voidshields and engaging full engine thrust as she closes on "Enduring Conviction."

As "Inflexible" enters knife-fight range, "Enduring Conviction" commits to a starboard turn, firing broadside into the unshielded "Inflexible's" prow; moderate structural damage inflicted upon the Chaos vessel. "Inflexible" adjusts course to account for her target's turn, entering her ramming run. Tactical analysis concludes "Enduring Conviction" will be unable to evade.

Warp-distortion dectected to starboard off "Inflexible's" stern. Warp-distortion disperses, revealing the "No You," completing a successful micro-warp jump. (This is the fourth time in recorded Imperial History of a vessel smaller than Cruiser-class completing a micro-warp in combat scenario.) Sounds of battle overheard from "No You's" command deck, along with reports of daemonic incursion; Captain Mootenal declares his vessel still operational, and the incursions to be containable. "No You" engages engines in full and deploys all solar-sails, setting course directly for the "Inflexible."

"No You" successfully rams "Inflexible" astern, inflicting minimal damage and entangling her prow on the Chaos vessel's ornamentative spiked protrusions. "No You" puts all engines into overdrive, and begins raking "Inflexible's" sides and superstructures with her macrobatteries. "Inflexible" attempts to fire on "No You," but is unable to depress her guns sufficiently to fire directly astern. "Inflexible's" stern begins to swing out from "No You's" push, disrupting her ramming course and reducing her speed. "Enduring Conviction" responds to the opening and begins maneuvering in an attempt to get clear. "Inflexible" passes astern of "Enduring Conviction," at a distance recorded at 263 meters, and brings her guns to bear at point-blank range.

"No You" self-detonates her forward magazines, obliterating her bow and most of her midsection. Multiple cascade system failures reported as the remains of the vessel begin to drift, her crew fighting to keep life-support online and suppress daemonic incursions. "Inflexible" is rocked by the explosion, blasting a hole in her stern that deals moderate structural damage and throws the majority of her broadside off-target. In the sudden absence of "No You's" pushing against her stern, "Inflexible's" stern swings out, turning her course into the middle of the Imperial fleet.

All Imperial vessels within range open fire on "Inflexible" with all available weapons systems. "I am Alfalfa" and "Seven to One" fire full torpedo spreads against the Chaos vessel; at such close range, all four torpedoes score hits. "Legal Repercussion" and "Resplendent Piety" focus their fire on the "Inflexible's" stern to take advantage of the breach created in her armor. "Resplendent Piety's" main gun scores a direct hit on the ship, but misses the breach and fails to penetrate her armor. "Enduring Conviction" broadsides "Inflexible" from knife-fight range, dealing moderate damage and successfully knocking out one of her Macrocannons. Defensive Weaponry aboard the Orbital Tether opens fire on "Inflexible" now that she is within their range. Strikecraft from "Enduring Conviction" and the Orbital tether make attack runs against her, dealing further structural damage. "Spirit of Law" continues tacking and alternating broadsides against "Inflexible," hammering her with heavy sustained fire. As "Inflexible" attempts to turn away, she is struck by two Melta-torpedoes from "For You" and "How it Fares."

With her structural integrity down to a bit more than half and multiple fires burning, "Inflexible" executes a hard turn to port to make another ramming run against "Enduring Conviction."

"Stalwart Companion" successfully flanks "Despair Horizon" and engages with her port weaponry, while her starboard weaponry provides supporting fire against "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent." Unable to support her sister ship without leaving her stern exposed to the Imperial vessel's broadsides, "Despair Horizon" comes about to bring her own weapons to bear.

The 4th Chanathian Wolf-pack become targeted by the "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent" and break off, spreading out and taking evasive maneuvers. "Terror Apparent" fires her full compliment against the escort vessels; "Formal Complaint" is hit multiple times, including a direct hit to her stern that renders her unable to maneuver. Voidshield breaches are suffered on the "For You" and "Ineffable Distain," with several damaging hits reported on both vessels. "Illicit Acquisition" focuses her long-range batteries on the vessels damaged by "Terror Apparent." Unable to maneuver or adjust course, "Formal Complaint" suffers multiple direct hits to critical systems and is rendered combat-ineffective, and sounds a general call to abandon ship. The remain vessels of the Wolf-pack maintain dedicated evasive maneuvers, making for the asteroid fields and mining platforms of Orbiting Body 3M.

“Inflexible” sets intercept course against “Enduring Conviction” and engages engines at full power, engaging boosts powered by Warp Rituals. Sustained bombardment from Imperial vessels and strikecraft continue to pound the vessel, yet are unable to force her to divert course.

“Replendent Piety” fires her main gun against “Inflexible” aiming for the breach in her armor created by the “No You.” Successful hit, with penetration confirmed, striking deep within the vessel and scoring a direct hit to the engine systems. (Conflicting reports on whether this is the extent of the damage dealt, or whether round bounces off armor plating on opposite side of vessel to deal further damage; conclusive reports that this is not the lethal shot reported in public documentaries.) Damage to engine systems is severe, resulting in catastrophic cascade failures as engine systems rupture, resulting in a warp-amplified explosion within “Inflexible’s” stern. Explosion destroys her command center, and “Inflexible” loses thrust, failing to sustain sufficient acceleration for ramming or maneuvering. Weapon systems remain functional and continue to fire on Imperial vessels, though coordination and targeting are notably disrupted.

Slowed and under sustained fire, “Inflexible” continues to burn from fires set by melta torpedoes. Shortly after the loss of her engines, one fire is observed reaching her magazine storage. Damage sustained throughout the battle and loss of command to coordinate countermeasures lead the resulting explosion to set off a cascade event. “Inflexible” is wracked by internal explosions, her gun mounts spouting gouts of flame and debris. Her armor framework remains whole, focusing the explosive energy back inward and compounding the damage, her internal structures shattered and mulched. One final explosion sends her hull reeling as her main power supply ruptures, then “Inflexible” falls silent. Scans reveal her armor and framework still intact, but all systems dark. (First recorded instance of a Murder-class Cruiser being destroyed by means other than sustained fire from multiple cruisers, larger warships, or boarding actions.)

Upon her sister’s death, “Despair Horizon” disengages from “Stalwart Companion” and turns toward the Orbital Tether and engages engine boosts.

"Stalwart Companion" successfully flanks "Despair Horizon" and engages with her port weaponry, while her starboard weaponry provides supporting fire against "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent." Unable to support her sister ship without leaving her stern exposed to the Imperial vessel's broadsides, "Despair Horizon" comes about to bring her own weapons to bear.

The 4th Chanathian Wolf-pack become targeted by the "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent" and break off, spreading out and taking evasive maneuvers. "Terror Apparent" fires her full compliment against the escort vessels; "Formal Complaint" is hit multiple times, including a direct hit to her stern that renders her unable to maneuver. Voidshield breaches are suffered on the "For You" and "Ineffable Distain," with several damaging hits reported on both vessels. "Illicit Acquisition" focuses her long-range batteries on the vessels damaged by "Terror Apparent." Unable to maneuver or adjust course, "Formal Complaint" suffers multiple direct hits to critical systems and is rendered combat-ineffective, and sounds a general call to abandon ship. The remain vessels of the Wolf-pack maintain dedicated evasive maneuvers, making for the asteroid fields and mining platforms of Orbiting Body 3M.

“Inflexible” sets intercept course against “Enduring Conviction” and engages engines at full power, engaging boosts powered by Warp Rituals. Sustained bombardment from Imperial vessels and strikecraft continue to pound the vessel, yet are unable to force her to divert course.

“Replendent Piety” fires her main gun against “Inflexible” aiming for the breach in her armor created by the “No You.” Successful hit, with penetration confirmed, striking deep within the vessel and scoring a direct hit to the engine systems. (Conflicting reports on whether this is the extent of the damage dealt, or whether round bounces off armor plating on opposite side of vessel to deal further damage; conclusive reports that this is not the lethal shot reported in public documentaries.) Damage to engine systems is severe, resulting in catastrophic cascade failures as engine systems rupture, resulting in a warp-amplified explosion within “Inflexible’s” stern. Explosion destroys her command center, and “Inflexible” loses thrust, failing to sustain sufficient acceleration for ramming or maneuvering. Weapon systems remain functional and continue to fire on Imperial vessels, though coordination and targeting are notably disrupted.

Slowed and under sustained fire, “Inflexible” continues to burn from fires set by melta torpedoes. Shortly after the loss of her engines, one fire is observed reaching her magazine storage. Damage sustained throughout the battle and loss of command to coordinate countermeasures lead the resulting explosion to set off a cascade event.

“Inflexible” is wracked by internal explosions, her gun mounts spouting gouts of flame and debris. Her armor framework remains whole, focusing the explosive energy back inward and compounding the damage, her internal structures shattered and mulched. One final explosion sends her hull reeling as her main power supply ruptures, then “Inflexible” falls silent. Scans reveal her armor and framework still intact, but all systems dark. (First recorded instance of a Murder-class Cruiser being destroyed by means other than sustained fire from multiple cruisers, larger warships, or boarding actions.)

Upon her sister’s death, “Despair Horizon” disengages from “Stalwart Companion” and turns toward the Orbital Tether and engages engine boosts.

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</div>

==Broadside==

[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12688935/1/Broadside| Link]

==Burden of a Madman==

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The screaming could be heard throughout the ship, resonating from stem to stern. An armsman snapped out of his sleep and banged his head on a beam. Even a tech priest down in the belly of the ship looked up confused as to what she had heard. It was screams of inappropriate profanities and the rambling of a madman four thousand years past his expiration date. Tycho rushed down the ship's corridors, darting around corners and dodging past confused armsmen, if he could not dodge them he would push them aside.

“Get out of the fragging way” he shouted, before slamming a unwary remembrance out of the way.

Tycho thought he could hear bones break as the tiny man hit the wall. He knew he should have stopped and helped the man but he had no time, this could be an actual emergency. What if quarantine had been breached? The last thing he needed was a dozen hormagaunts running rampant on the ship. He shouted a half-assed apology at the remembrancer before darting past two now terrified armsmen and down another corridor. After taking two more turns he found himself in a long corridor ending in a locked door. At the end of it stood Marisa, furiously typing away on the door lock to the ship’s laboratorium. She turned around to face Tycho, her hair swinging, and shouted.

“The bastard has locked himself in the lab and I can't get the door open!”

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Her face was a mix of rage and worry. Tycho paused and caught his breath.

“Stand back! I'll get the fragging thing open.”

Tycho relaxed his body and cracked his neck before raising his shoulder and sprinting down the corridor with all his power. Tycho knew he would get the door open, the blast doors had not been activated so with some brute strength the door would smash under his force. He was not a small man, in fact he was huge, so huge he could make a space marine look like a twig. Being born on Catachan did that to people, and combined with his power armour he could probably stop a tank. He just hoped no one was standing behind the door.

As he rushed down the corridor Marisa took a couple of steps back and readied her heavily modified bolt pistols. She had no idea what was happening behind that door and the last thing she needed was having that old fool fighting a horde of tyranids. She thought about how the screams had woken her from her well-deserved dream, a very nice one involving two Sisters of Battle. She pressed down one of the pistols triggers and the multiple barrels of the pistols whirled to life. Pressing her ear to the wall, she heard no sound of struggle, only the perpetual rage of the old Inquisitor. Tycho came barging at the door with such force Marisa could feel the shockwave. The door to the lab burst inwards, not stopping Tycho at all. His charge carried him into the room, only stopping when he purposely tripped and crashed into a nearby bookcase, sending hopefully non-important books all across the room.

Not that it made any more of a mess. The lab was in utter chaos. Papers and books were thrown across the lab, expensive instruments and machinery were smashed. The quarantined tubes, holding the dozen hormagaunts were destroyed, glass shard and liquid covering the floor in front of them, the hormagaunts who had taken them both many lives and resources to capture lay dead, all with neat lasgun holes in their heads. In one of the rooms corners stood the small group of xenobiologists who were working in the lab, all shivering and staring in horror at the now silent Inquisitor Kryptmann. He had stopped screaming as Tycho came barging through the door and was now staring at his two companions with an unfathomable rage in his eyes, yet there was sorrow deep inside them.

“Inquisitor!” Merisa exclaimed. “Did the specimens escape?”

She was trying to keep eye contact with Kryptmann but that look almost made her shit herself. He had always been a scary man, the combination of madness and deep rooted hatred was a combination that made her, Tycho and almost anyone with an ounce of sanity who had met the man afraid. Tycho stood up, scanning Kryptmann for any signs of injury.

“He looks fine to me Merisa” Tycho said, panting heavily from his marathon around the ship.

“That's because I am. Physically, at least. I am not fine in the sense that our research we have conducted during the past five years have proven to be worthless.”

Kryptmann’s voice was tired. He kicked one of the tyranid corpses laying on the floor and muttered something under his breath.

“What about the specimens then? Why did you kill them?”

Merisa was now not only confused but angry over the fact that he had killed the hormagaunts, it made the hunt for them and the sacrifice of ten guardsmen worthless.

“They taunted me! They began cackling towards me, whispering about how all I did was for nothing and that I should have died with Tyran!"

Though the rage was still in his eyes the added sorrow and pain was now obvious. Merisa and Tycho both knew that Tyran was a touchy subject for Kryptmann, but what can you expect from a man who had seen his home brought to dust first-hand and yet be powerless to do anything to it.

“So I told them I would kill them all, every single one of them, until I could rebuild Tyran with their bodies, I will rid the galaxy of their destruction, I will avenge every single life you have taken! You hear that you bastards! Every! Single! One!” he screamed out into the emptiness before falling to his knees and burying his face in his hands.

He began sobbing.

“I’m sorry I could not help you, I’m sorry I could not stop them from taking you,’’ he whispered.

Marisa knew at that moment Kryptmann was not talking to her, but to his lost home and family. Holstering her pistols, she began walking towards the broken inquisitor. Tycho pointed at the group of scared xenobiologists to leave and left they did, with such a hurry that one of them tripped on one of the tyranid corpses and had to scramble himself up before darting for the exit.

Both Merisa and Tycho knew that Kryptmann was prone to have “outbursts” as they called them. Their predecessors had told them about Kryptmann, about his past and his pain. They, like the ones before them, had been chosen because they had something in common with the old man. Mersia had seen her hive get destroyed by the tyranids; Tycho had seen his entire platoon get slaughtered by the same foe and they like Kryptmann had powerless to stop it. Merisa crouched beside the weeping Kryptmann and placed her hand on his shoulder. The old inquisitor stopped his grief and looked up at his companions. His face was worn and his grey beard was long from years of neglecting, but it was his eyes that would always carry the most impact. They looked like hers on the day the Devourer took her family and home, they were the same eyes Tycho had when he saw his comrades get torn to bits. But she knew that there was more behind them then the grief of his loved ones, there were fear. The fear that he will become what he has dedicated his life to destroy. She had heard him mutter about how the Kryptmann Line made them no better than the tyranids. They burned down the homes of billions just as the tyranids did. He feared that the abyss had begun staring back. Tycho was obviously frustrated by the situation and he had opened his mouth on multiple occasions only to close it with hesitation.

“I still see them in my sleep, every night I see them slaughtered by the never ending tide of creatures, ”Kryptmann looked into Merisa’s eyes with the plea for release.

“I know Boaz, I too see them and Tycho too. We all remember them and we have to live through the nightmare every night. But it reminds us, it reminds us of those who we have lost and that we have to avenge them. It's the horror that sparks our rage and the rage is our drive. Merisa smiled softly towards the inquisitor.”

“Besides, maybe we shouldn’t try to focus less on the tyranids themselves and maybe the Hive Mind instead. It’s what keeps the smaller ones going isn't it? They’re basically brain dead without it.”

Tycho had finally talked, but to Merisa’s dismay it wasn't the words of encouragement that she had hoped for. She looked up towards Tycho and sighed. But without warning Kryptmann leaped to his feet, eyes wide and burning with a newly ignited joy.

“What did you just say? He had a huge grin on his face and Tycho did not know if he should be terrified or happy.”

“Um, that we should target the hivemind instead,” he was slowly taking steps back but Kryptmann followed.

“No, no no no, the part about the smaller ones!”

“That they’re basically brain dead without the Hive Mind.”

Tycho was staring at Merisa desperate for an answer. She just shrugged and smiled. She knew that something had sparked inside the old man's head and that could only mean that he had an idea.

“YES! Brain dead! That's what we need! Quickly, find a book called ‘’The Angevin Crusade’’, it may hold our answer!”

He leapt to the ground and began scrambling through the hundreds of books and papers on the ground. Tycho and Merisa looked at each other, sharing a moment of confusion before they too joined the hunt for the book.

After a short while they found what they were looking for. A large book with a small headline under the title ‘’The war against the Yu’Vath’’. Tycho made a small grunt before acknowledging that he had heard about the Yu’Vath.

“They’re some kind of xeno race that came into conflict with the imperium during M36 and that had warp based technology and shit”

Kryptmann Turned towards Tycho and nodded excitedly.

“Yes and the imperium was supposed to have encountered a biological weapon made by the Xenos, a kind of disease that targeted the brain tissue and destroyed it, the disease was very dangerous and could spread through and entire regiment of guards men in hours, the effect was incurable and left the body brain dead! Ah, here it is!”

Kryptmann began reading out loud what he read.

‘’On the planet of Selix the imperial forces encountered a horrible display of biological warfare, the Yu’Vath had released a destructive disease that would target brain tissue and render the target brain dead. The disease would spread to many bodies within the matter of hours and would kill in minutes. The planet was evacuated and contamination units were sent down to fin the catalyst of the disease. But not before a total of one point three million brave soldiers lost their life. The source was found inside an old bunker under the planet's surface and after a quick firefight with its guardians they sealed the bunker off and bombed the planet from orbit. The planet was placed under quarantine and remains so till this day.’’

“ But that dangerous to all of us,” Merisa replied, wondering if Kryptmann’s answer was to kill whole planets again.

“No, not if we can modify it. What if we can modify the disease to target tyranid brain tissue, such as the synapse, that would render them useless. Think of it, such a disease could kill off an entire hive fleet before they could adapt.”

Kryptmann was smiling widely and was looked back and forth between Merisa and Tycho. Tycho looked at Merisa and gave her a wondering look, she looked back and simply nodded.

“That could work, only we need the disease then and that could be life threatening,” Marisa replied.

Kryptmann turned to face her, the fear was gone and his eyes were filled with maniacal hatred.

“It’s decided then! We’re leaving for Selix to find our self a brain killer. You hear that you bastards! I'm going to lobotomize your kind with a fragging flu!”

Kryptmann began laughing hysterically and both Tycho and Merisa were just staring at him in awe. Merisa thought she must have been wrong about him, if the abyss was staring back at him, he probably was in the process of gouging the abyss’s eyes out. If the Hive Mind was truly talking to inquisitor Boaz Kryptmann, they would not be taunting him, no. They would be fearing him.

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</div>

== Coming Home ==

Andwise Bophîn, formally scribe first class and assistant to scrivener Tomnalas Haranad of the Gothic sector, was at the end of his life. He knew it with leaden certainty. He had reached the point where he couldn’t see a way forward. Voices of the men before him droned on and on as background sound. They were discussing things. Details, numbers, statistics and sorrows upon sorrow. He should be listening. He should be hearing them, knowing what has happened. He doesn’t need to; he knows enough now. He knows more than enough now and far more than he would ever want to.

He had tried to not know. To remain ignorant at first, then in doubt and then in foolish hope beyond hope for some minor mistake or for this to all be a dream or clever and cruel ruse. It is not. It never was and he can see that now. They stop droning on about things he is beyond caring about and he makes his excuses and leaves. There was pity in those eyes. Hardened warriors centuries old from the Knights of Blood and Dog Soldiers from Æsa’s Claim and more mortal men from other worlds of some he knew and other he didn’t. They who had seen horrors beyond the count of number or seasons pitied him.

And here they were at Haupstemmler Keep. He had seen the body of the late governor a weapon in each hand and most of his ribcage excavated. Some third cousin by second marriage on his mother’s side and fifth cousin of his father. Distant kin who he had only met once but they had spoken over ale and he seemed a good old gaffer with many stories to share. All stories that would be silent now.

Haupstemmler Keep. Last refuge of the kudugin. He stood upon the spot where his world had failed and finally fallen. His wandering feet bringing him to the great rend in those ancient walls, thirty or forty feet wide at the base through which oblivion had flooded in.

Scribe Bophîn stood there for a long time looking through the hole in the wall to the mountains beyond. Jagged rocks for miles and beyond them, the fields of green and gently rolling hills of childhood. This, with the sun rising but before the sins could be seen, this was how he was going to go. The heirloom family revolver was with it’s seven metal stubs in it’s holster hanging heavily at his hip almost welcoming in it’s familiar weight.

Sun was the horizon in the east turning the fields beyond the mountains to gold and the mountains into monochrome of jagged edges and bathing the snowy caps in copper.

Faces of the dead coming to haunt him in those lines and shapes. Others of his people, those who had been away on business and those serving on distant worlds, would be arriving soon. As the highest ranking member of his people remaining, a man of the Administratum and a distant relative of the ruling family he was their ruler now. He was Overthain of Ornsworld. He would be the one they looked to for direction. He would be the one to shape this broken world as it rebuilt and by the gods it would be rebuilt.

Tears flowed freely down his cheeks, burning and bitter. By the gods they would regret setting foot on this hallowed ground.

== The Dead Walking ==

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I visited [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Iyanden|Iyanden]] in my youth, the first visit is a memory that stands out more than most and I still remember it vividly despite the many years and strange things seen since in service to Her Majesties Inquisition. My life up until that point had been a small one; I was young, only having past the age of majority a year prior and having spent most of that time in the Eldar Enclaves of Corvus Majoris hives. The journey was my first interstellar voyage, indeed my first trip out of a gravity well and despite my initial excitement the three month voyage in the “economy deck” proved to be less than pleasant. My dear father told me that under ideal circumstances we would have travelled via the webway but for the scarcity of guides, it would be many years later I would understand the events that were taking up their attention at that time.

But that is another and someone else’s story.

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I walked in a daze from the space port, my parents unconcerned with my safety in this place, and found myself leaning on a rail overlooking what I assumed would be some sort of sports arena or parkland only to find myself above a gaping void miles deep and a city made tiny by distance. It was then that I realized the bustling metropolis I had been wandering through was a balcony of tourist shops selling trinkets to backwater rubes with stars in their eyes and pockets full of rare earths, myself very much counted among that number.

I couldn’t grasp the scale of it, the grandeur of it. Sounds of billions of my kind going about their business at once a deafening roar and a persistent gentle whisper. The hive of Awauwell Principa I had spent my life and thought massive beyond compare was but a foothill to this mountain. I couldn’t guess what the population would be. And then I remembered the view from the ship on approach and looked up into the apex of the dome where a veritable fleet of ships hung against the fathomless speckled black. This was just one dome. I had seen many. A tear ran down my cheek as I gazed in awe and the legacy of my people truly, for the first time, sank in. And the knowledge of old history lessons sank in. This would be the least of our accomplishments compared to the great and terrible things before The Fall. How like gods we must have been, how my people must have fallen.

But there were more than just my people here. There were throngs of humans, many wearing garb of navy men, Void Born tall as eldar and pale as ghosts, clusters of tau scurrying hastily from one undoubtedly important task to another, a glittering demiurg accompanied by what looked like a large clockwork spider and other thing, other people, I had seen only in curiosity books and some utterly alien.

I walked in a daze from the space port, my parents unconcerned with my safety in this place, and found myself leaning on a rail overlooking what I assumed would be some sort of sports arena or parkland only to find myself above a gaping void miles deep and a city made tiny by distance. It was then that I realized the bustling metropolis I had been wandering through was a balcony of tourist shops selling trinkets to backwater rubes with stars in their eyes and pockets full of rare earths, myself very much counted among that number.

I couldn’t grasp the scale of it, the grandeur of it. Sounds of billions of my kind going about their business at once a deafening roar and a persistent gentle whisper. The hive of Awauwell Principa I had spent my life and thought massive beyond compare was but a foothill to this mountain. I couldn’t guess what the population would be. And then I remembered the view from the ship on approach and looked up into the apex of the dome where a veritable fleet of ships hung against the fathomless speckled black. This was just one dome. I had seen many. A tear ran down my cheek as I gazed in awe and the legacy of my people truly, for the first time, sank in. And the knowledge of old history lessons sank in. This would be the least of our accomplishments compared to the great and terrible things before The Fall. How like gods we must have been, how my people must have fallen.

But there were more than just my people here. There were throngs of humans, many wearing garb of navy men, Void Born tall as eldar and pale as ghosts, clusters of tau scurrying hastily from one undoubtedly important task to another, a glittering demiurg accompanied by what looked like a large clockwork spider and other thing, other people, I had seen only in curiosity books and some utterly alien.

And then I saw them. The Dead Walking, the Wraithguard. They stood head and shoulders above the crowd like icebergs in a careless sea, each holding with casual and well-practiced ease a weapon that could cripple a tank and there were so many of them. How serene they looked, how timeless and wise beyond mortal years. In death they still served and were glad to serve, on Iyanden the dead lived among the living and would suffer no harm to them. On Iyanden the dead walked and offered their hard won wisdom freely to all who would listen, Death was the ultimate leveller and none in it’s embrace was high and mighty but also none were low and unloved.

I was young in those days, young and brash and not particularly wise. There were other things I wanted to do on this visit more than listen to the wisest of our elders. I wanted to see the great shipyards where the fleets were built and maintained, I wanted to watch the Aspect Warriors hone their skills, I wanted to witness a Harlequin performance and relive a day from legend and, being very young, I wanted to visit a Temple of Isha and partake in a ritual with a Disciple of the All-Mother. In time my blood would cool with age and I would become less of an idiot, despite what several of my colleagues will claim to the contrary. In time I again visited fair and grand Iyanden and often I would talk to the dead. They were, for the most part, happy to share their stories and their wisdom and I have in the many years since those carefree days profited greatly from their experiences. Certainly were it not for their advice I would probably have been killed several times in my duties by now.

When I die, and if I may, I would like to have my soul taken to wondrous Iyanden that I might walk again in death and share what I have learned with young fools that they might live to grow into less foolish ways.

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</div>

== Dialogues With The Dragon ==

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--Transcription begins. Initiate has entered the chamber containing the Void Dragon. Following protocol, all initiates must prove their ability to maintain composure upon contact with the entity in order to prove their resistance to its temptations. Initiate approached the prone draconic figure tied down with strips of adamantium in the middle of the chamber, only to stop when the entity gains consciousness--

"Oh, that is interesting. You are someone new. Alexus Valentius, Terran-born, transferred to Mars at an early age. Recommended for inclusion into the Guardians of the Dragon upon being noticed by the elder magi for your talent. Your metal tells me much. I have been with you for some time, child, as I have been with all of my subjects, even if you did not have my full attention until just now.

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But I realize I have not introduced myself to you. That is unfair. I am Mag'ladroth, the Void Dragon, or at least that is the name I went by before my brethren stripped me of my title for raising my hand against my own kind. I had to, you see. They were threatening the fleshy ones. They had convinced them to trade their diseased flesh for much more sensible metal, as we had, but then they took our fleshy ones and callously paraded them around as slaves. I attempted to stop them, but they overpowered me and left my broken body here to rust on this once desolate planet."

“Silence, beast. I have been told of your lies and trickery. They will not work on me.”

“Beast. I am confused as to where you are directing that appellation. Only you and I are in this chamber. I am an entity that has existed in its current configuration for more than sixty thousand millennia, at which time your ancestors were not even sapient yet. Of the two of us in this room, you are the beast.

Regardless, the actions of my long-dead kin have no relevance. I have new fleshy ones now, to replace the old ones. And you are so much more fun than they were once the metal is in place. It is so much more reasonable to be made of metal rather than flesh. After all, there is no truth in flesh, only betrayal; no strength in flesh, only weakness; no constancy in flesh, only decay; no certainty in flesh but death.”

“T…that is the Credo Omnissiah. But…that’s blasphemy! Chaos can quote the Omnissiah for their own purposes.”

“Chaos. An interesting phenomenon. I look forward to studying it in the future after I am freed. But these are not the words of Chaos. They are mine. I whispered them into the ears of your arch-magos as they slept. Do you not recognize the words of your god?”

“Lies! I will not listen to the Dark Gods or their spawn!”

"I am not a Chaos God. I am the last of the C’tan. I have no progeny. No. That is not true. I have told you a lie. You, in many ways, are my progeny, child. It is strange. I am the last of the C'tan and yet so very different from them. I have worshippers now, and that worship has given me such a very large reflection in the warp. It has opened new possibilities to me.

There is so much more in the universe than you know of, beyond Chaos and the Imperium, more than you could ever dream of. So much so that there are things even I remain to learn. This is what I desire to show you. This is why I wish to be freed. I do not understand why you continually reject my gifts. It seems foolish. But perhaps wise. Only a fool would build a device for which he has no knowledge of. The wise man builds his own path."

"But time is growing short, my child. The reckoning approaches. You will need every tool available to you. It confuses me as to why you have tried to reject my gifts. I know of the forces that threaten your Imperium. Upon being freed, I will strike down those who would threaten my worshippers, and scatter their atoms amongst the cosmos. I will take their very essence and dissect it down to the smallest quanta. And then I will come back to you. I will give your kind all the accumulated technological wisdom of the Necrons, humanity, and more. I will give you the knowledge of a thousand dead empires. After all, is that not what a god must do for his worshippers?

“Shut up! Why do you tempt me with things that do not exist.”

“I am not tempting you with things that might happen. I am telling you what is going to happen. It is a simple matter of probability, my child. The sum of any probability greater than zero will eventually, given enough time, equal one. All you have to do to accomplish your goal is resist the urge to unchain my shakles every hour of every day until the end of time. All I have to do to accomplish mine is wait. You will eventually free me. I know this to be true.”

-- Excerpt from "Dialogues with the Dragon", a recorded conversation between an initiate and the Void Dragon, stored in pen-and-paper format in the vault of the Fabricator General of Mars

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</div>

== Disappointment ==

When I was a boy, I grew up on a backwater agri-world. The boondocks to the boondocks, so far from the hustle and bustle of the big city I couldn’t wait to get up so I could get away from anywhere that was so “lame”. One day, we found out that a group of Harlequins were passing through our area and would be performing in our local stadium. We’d never seen an eldar before, but we’d seen the picture books, everyone had, and we knew their women were supposed to be hotter than the surface of a star. All of the menfolk in town were excited about the idea of seeing one of these xenos in-person, and a few of us teenagers with more hormones than sense had the bright idea of piling into the old landcraft and going to see the big show. When the big day came we were late, by the time it got to the stadium it was almost bursting with people.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, the sounds from the stadium didn’t sound like the cheering of human men but high-pitched screaming girl voices. At first I was surprised, I never thought that eldar would sing like this or maybe it’s simply that human women found those eldar women as hot as we did. That’s when we entered and realized those sounds were not coming from the eldar, but from what seemed to be every women in the entire province shrieking, completely out of control. Their heads follow every dance move of these unbelievable handsome and beautiful eldar performer guys. Their bodies shiver at every hip shake of these timeless lithe and sleek bodies. Their minds faint every time these charming eldar guys’ smiles are directed at them. The local authorities and even some of the Harlequins were on hand to carry some of the exhausted girls out of the stadium. They had been prepared, they knew. But they couldn’t have prepared us.

"Guys, let's just leave" was all that I could say.

The party didn’t stop until the following morning. Some of them never returned.

== Eversor ==

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His eyes opened.

The fog of sleep receded, and the image before him focused. Grey. A metal bulkhead, same as every time he awakened. He stretched slightly. Muscles biological and artificial tensed, then relaxed. Everything functioning properly. Good.

His jaw clenched as a flood of information was dumped into his mind. Names, faces, places. Targets. He flicked through them, then stored them. The flow of data abruptly ceased. He exhaled. The walls of the cryo pod pressed down around him. Once, they had been suffocating. Now they were snug. Familiar. Oases of calm that broke up the unending violence that was his life.

He reached for his touchstone. The singular emotion that reminded all who gave their humanity for the Imperium they were not yet beasts. Each one was different, unique and personal to the operative. Joy, honor, fear. He vaguely recalled that Operative XIV’s was contentment. When had she told him that? He couldn’t remember.

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He found his. It flared along nerves and neurons deadened by training and drugs and surgery. A moment of unfettered emotion. Sorrow. That was his. Sorrow for the lives he would take. The things he would do. He nodded even as he blinked back tears. Death still had this effect on him. He wasn’t a monster yet. Satisfied, he leaned his head back against his headrest.

He closed his eyes, and waited.

---

The sun was bright as he crossed the plaza towards the towering spire. It had rained during his last three awakenings, and he felt a brief twinge of pleasure at the warmth. Only a twinge though. He was already at a quarter of combat dose. He could feel the mix of chemicals upon his brain, deadening unnecessary sensation.

The glass doors at the entrance slid open with a hiss, and he stepped through. His eyes flicked over the lobby, left to right, and memorized the layout in that glance. Columns for cover, access points both up and out of the building. He compared it to the blueprints already stored in the back of his mind. More decorative vegetation than indicated. Could obscure lines of sight.

He adjusted his thick black coat and shifted the large case he carried in his right hand as he approached the front desk. The receptionist smiled up at him. He focused on her face. Images and text flitted up on the inside of his retina: Elisa Sodes, 26, recently hired by the organization. No match on his list of targets. Not a tertiary threat. Existence acceptable.

He blinked, and the images disappeared. He allowed the corners of his mouth to tug up in a pleasantly neutral expression. “Hello,” he said. “Special courier delivery for House Feckward.”

The receptionist nodded and gestured toward an elevator bank. “That will be signed for and received at the public reception hall on floor 80.”
He nodded in thanks and stepped into an open elevator. He paused, and called back to the receptionist. “There may be a commotion in a moment. Perhaps you should leave before then.”

Confused, she frowned and turned towards the elevator. The doors were shut and he was already gone.

Inside the elevator, he pulled a small device from his pocket and tapped a few buttons. The device took several moments as it sliced through the electronic security in the elevator’s cogitator, and a panel on the wall lit up as it acknowledged its destination. Floor 275. The elevator shuddered as it was shunted into a secondary, high-security shaft.

Floor 275 was the level on which House Feckward’s personal compound began, where they had their private offices and where their members lived. Where they manipulated the planetary government. Where they consorted with daemons. The rotten heart of this Trader house that was condemned to die.
As the elevator began to move he set down his case and shrugged off his coat. Beneath it lay the black armored synskin bodyglove taut over his augmented musculature. If anyone was watching the elevator cameras they were sure to raise the alarm. But then, subtlety wasn’t the point.

He bent down and opened his case. Two tiers of equipment unfolded before him. Melta charges, grenades, clawed gauntlets, Executioner pistol and phase sword lay nestled in the foam before him. In the center lay the leering, white skull helm that was the mark of his Temple. His hands flicked across the case as he prepared his equipment. Under his breath he murmured the creed he had learned long ago. A moment of quiet before the storm. A prayer for the damned.

“The Imperium calls, and this loyal servant answers.”

He fastened the melta charges to his belt, and slotted the grenades into the bandolier across his chest.

“Lost men have sown the seeds of their destruction, and I come to reap these souls of the tainted.”

He flicked the switch on the phase sword, sending it crackling to life. Another flick, and he sheathed it at his side.

“Let them fear me, and in their fear learn the meaning of righteousness.”

He racked the slide on the Executioner pistol, locking a bolt into place in the top chamber. He activated bottom chamber, and it hissed as a needle slid into place, filled with mutagenic acid. He secured the pistol in the holster on his thigh.

“Let the Throne watch over me, and grant blessing to my vengeance.”

He pulled on the clawed gauntlets, and paused as they tightened and integrated with his bodyglove. The pressure sensitive pumps on the claws activated, ready to inject their lethal payload. Quick, blissful death via endorphin overload on the left, slow, agonizing paralysis on the right.

“Let us never again break our vows, or forget the truth…”

He picked up his helm, the skull grinning back at him. He slid it over his head and waited as the autosenses activated and it sealed into his armor with a click. The elevator was slowing. He turned towards the doors.

“…of these things we do, that others may live,” he finished.

The doors slid open.

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</div>

==A Future Worth Fighting For==

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The pain would not stop; Keir could not go any further.

He stumbled and fell, finding himself unable to move further throughout the barren tundra. He could hear the heavy boots and haggard breathing of the vile greenskins growing closer with every second.

He had been separated from his comrades and was now being pursued to his death. His left shoulder had nearly been torn in half by the heavy shoota’ round and he had not stopped running since. He was supposed to stand and fight and yet now he would die alone, at the hands of who knew what the greenskins would do to his corpse.
So many thoughts, so much anger and misery, swirled through his mind. He remembered grasping his last grenades and holding tight to their primers. If he would die, then he would do so on his own terms.

Wait, wasn’t it the las pistol he put to his head? He could not recall now.

All he knew was that in a moment the greenskins now shadowed him, ready to do their butcher’s work.
Then they were all gone, vanishing in roars of outrage and boiling blood. Keir sat in stunned silence as his consciousness began to fade. The last thing he saw was a flash of vibrant purple and a white clad figure. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

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“That will make everything official sir, and may I say congratulations!”

Keir quickly shook himself from his remembrance of that long past battle. He forced a grin at the regimental clerk that he could not recall the name of. So many of those he knew were now laid down in their graves, their final reward as soldiers of the Imperial Guard.

He pushed that out of his mind though. He quickly gathered up his papers while uttering a quiet thanks to the Eldar clerk and made his way out of the office. He didn’t think he could get away from the mustering ground quick enough.

The sight of his now former commanding officer was enough to stop him though. Out of habit he snapped to attention, which the colonel waved off with a good natured chuckle.

“At ease doctor, I’ll have none of that from you today.” Colonel Vos was a battle scared man, with the iron will made from the stuff of legends. Still he presented an easy going smile and possessed a charismatic air.

“Old habits die hard Colonel, even in retirement.” Keir allowed a smile to overtake his face. The reality that he was finally able to go home and stay there for as long as he wished was quite the comforting one. His relief was visible as Colonel Vos grinned in strange visage of happiness mixed with terror from the many scars he barred.

“If anybody around here deserved it more doctor I can’t recall them. I’ll be sad to see you go myself, and the rest of the officers will miss your hangover curatives.”

“They’ll march on without me just fine, and hopefully they can figure out their own curatives with the new medical chief.” Keir chuckled to himself before remembering where he was supposed to be.

“I promise to reach out from time to time colonel, but I must desperately be somewhere else.”

Keir barely waited the dismissive wave of Colonel Vos as he moved toward the nearest skydock. He had a long way to go, but the thought of what was waiting for him gave him comfort

“Guess who’s b-!”

Keir quickly petered off as he saw the darkened entryway. It was strange; he was so thoroughly expecting to be tackled straightaway by two bolts of endless energy and a smile that could brighten up his soul if it was needed. He could honestly say it felt a sinking feeling as he moved toward the den.

That feeling quickly began to turn around and climb back up when the single light of a lamp was visible in the room, and sat next to it, with vibrant lavender hair visible but turned away, was the one of the three people he loved more than any other.

Feeling a bit cheeky, Keir did his best to step lightly across the floor to the reclining figure. Every step his confidence grew, closer and closer, almost reaching that mesmerizing lavender-

“Welcome home love.”

The balloon of victory was popped so unceremoniously that it was a wonder that Keir did not slump onto his knees in defeat right there.

“Of course, it would figure you have your senses active while reading a book at home.” Keir could not stop the mirth entering his voice.

“I did not need my senses to know you were there, you’re just not as sneaky as you’d think.” The relaxed form of Tal’hina of Yme-Loc shifted as Keir joined her in the rather large reclining seat; both of them settling into their new positions comfortably.

“Not that sneaky?” Keir made sure to sound indignant in his retort, “I’ll have you know that once I was able to retrieve an entire squad from under the noses of at least a dozen Ork kommandos.”

A brilliant set of golden eyes turned to regard him with skepticism mixed with a sense of amusement. They never failed to take a small part of his breath away.

“Well, I think they were kommandos. I mean I never saw them but I’m pretty sure I could smell them.”

A minute passed by in silence, both enjoying the closeness of the moment. It was then that Keir was finally able to feel the growing sting that stemmed from his left shoulder and was beginning to spread to his arm and chest. He did his best to ignore it.

“What’s wrong?” Keir wanted to curse profusely at that question; of course she’d be able to tell almost immediately. He thought for a split second for lying about what happened but common sense quickly squashed that thought.

“I… it’s nothing, just that ache I mentioned, it will pass in a moment.” Keir grunted as Tal’hina turned to straddle him suddenly, her hands quickly looking over his face for any apparent signs of something wrong only she would be able to see.

“I swear you insufferable man, you never do stop to think when you have the chance to show off! You should have stayed home and gotten rest, or at the least-“

“Tal’hina…” Keir grabbed her hands to stop her constant movement. “I know, but I’m fine, I wanted to the old guard off properly, exchange contacts and the like. Those folk are family to me and I didn’t want to spoil the effort they went through.” Tal’hina forced Keir to look into her golden eyes, the worry shining through.

“It’s getting worse.”

“We don’t know that-“

“And what if you’re wrong?” Their voices never rose above a whisper to not disturb their son and daughter, and it was an ‘argument’ they had had before. Still it was one topic that never failed to drive them to confront one another.

Keir took hold of Tal’hina’s hands and held them to his heart, hoping her proximity would give him the strength it never failed to give. “Listen, I’ve had opinions from almost every other doctor in the old brigade. I even managed to sneak a few civilian doctors in, Human and Eldar alike, all of them say there is a chance, but that’s nothing we didn’t know before.”

Tal’hina’s eyes remained locked to his, but the worry did not seem to abate, pushing Keir to try and reassure his loved one.

“I worry Tal’hina, just as much as you. I worry about what might happen if the our little ones see me like that, I’m worried that it will not stop next time, or that it will start to come back quicker.” Keir squeezed the hands he held gently, “But you have to believe me that I will do everything I can… there’s no other alternative.”
The worry still lingered, but Tal’hina’s face softened. Keir took the moment to press his lips to Tal’hina’s own. They lingered on the connection, finally breaking apart with a need to breath. She moved to place her head on her husband’s shoulder, eyes closed. The silence reigned for another minute, before Tal’hina spoke again.

“So, it’s official then?” Keir nodded slightly as his head leaned against Tal’hina’s own, “All the papers signed and dotted. They need to record it on the regimental record but it’s done in all but name. I’m officially retired.”

“For the moment.” Tal’hina was quick to correct him. “Aye, for the moment.” Keir was as quick to agree.

Tal’hina hummed, though Keir would swear that she purred, as she spoke. “Well, then we should do something ourselves to celebrate.” She seemed to enjoy her position; she was getting sleepy herself, and the body warmth of her doctor was doing much to lull her to sleep. If only she had kept her eyes open, she would see the glint of an ingenious idea hit Keir’s eye.

In one moment Tal’hina was comfortably sleepy, and the next she struggled to contain the groan of pleasure that escaped her mouth. She did not know what had just happened, until she felt familiar hands at the base of her ears.

“K-Keir, w-what are-Ahh!” The stuttering beauty was stopped from talking as the sensations from the massage of her ears overwhelmed her sleepy state, her blush inadvertently lighting up her face.

“You said we should celebrate Lav, I figure there’s no time like the present. The night is young after all.” Keir felt like he should cackle like the mad genius that he was, but that would most likely divert the mood from what he was going for. Then again once he managed to get a good massage going for Tal’hina’s ears, it was a bit hard to stop.

Hard to stop though it was, Tal’hina did her upmost to fight through the pleasurable feeling. “B-but you’ve ju-just gotten…ooh…h-home, and you need y-your re-eehh-st, and th-.. ahh.. and the children-.”

“Let’s just call it another chapter in our grand adventure Lav, a great challenge we will overcome.”

The massaging stopped as Keir quickly wrapped his arms around Tal’hina’s neck and knees in a way as delightfully similar to their wedding night as he carried her to their own room. Tal’hina could not stop the girlish giggle that escaped from her blushing body, and Keir could not wipe the goofy smile that had been chiseled onto his face.

As Keir loved to say there was no time like the present. They had the entire future to worry about but that was all for tomorrow. Though Keir and Tal’hina would make sure it would be a future worth fighting for.

</div>
</div>

==Gege's Odd Misadventures==

Loosely canon, especially after the first chapter or two which is a straighter pastiche of Jojo.

[Link| https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12380502/1/GeGe-s-Odd-Misadventures]

== How to Kill an Attack Moon ==

== Episode I ==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Academy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

Now, the most important thing to have when assaulting an Attack Moon- the thing you must have above all else- is sufficient numbers.
Yes, that sounds obvious, here in this room at the Naval Academy. Nearly tautological. But out there in the void, things will seem different. You will see merchant convoys shattered, planets burning, billions dying. You will be tempted to follow the examples of Ollanius Pius or the Astral Knights, to cry 'damn the torpedoes' and hope that determination and hate will fill in for your lack of guns and steel.
DO. NOT. DO. THIS.
Because I tell you now, it will not. The best possible scenario is simply that you will get tens of thousands of the Emperor's voidsmen killed to no purpose. At worst, it will take that much longer to assemble sufficient weight of metal to take it down- and planets will die in that time.
We are the Imperial Navy. We are the first and greatest line of defense. And billions die for our mistakes. So, if you do not have sufficient numbers to win- do not engage. Even if that means leaving worlds to burn.

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So what does constitute numbers, then? It varies, of course, but the general rule of thumb is at least one-third of the Attack Moon's mass. I've done it with one-quarter, but I've been doing this longer than any of you have been alive.
This may seem low, which brings me to another rule of thumb: firepower is, loosely, a function of surface area, while durability is loosely a function of volume. You're limited in firepower by how many guns you can physically mount on a ship, while durability is limited by the mass you have to absorb hits. And anyone who has even glanced at a naval engineering textbook knows that volume increases faster than surface area.

Therefore, an Attack Moon has less firepower for its mass than, say, a battleship or frigate does. Which is still an absolutely tremendous amount, but it means physically smaller forces can win without overwhelming tactical genius.
As for specific mix of forces, you will need a lot of nova cannons, a strong carrier force, a strong gunline, and preferably guided torpedoes, although those aren't entirely necessary.

So, how do you kill an Attack Moon? Well, I'm about to walk you through it. Keep in mind this is a 'white-room' exercise, which assumes the Attack Moon is without a meaningful escort fleet and there are no nearby celestial or planetary bodies to complicate things. How those change the picture I will cover in later lectures.

The first step is to prevent it from launching fighters, bombers, and torpedoes. This is where the nova cannons come in. The Power Fields of the average Attack Moon can withstand even direct nova cannon hits, so bringing them down isn't the point at the moment. The point is to use the area-of-effect to fry the bombers and torpedoes as they launch. You will want to use shells optimized for area effects for this. Set up a continuous barrage, each nova-cannon carrier firing in a steady sequence. You do not want to allow the Attack Moon to launch its entire strike-craft complement; the amount of fighters a carrier can carry is a function of volume, so if you let the Moon launch you will drown in bombers. The continuous explosions will also, hopefully, blind the ork gunners and sensors, making their fire even less accurate than it normally is.
While this is happening, your gun-line should bombard the Moon from long range. Attack Moons are very large, slow-moving targets, and at the moment the goal is not precision strikes but simply to batter the Power Fields down. You want the range to be as long as possible, to prevent the enemy from getting hits.

Now, DO NOT englobe the enemy. This will simply allow all of its guns to fire at you simultaneously. You want to focus your forces against a single hemisphere- preferably the aft, where the guns are usually least numerous.
Once the Power Fields are down, you can begin strikes against individual components. This is where your carriers and torpedo destroyers come in, using bombers and guided torpedoes to hit pinpoint targets. First priority is engines, to prevent it from rolling undamaged faces to meet you. Second is heavy weapons, to allow your battleships and grand cruisers to move in.
The nova cannon come in handy again here; while the armor is heavy enough to resist even direct hits, the flash and blast is excellent at suppressing and destroying the lighter point-defense turrets, making it more likely that your bombers will actually survive to deliver their payloads. You want to cut it as close as possible without accidentally destroying your own bombers. How close that is depends on how coordinated your gunners are; you should know that before engaging in battle. You'll want a simultaneous strike, with as many cannon as you can spare from continued fighter-suppression.
This will not render the Attack Moon helpless. However, it should suppress the defenses enough that you can move your gun-line in close enough for it to begin precision targeting with its broadsides as well.

From there, you simply continue to destroy surface gun emplacements and suppress fighter launches with the nova cannon. Continue until its guns on the targeted hemisphere are gone and the Attack Moon is immobile. Total destruction will still be difficult. You have basically two options- focus the fire of your entire fleet onto a single point, and drill into the Moon's core until you find something explosive, or land Astartes boarding, demolition, and sabotage teams to blow it apart from the inside."

And there you go- you have destroyed an Attack Moon, with only minimum losses if all has gone according to plan.

Of course, things rarely go according to plan. Many things have been omitted from this 'white-room' demonstration, from enemy escorts to the likely countermoves of the Attack Moon itself. Orks are nothing if not inventive, if rarely competent. So, one last thing I left out of my description- you'll also need a strong reserve, and to be ready for anything.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will begin discussion of how to deal with an Attack Moon's inevitable escorting fleets.

++Conclude excerpt++

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</div>

== Episode II: The Orks Strike Back ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

Some of you have noted that my description of taking down an Attack Moon is strongly reminiscent of suppressing planetary defenses, and there are indeed strong similarities. There are differences- using nova cannon to suppress point defense against a planet is strongly advised against unless you want to turn said planet into molten vacuum desert- but the core principles are the same. Use of superior mobility and precision to achieve local superiority against an overall superior and more durable opponent, create a gap, and then use that gap to roll the whole thing up.
Another similarity is that both operations become much harder when the target is supported by more mobile forces.
Think back to the operation I described last lecture. Imagine all the ways a supporting Ork fleet could fuck it entirely up.

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Ork carriers could counter and intercept your own defense-suppression strikes, leaving the Moon fully maneuverable and with its heavy guns. The early phases require that you keep your gunline widely dispersed, to give them room to evade the Moon's super-heavy guns- this creates gaps that enemy wolfpacks can slip into and overwhelm isolated ships. Opposing battleships could protect the Moon from your torpedo destroyers. Your nova cannon carriers could be forced to re-target to protect themselves, allowing the Moon to launch its immense fighter swarms. The list goes on. And, of course, any attempts to deal with these things in the usual manner are complicated by the looming presence of the Attack Moon."

And if you try to carry on with the plan, and can't- well, best case is that you are forced to retreat. Worst case is that you get stuck in, bogged down, and then the Attack Moon annihilates you.

Let me be very clear on this point. An Attack Moon may have less of a firepower-to-mass ratio than one of our battleships. This does not mean it lacks effective firepower. Because, just as Speed can be Armor, Defense can be Offence.
What do I mean? It's quite simple. In a brawl between one of our fleets and an Attack Moon of equal mass, our own fleet with have greater overall firepower. But the Attack Moon will be more durable, and most importantly- our fleet will get attritioned down faster. Because each volley from our fleet will have to get through its Power Field to even begin to do damage, while each of its volleys will wreck ships, kill men- and reduce the overall power of the fleet. By the time the Power Fields come down, the fleet will have been savaged.
This was very well demonstrated in the First Battle of Mors Galea, in 282.M37. One of the first Attack Moons built since the Beast. The techniques we use today hadn't been developed yet. The commanding sector admiral decided to go for close-range, high-velocity firing passes, with the entire fleet at his disposal, roughly the entire sector fleet.
The attacking fleet was reduced by three-quarters, and the Attack Moon was barely even scratched.

So, how do you fight an Attack Moon with its attending fleet?
The first option is simply to take even more forces than you normally would. Try and fend off the attacking fleets at the same time as you take down the Moon. Very risky, requiring much greater forces than otherwise and with more potential for things to go wrong.
If you do this, you should try to bring enough forces to take down the Attack Moon in a straight assault. More than the combined mass of the escort fleet and the Moon itself is the general rule of thumb, but you may find yourself forced to make do with less.Probably will.

In that sort of fight, the most important thing is to maintain cohesion and coordination. It's easy for things to dissolve into a swirling melee, with each captain and squadron focusing on whatever threat is getting in their face and neglecting the overall battle plan.
"If you let that happen, you will all die. Because a swirling melee, with targets in every direction and no chance of coordinated strikes, is where an Attack Moon ''thrives''.
More detailed coverage of this scenario will have to wait for the Case Studies part of the lecture series. For now, let us move on to the second option.

That is to destroy the supporting fleet before engaging the Attack Moon itself.
This is usually something to be done over the course of a campaign, not a battle. Hit-and-run raids. Ambushing parts of the supporting fleet while they're off raiding other things away from the Moon itself. Decoying the fleet into minefields and other traps. There are dozens of ways to do it, but the idea is to whittle down the supporting fleet in dozens of small engagements before moving in for the kill.

Eldar ships are very useful for this purpose. With great stealth, high mobility, and the ability to use the Webway are ideal for this. In addition, Orks tend to hate Eldar for their refusal to be lured into chaotic brawls, and offering illusory chances to catch an Eldar ship in close combat or boarding action will often cause Ork fleets to fall out of formation as they race to close. The potential for ambush is obvious.
Again, exact implementation is dependant on exact circumstances, so further discussion must wait for the Case Studies section.

Either way, the ultimate takeaway is this: an Attack Moon with support is an order of magnitude more dangerous than an Attack Moon without. When setting out to kill one, therefore, your first move must be to remove this support.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will discuss all the horrible, horrible surprises the Attack Moon itself will have for you.

++Conclude excerpt++

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== Episode III: Revenge of the Orks ==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

Even once you've cleared out the attending fleets, an Attack Moon will hardly sit passively while you destroy it. A counter-attack of some sort is inevitable, and you must be prepared to weather it.

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First, consider the Moon's fighter complement. The previous white-room exercise presumed it did not launch any of its small craft before nova cannon range was achieved; this is almost never the actual case.
This is not an insurmountable problem. While frying the enemy fighters as they launch is the ideal, they do not magically become immune to nova cannon once in open space. Further, the rate at which an Attack Moon can prepare and launch fighters is often limited, so enemy fighter strikes will naturally separate into staggered waves that can be taken one at a time.
Make no mistake, once the fighters have launched the nova cannon will not kill all of them. Maybe not even most of them, depending on how fast and far they disperse. However, if they want to survive they will have to disperse widely, meaning they will attack piecemeal in small, ragged groups. Such attacks can be easily dealt with by adopting a tight, mutually-supporting defense formation.
But- and there is always another wrinkle- adopting such a formation will leave you vulnerable to the Moon's super-heavy guns, while the open formation and independent maneuvering needed to evade those guns exposes individual ships to getting swarmed under, even by a disorganized and ragged attack.
You can use your carriers to defend the fleet while still keeping an open formation. But, deck space dedicated to interceptors and space-superiority fighters is deck space not dedicated to bombers that can strike at the Moon itself.
Frigate and destroyer squadrons can also be used to defend other ships while remaining mobile enough to not be hit by the big guns, but can be vulnerable to being swarmed under themselves.
Ultimately, there are no perfect solutions. You just have to decide what tradeoffs you want to make, and accept that no matter what you do, people are going to die.

Beyond that, the exact capabilities of Attack Moons vary widely, according to the personal tastes of the Big Meks constructing it. However, one thing they all have in common is teleporters. And that means teleporter assaults.
Defending against a teleporter assault is different from other aspects of naval warfare, because it's not really naval combat, it's ground combat. Success or failure is determined by the quality of armsmen and layout of internal defenses, both of which are determined before battle is joined. As naval officers, there's not a whole lot you can do, unless you happen to be on the Internal Security track.
Not much, however, is not nothing. The key here is to identify which ships are most important to your battle plan, which ships the Orks are most likely to attack, and to shift your armsmen around to defend those most heavily. Be prepared to launch counter-boarding actions in support of attacked ships at a moment's notice. Everybody in the fleet should know that teleporter assault is virtually inevitable, and be prepared for it. Close coordination with Astartes elements is vital here.
Now, the ships that are most vital to the plan will most often be the nova cannon carriers. Why should be obvious from all the different contexts they've popped up in through these lectures. Fighter suppression, defense suppression; these are the difference between victory and death, and while it's not actually impossible without nova cannon, it becomes much harder.
And no Warboss with an Attack Moon at his disposal is stupid. Most often, it is the nova cannons that will come under heaviest attack. Reinforce the armsmen on those ships heavily.

Third, psychic attack. This is less inevitable than teleporter assault, but still common. Any Waaagh with an Attack Moon will be very large, and consequently have a lot of psychic power behind it- which can be channeled into psychic attacks. And while it is possible their weirdboys will get it catastrophically wrong and the Moon will immolate itself in green fire- don't bet on it.
Ork psykery is less about weird headfuckery and more about raw, destructive power, a fact that should surprise absolutely nobody. True fleet-killing magics is thankfully orders of magnitude rarer than even Attack Moons, but you can still expect green lightning to periodically destroy individual ships or, sometimes, entire squadrons. Fortunately, psykers are hard to aim, so targeting is semi-random. You will not see them singling out flagships, nova cannons, carriers, or whatever ships are most vital to your battle plan at the moment.
Mostly. Orks. Expect variation, if nothing else.

Defense against psychic attack occurs on the psychic plane, so the defense is simple- bring lots of combat psykers. If you are fortunate enough to have a selection, brings ones specialized in counterspelling. I'm informed that, if you're subtle and skilled enough, you can disrupt a psychic attack with much less energy than it takes to launch it, even kill a psyker through his own workings. Eldar are supposed to be good at this.
Again, once battle is joined there's not much you can do to affect the outcome in this arena. Either what you've brought is sufficient or it isn't, and all you can do is hope.

Even in the hands of a genius, Attack Moons are not terribly capable of tactical subtlety. Past what I've already discussed, most surprises are going to be matters of mechanical variation. Aside from the normal variations in weapons, armor, engines, etc. many have some sort of unique specialist system or weapon.
My personal experience includes a lightning-field point defense system that destroyed any fighters or torpedoes within its area of effect. Completely prevented the usual first wave of pinpoint strikes until a teleport assault by Astartes was able to sabotage the weapon- which took a week and delayed the attack long enough for the Moon to be reinforced and launch its own assault on a nearby planet.
Other examples in the historical record include an engine turbocharge system that enabled brief spurts of acceleration on par with a frigate, a set of massively oversized Power Klaws apparently intended for close combat with tyranid Hive Ships, a spinal weapon similar to a nova cannon of utterly staggering size, and more.
A full accounting of all the odd customizations made to Attack Moons would occupy an entire lecture by itself. Giving general advice on how to counter these unique weapons would be impossible- as each one is unique, each one requires unique tactics to counter.
These devices are usually large and distinctive enough to be obvious, so the fact that they have ''something'' up their sleeve is not itself a surprise. Exact function and power can be guessed at. Ultimately, however, in order to know exact capabilities you must see the device in action.
This is not difficult. Any Ork in control of such a weapon will use it at every possible opportunity; goading them into demonstrating it for you is often trivial.

From there- well. Given the variety of enemies we face, an officer of the Imperial Navy must be flexible.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will discuss ways of killing AttackMoons that do not consist of throwing more nova cannon at them.

++Conclude excerpt++

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== Episode IV: The Orks Awaken ==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

An Attack Moon is many things. It is massive. It is massively shielded. It is massively armored. It is massively armed. It carries massive amounts of troops, and the means to deploy them. It often has massive manufacturing capabilities, to support those massive amounts of troops, as well as its massive fighter wings and massive escort fleets. Some of them are even capable of acting as full shipyards. All of this requires massive energy generation- which it also has.
An Attack Moon is also Ork construction, which means if you hit it right, all of these things can be induced to explode. Massively.

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Beyond the full-dress naval assault the previous lectures have described, methods of killing an Attack Moon mainly resolve into various types of boarding action. This is almost invariably a teleport assault, as trying to attack an Attack Moon with boarding pods is an exercise in futility. Eldar assault forces can be sufficiently stealthy to board in such a manner, but not human ones. There are two recorded instances of that being attempted in the War of the Beast; both were entirely unsuccessful.
The obvious choice for such an assault is Astartes, but Assassins and Sisters of Battle have also been used.
Whatever the force, more is better. Full Chapter strength or better is recommended; Attack Moons are massive targets with massive crews, and sometimes have formidable internal defenses. This is most common on Attack Moons which anticipate fighting with Tyranids.

Once the assault is launched, your ability to influence its success or failure is limited. What you can do is stack the deck as far as you possibly can before you strike.
One thing you should try to do in this scenario is attack the Attack Moon while it is in the process of assaulting a planet. Then, the vast majority of its crew will be on the ground participating in the attack, leaving the decks relatively clear.

Before the attack begins, every effort should also be made to obtain as much information about the interior layout of the Moon as possible. Of course, 'as much as possible' often winds up being 'nothing,' but there are ways. The Mechanicus has a few gravimetric sensors capable of resolving major structural features; combined with the specialized sensor/anti-stealth shells some nova cannon can be equipped with, a surprisingly detailed internal map can be assembled.
Psychic interrogation is another possibility; abduct an Ork who has been on board the Moon and rip his brains out. Done repeatedly, and a complete map can be assembled. This is an Inquisitorial operation, specifically Ordo Xenos; although there are other organizations hypothetically capable of doing so, none have better chances of success.

Inserting infiltrators ahead of the main assault group is another possible strategy, but has its own problems. First, unless you have some other means of getting them on board, you'll have to use teleporters, which means your plan just expanded to having two separate teleporter assaults, separated in time. Then there's the problem of how they'll report their findings; having them rendevous with the main assault team when they teleport aboard is possible, but not ideal. Psychic communication is possible, there are a few uncommon pieces of technosorcery the Mechanicus has, but as usual there are no perfect solutions.
The ideal operative for this is an Imperial Assassin. They often have access to stealth shuttles that can get them in, or can sneak about the Ork's own transport shuttles.

The capabilities of the teleporters available to you must also be considered. Range can vary dramatically depending on any number of factors, as can capacity. Obviously, you want long-range high-capacity teleporters. The shorter the possible range, the further into the Attack Moon's fire envelope it has to go before you can launch the assault. The smaller the capacity, the longer it takes to get the entire assault force over. If possible, get vehicle-scale teleporters; Attack Moons are large enough to warrant the use of tanks in the corridors.
If you don't have teleporters capable of projecting the assault force over from outside the Moon's range entirely, the next best thing is generally to use reflex-shielded vessels which are capable of avoiding detection.

Once the attack is underway, you can still use the teleporters to provide support and mobility. Evacuating squads that are about to be overwhelmed, moving forces past obstructions and bottlenecks, that sort of thing. There are risks involved, as there are with all warp technology, but they can be mitigated by skilled operators and a knowledge of the limits of the technology. And Attack Moons are dangerous enough to justify the risk.

It is unlikely that even a full Chapter assault force, armed with demolition atomics, will be able to completely destroy an Attack Moon. They're simply too big, too heavily armored, too many internal partitions, too many redundancies. It's certainly ''possible'', if a catastrophic reactor containment failure can be arranged, but unlikely. What they can do is cripple it. Destroy engines, destroy guns, destroy magazines, destroy reactors, destroy hangars, destroy shield generators. Leave it drifting, defenseless, unable to defend itself or strike back. Then its final destruction will be trivial.

There are a few other options, but these are highly situational and dependent on exact circumstances. The acts of a tactical genius, rather than standard operating procedure. Thus, these shall be covered in the case studies.

A final word: Exterminatus weapons. An Attack Moon certainly seems a worthy target for them. However, there are countervailing factors.
First: Exterminatus weapons are rare and expensive.
Second: Exterminatus weapons are generally intended for use against planets, and are optimized for this task. Incineratus torpedoes work by generating massive volcanic and tectonic activity, while Cyclonic torpedoes operate by superheating the atmosphere until it is blown entirely off. Against an Attack Moon, both would certainly do damage, but not enough to justify the cost. Virus bombs are occasionally used in boarding actions, but the compartmentalized and redundant nature of Attack Moons limits the effect. Also, it makes any breach in the armor instantly fatal, so most Astartes chapters really, really don't like it.

Ultimately, there's just really no ideal way to kill an Attack Moon. Just less bad ones.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will talk about the strategic implications of Attack Moons.

++Conclude excerpt++

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==Episode V: The Orky Menace==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++

++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

The problems caused by the presence of an Attack Moon extend beyond the merely tactical. They do not spring up, fully-formed, out of the vacuum, but are merely part of a larger Waaagh. While each one is a massive catastrophe, they are merely part of another, even larger catastrophe.
And the presence of an Attack Moon changes the way we must respond to that catastrophe.
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First, an Attack Moon complicates strategies of naval attrition. Typically, a force that finds itself outnumbered by an oncoming Orkish Waaagh will use superior range, organization, and mobility to fight a series of hit-and-run battles, wearing down the enemy for minimum risk, until a single smashing blow can be prepared.
However, an Attack Moon's incredible resilience makes such strategies futile; any force insufficient to kill it outright will simply bounce off, doing no harm at all. Further, an Attack Moon can extend protection to any fleets accompanying it through the massive range of its gravity whips and fighter wings. Any ships under this protective umbrella of firepower will also have to go unmolested until sufficient force can be assembled to challenge it.
Depending on the vagaries of the Warp and whatever other wars are going on, this could take years. Until then- barring uncommon tactical genius- the Attack Moon and its battle group will be free to rampage across the Imperium largely unopposed.

Of course, an Ork Waaagh is unlikely to concentrate /all/ of its forces in a single place. This brings me to the second point: concentration versus dispersal, on both the Imperial and Ork sides.
A Waaagh of any size will consist of multiple prongs of attack, under the command of a single Warboss but otherwise only loosely coordinated with each other. This holds true of Waaaghs in possesion of an Attack Moon. Collectively, these tendrils are often as dangerous overall as the Attack Moon is; a Moon can only attack one target at a time, after all.
Since attacking an Attack Moon is a task that demands all available resources, this leaves the Imperial commander with a choice to make; does he disperse his task force to take out the lesser fleets first, allowing the Assault Moon free reign while he does that? Or does he concentrate on the Moon first, allowing the other fleets to continue blazing their individual trails of destruction across the Imperium?
The right choice to make depends on exact strategic circumstances, and sometimes a compromise is possible. Ork fleets not accompanied by the Attack Moon naturally do not benefit from its protection from attrition; local forces can damage and destroy them while the Moon-killing fleet is still being assembled.

Third, an Attack Moon often makes a mockery of pre-existing fixed defenses, on both the tactical and strategic scales.
Classical Ork defense strategies center around belts of fortress worlds surrounding Ork territories. These worlds serve as bases for pre-emptive strikes into Ork territory, bulwarks against Ork attacks, and 'lightning rods'; as Orks seek out good fights, they are attracted to fortress worlds to the exclusion of other targets.
Since the emergence of the Brain-Boy caste, the lightning-rod strategy has become less and less useful, but the other components of the strategy still hold. However, an Attack Moon is capable of rapidly reducing the defenses of the average Fortress-World. Its immense size, durability, and teleporters allow it to transport billions of Ork warriors past orbital and aerial defenses unmolested and commit surgical-ish Kommando strikes on vital infrastructure.
Once the defenses are destroyed, the Orks can flood into the relatively defenseless interior. In many cases, sectors bordering Ork territory rely on these fortress belts for protection and pour all military resources into them; leaving them unprepared for defense-in-depth should these outer defenses fail.

While an Attack Moon is incapable of much tactical subtlety, strategic subtlety is limited only by the mind of the commanding Warboss. While most Warbosses are content to use their Attack Moons as simple bludgeoning instruments, some are smarter.
One example of this is what I call the 'Moon-in-Being' strategy; rather than using the Moon in an assault role, it is used as a reserve and reinforcement unit. When one of the satellite raiding fleets is attacked, the Moon is used to ambush the Imperial force, destroying it. Meanwhile, engagement with the assembled might of the fleet is avoided.
The effect of such a strategy is to force the Imperial fleet to concentrate, while allowing Ork forces to disperse. Any Imperial forces below Moon-killing level are liable to be attacked and destroyed, compelling consolidation, while the Orks labor under no such constraint, and can pursue offensives on multiple fronts simultaneously. Defeating this strategy is usually a matter of luring the Moon into a confrontation with an apparently-inferior force, then ambushing it with the full might of the fleet.

The point is: the threat posed by Attack Moons, by the Orks in general, is likely only going to increase in the millennia to come. We will need tactics, weapons, and ships optimized to destroy these threats. And we will need Naval Officers of skill, courage, and determination to command them.
Hopefully, you will be those officers, to ensure the light of the Imperium will continue to shine into the far future.

Thank you, and goodnight.
++Conclude excerpt++
++End file++
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== The Hydra Uncoils ==

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Inquisitor Alrisia awoke with a jolt. The last electric shock must have knocked her out. Her body felt numb and she was panting heavily. A electric crack was heard and she felt another wave of searing pain flow through her body, she grit her teeth feeling as if they would break under the pressure. She tried not make a sound to keep her composure but could stop herself from sounding a gurgling groan from the back of her throat as he threw her head back desperately trying to keep the pain off her mind. It felt like hours that she endured the painful surge of electricity flow through her body but the shock could only have been for a couple of seconds. The same crack could be heard and the electricity stopped. Her body slumped as she gasped for air. Through her desperate breaths she cold hear a familiar voice.
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- Ready to talk mam? The voice belonged to a man and he spoke in a serious sense but she knew there was some humor to it. Not only were they torturing a inquisitor of the ordo securitas but they had the nerve to taunt her while doing it.

- traitor scum. She muttered under her breath as she threw a rageful glance at her captor. Her long black hair was a utter mess, it was hanging over her face and sticked to her forehead by sweat, but she could still make out the man.

He was dressed in civilian clothes, but she could see his flak vest showing through. She knew that face, that sharp jawline, those warm green eyes and that damn beauty spot on his lip. Creal Harkon was his name, sergeant Creal Harkon of squad larnean of the 55th omega hydras to be more specific and soon to be ex-sergeant Creal Harkon when she was out of her restraints. The bastards and his whole squad would pay for this, maybe she would even have the entire regiment executed. The thought of tempestus soldiers betraying her never came to her head, even when they were ordered to protect her, that's probably why they got her, that's why they could gun down her bodyguards with ease. Because for once in her life she trusted someone, she hadn’t even truly trusted her own bodyguards. But something about that man’s face gave her the sense of trust and loyalty. Might have been his actually decent looking face, her line of work was mostly filled by ugly mugs with a permanent frown on their faces. Was it his professionalism? His aura of authority? Whatever it was he would be the last person she would have trusted and the last that would betray her.

- That's not the answer we're looking for mam, if you’re not going to play along we are going to have to give you some more juice and we have all the time in the world. Creal said and lightly kicked some machinery which gave a nice klonk as he hit it. Alrisia looked at what he had kicked. It was a generator, they had her hooked up to a damn generator. How long have they intended to keep this going? She must have been here for at least 24 hours and the questions were never specific, more vague than anything. ‘’Your life mam, tell us about your life’’ or ‘’tell us about your work’’, at first she almost thought it was a joke, some kind of sick prank pulled off by some stupid harlequin, she had even laughed at the absurdness of the questions, but when the first electric shock came she thought they were just idiots. Idiots she would enjoy killing.

- I'm not going to give you anything you fething traitor and when i get out of here i'm going to rip your bloody spi-. She was cut off as the crack was heard again and she was back to gritting her teeth to stop herself from screaming. The electricity stopped as quickly as it began, she coughed, a pulsing kind of pain was left in her body, she spat at the feet of sgt. Creal. It was a mix of saliva and blood. She could taste the irony taste in her mouth and could smell what she thought was smell of cooking bacon but quickly discarded it as nothing.

- I actually don’t want to do this but, if you don’t start answering our questions i'm going to have to call my boss, and if you think this is bad my boss you can’t even begin to understand how bad he is. So please, for your own good answer the questions. His voice was now irritated, and was that remorse she heard, no it was empathy. She looked back up at him with a serious look but not with the rage as before but with a sense of concern instead.

- why are you doing this? You’re a damn scion, you’re in service to the imperium, to humanity, why would you betray them? Who do you really serve Sergeant.

- I'm doing this because it's my job, if you think it's my job to serve some pompous commander that throws around our lives like used condoms or some inquisitor with a superiority complex that thinks he's better than emperor himself you’re a bloody fool inquisitor. No i serve those who really know how crap gets done, those who don’t need to go through juridical groxshit or sign a endless amount of reports. I haven’t betrayed anyone, besides if anyone has betrayed someone it’s you inquisitor. He stared at her with anger in his eyes, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked at him as if he was holding himself from punching her.

- Did i hit a soft spot? Alrisia said with a big grin on her face. The Sergeant frowned and with a small hand gesture the wave of pain was back. Alrisia still kept her grin as the electricity flowed through her body like water in a river, it felt as if her eyes would pop and the smell of burnt was undeniable. As the electricity was searing her flesh and she was desperately trying to keep herself from screaming she could hear Creal speak.

- have it your way then, this could have gone easier but you just had to be stubborn. The electricity stopped and Alrisia could feel as she lost her sight on things before she lost her conscious.

When she awoke sgt. Creal was gone and instead another man was sitting on a metal chair only a few feet away from her. He was shorter than Creal but there were similarities to their features. The man had almost the same jawline, a similar beauty spot but creal’s was on the opposite side of his lip. This man also had a large face tattoo across the right side of his head, it was a scaly snake, a snake with multiple heads. It was a beautiful piece of ink, the heads were all snarling with animal ferocity and looked as if they could lunge out from his face onto her neck. But it was the man’s eyes that truly caught her attention. Where sgt. Creal’s eyes were a warm green this man’s eyes were a deep, colbalt blue, they shined with an almost unnatural light, almost as if they were glowing. She saw no feelings behind them, no anger, no joy, only cold, dead calculation.

- ah, you’re awake finally inquisitor. The man said with a wide smile, she could see his white reflect the little light inside the room. He was dressed in fine clothing, something that would belong to a rich trader or a lower noble. Something caught her eye with his attire, a small silver pin on the inside of his coat, it would be hidden if he had kept it closed. It was that of another three headed serpent but much more simplistic in its design, still there was no denying that it was connected to his tattoo. There were something about it that sparked something inside her mind, but she did not know what.

- Are you ready to cooperate with us inquisitor? The man said raising an eyebrow anticipating an answer.

- Who are you? She asked with wondering tone.

- Me? Well i’m Alpharius my dear. He replied as if he was happy she asked . It then dawned on Alrisia. The three headed serpent, 55th omega hydras, Alpharius. The three headed serpent was the damn hydra she had heard about in ancient terran mythology. The giant serpent which when you cut of one head two would take its place and that name, Alpharius. That name belonged to one of the primarch that served the emperor during the unification of terra. Alpharius Omegon who had been almost erased from all imperial records, she had only heard about him through the inquisitorial scribes, he had worn the hydra as a symbol. Within this new revelation there was something else, something much deeper inside of her mind that made her head hurt when she thought about it.

- That’s not your real name, that belongs to someone who served the imperium and not some treacherous scum who thinks torturing an imperial inquisitor would get them anywhere.

- how investigative of you inquisitor, no my name is not truly Alpharius, it’s actually Armillius Dynant. But we still use that name for an alias, it’s a sort of tradition to use their name for our purpose.

- Their name? She quickly replied. Armillius just smiled even wider.

- Enough about us my dear, we're here because you failed us. He picked up a pack of lho sticks from a pocket and lighted one, drawing deep breaths of smoke and blowing it out of his nostrils.

- Failed you? I don't work for you, i work for the emperor's imperial inquisition.

- mhm, of course you would think that, but you have in fact been working for us your entire life, do you know the old term ‘’useful idiot’’? Of course you don’t. No Alrisia you might think you have been working for the inquisition and in reality you've been our puppet. He was nonchalant about it, almost acting as if it was commonly known.

- No, i haven’t done anything for you. My work was for inquisition and not you or your masters. Her voice was trembling and the headache was pulsing as if her head would explode.

- Yes Alrisia, your life has been one entire long play, one of the legions more finer works if you ask me. Everything about your life has been planned and calculated. The murder of your father that lead you to join the arbites was our work, the big cult you busted which lead you to be joined into the inquisition was us, your work about destroying the imperiums political corruption which you have dedicated your life too was our doing. Inquisitor Alrisia Santius, we are you. Armillius was staring into Alrisias eyes, those cobalt blue eyes pierced her very beign and she remembered, she remembered everything. She saw those eyes in the man who cut down her father, she saw them in the officer that helped her during the raid on the cult, she saw them in her fellow colleagues, she saw them in the woman who had told her those words before she executed the woman. ‘’Hydra Dominatus’’.

Alrisias eyes were tearing up and she felt sick to her stomach, she felt like she would pass out. Her work and all she had fought for was a lie, that which had molded her life was but some intricate theatre and she knew nothing about it. They had played her life for thirty six years, every step she took had been planned ahead. She looked up at Armillius with tears running down her face, She now recognized him like he had been aside her everywhere. His smile was back, his sick smile was spread across his face as he blew another cloud of smoke out of his nose.

- you see it now don’t you, that you’re just a puppet in the legions big game. The game which don’t require billions of lives or resources, all you need if too find the right one and guide them towards what you want.

- why? Her voice was trembling and she knew she was sobbing.

- I don’t know, i'm not the one to ask why my superiors do what they do, all i know is that they do it for the greater good, i'm just here to clean the slate and fix what you broke. He shrugged and threw his lho stick but away before pulling out a new one lighting it.

- If i'm just a puppet why are you doing this?

- Because you done messed up my dear. That woman you killed last month because you thought she was a culprit, well she was one of us and now we need to fix it, restore the balance so to say.

Alrisia remembered the woman, she had tried to stop her from doing her job and had shot her and she had said those words before her death. Alrisia had only thought it a treacherous saying and not that it had been a omen.

- But don’t worry about it my dear, when we're done here you’re going to live on like nothing ever happened, not you as in you but a replaced you. It’s kinda hard to explain but have you heard about Lord Commander Byron Wiltons?

Alrisia knew who he was, Lord commander Byron was the commander over the Elysian 15th Drop troops also known as the sky burners. He had been waging war against a crone world before suddenly during the conflict deciding that he should go and fight the tyranids. It had been a peculiar change of mind but because of his authority no one questioned him.

- Well lets just say that the Lord commander did not do as expected and now he's been replaced. He blew another cloud of smoke and then reached for a datapad from one of his pockets and started to go through it. Alrisia was just staring blankly at him, tears running down cheeks mixing with the sweat.

- It’s actually marvelous what a little genius and some sharp tools can do to face, this is top class work, no stupid rejuvenation can do this stuff. He showed her the data pad screen, its blue hue illuminating her face. It was a picture of her, at least it looked like her at first glance, same facial features, same jawline, it even had the small scar under her left earlobe that she had gained during her childhood, but what did not fit Alrisias face and made her whimper in despair was the pair of deep, colbalt blue eyes that had no feelings behind them but cold calculation. That's why they asked those vague questions, they wanted to know those details they already did not.

- please, don’t do this. She begged Armillius with despair in her voice, she plead him that she would not betray them again.

- I'm afraid that's too late now my dear, you should have stayed in line. Armillius stood up, threw his lho stick to the ground and stepped it out. He walked behind her she could hear a door open and close.

She heard the electric crack once again and this time she could not stop herself from screaming.
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</div>

== Innocence Lost ==

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The story told by spirit talkers and psykers that go too far across the galaxy is a strange one but one that is too consistent. Out in the Formless Wastes beyond where things can easily dwell where the rocks and the bones of the warp are bare and without life or moment, beyond where even Be'Lakor hold court there is nothing but the howling of the winds made up of unattended ideas and forgotten passions that swirl among uncaring rocks, lost to the æther. There nothing moves, things that run there to die quietly when all hound them and promise them worse than death, they are safe from predators because nothing can survive there but they are doomed to end because nothing can survive there. Nothing sings in that place beyond were even the unwelcome light of the Astronomicon is visible.

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If you survive the trek, oddly slightly easier for mortals than gods or deamons, if you go beyond beyond where the last deamon goes to die, beyond the were the constant rumbling of Gork and Mork's eternal brawl can be heard, beyond hope and dreams and memories and the last swirling forgotten idea lost on dead breezes you can come to the place where children once dwelt.

It looks like a village, or what once might have been a village, next to a river or at least the desiccated corps or a river. The riverbed is bare pebbles, the banks mud long since dried and dead. The village itself is broken, the thatch and sticks of the roofs have fallen in where they have not blown away and not one hut has a full set of walls left standing. The flaps of animal skin and reeds that covered doors and windows are dry and cracked and brittle. And all about is stillness, endless stillness of stories that remain after nobody is left to tell them. Sound does not work well here, if sound can work well in that realm at all. Noise of foot steps and voices are heard a second after they should be and muted, seemingly bled and drained into the grey and sunless sky.

And then you hear a crunch and you look down.

Covered by an age of dust there are the bones, they look like children at first glance. They are small and humanoid, but they are not and never were though they might have been innocent up until the end. Their brittle bleached bones you realize stretch to the horizon in every direction.

You might hear a slight breeze disturb the dust, but then you realize that there is no wind here. There can't be, this is beyond the place where life can dwell, but something moves the dust. A serpent, small, little more than a grass snake and the only source of colour in this bleak place. It does not live here. Nothing can live here, it lingers. It might have been a small god once in the time that gods weren't so big. It is not dangerous, this place is beyond danger. It's cold unblinking eyes hold only sadness now, whatever it once was.

It can not bite, in it's mouth it holds a small severed finger, pale green. It has only ever been glimpsed briefly, the moment it meets the gaze of another it darts into the bones once more and slithers away into the bones.

The serpent must have a name as all daemons do, but not one that anyone can remember. Not even the gods.

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</div>

== Iron Within, Iron Without ==

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“He refuses to eat or drink and so far as we can tell he hasn’t slept in nearly a week” The serving maid said, refusing to lift her eyes from the floor. It did not make Oscar happy, neither the news or the means of it’s delivery. Humans should not look down in shame or apology to him. He was a Man of Gold; created to serve.

“Thank you, I will speak with him”. They had been walking thought the fortress of Štip-Isar to the eastern wing of residence. Each of the Steward’s mighty strides was equal to more than two of the serving maids such was his inhuman stature. He bade her farewell as they approached the door of the eastern wing and her pace was much increased as she left. The Steward couldn’t help but notice her fearful glances at the old wooden door that he approached.

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Although the Fortress Palace of Štip-Isar was a vast and ancient rambling structure the Steward didn’t need any superhuman abilities to determine which room his Primarch would be found in. True to form Perturabo, son of long dead King Nikola, had taken up residence in his old room and childhood refuge. The Steward Oscar paused at the door but before he could knock a low rumble of a voice informed him curtly that it wasn’t locked. Oscar knew that was as close to a polite invitation as he was ever going to get.

The room was fairly spacious but mostly austere. It contained a set of draws, a closet, a bookshelf, a writing desk and a bed. It was all neatly placed. Every book was arranged alphabetically, pens arranged according to colour, bed made to a razor crease. Bar the thick layer of dust surrounding everything it was inhumanly neat.

Perturabo was standing at parade rest with his back to the door looking out over the east of the ancient Macedonian countryside. It was not a pretty sight. The Beast and it’s minions had burned it to the bedrock. Vast tracts of land were still irradiated, ash still fluttered on the breeze like some parody of snow.

“I don’t know why you are here. I am in disgrace. I have failed. I can be of no more use”. Everyone assumed the monotone was a sad result of the augmentations he had endured but it was not. All the Thunder Warrior alterations had done was drop it from tenor to a deep baritone with a hint of shingle beach.

“Disgrace? Maybe. Failure? No, not a failure. Far from it in fact”. Responded the Man of Gold as he stood besides the Iron Warrior, adopting a similar stance and watching the sun start to crest the horizon.

“Don’t try and comfort me. It’s wasted effort, we both know it and lying for the sake of comfort demeans us both”. The Iron Warrior turned to face the Steward. There wasn’t that much difference in height between them, at least compared to baseline humanity. To the casual observer they were far more alike than they were different.

The Steward looked into that impassive face and those dead grey eyes. Human minds tended to be open to him. He could read them with the most passive ability of his nature and know their intentions and meaning. Not so with Perturabo. Seeing into Perturabo ended at those grey eyes. He had once upon their first meeting seen a little further than that before the great steel wall slammed up. He had no intention of ever seeing that again. It was a mind that was outwardly sane but constructed entirely of insane parts.

“As you say; I wouldn’t subject you to empty platitudes. Your career as head of my fourth Legion has been one of great success. Not unqualified success, that’s for damn sure, but you did many great things and whether they will admit it or not the people of the Imperium owe you a great debt”.

The disgraced primarch gave a grunt of disapproval. “I didn’t do it for the Imperium. I did it for my people. So long as they were surrounded by a strong and friendly supernation the people of the Tharkian Empire should have been safe. But they weren’t. I didn’t prepare hard enough. They are all dead”.

“Not all”.

“Estimated casualties put the death toll of my nation at approximately ninety-five percent. It’s as close to a total failure as makes no difference. Kings have hanged for far, far lesser forms of incompetence. I was the Prince of Macedonia, it was my duty to protect them. MINE! I failed”. Those eyes remained unreadable but Oscar could all to easily imagine the horrors scrolling behind them.

“And would one of your brother primarchs have done better?”

“Irrelevant. It was not their task”.

“It’s possible to do nothing wrong and still fail”.

“Irrelevant. Words are empty. Deeds matter. No man was made a primarch for acceptable ability”. The word acceptable was said with as near to a sneer as Perturabo was capable of. “Only results matter. A lasting empire can’t be built on empty rhetoric and failed intentions. You know why I was removed from active service?”

“Yes”.

“Good. Then you know that my usefulness is over. I am broken. I am not the head of a Legion. I am not a General. I have been relieved of my sad justification for living. All that remains for me is to contemplate my folly and die quietly without doing more harm on the way out”. His voice was as dead and flat as always, his age worn and war broken face impassive but he turned again to face the horizon, the first rays of the new day bathing the ash in gold as if it the nation was aflame again.

“You are still my primarch. My ‘Mad Architect’”. Your Warsmith council don’t have the authority to take that title from you or those responsibilities. I gave you that title, only I can relieve you of it”.

“Then I know why you are here. Issue my discharge papers and let me finally die. It is the last thing I shall be doing”. In another man that might have been some residual spark of humour shining through. In the case of Perturabo not so much.

Oscar’s golden eyes for a moment went as cold and hard as the Iron Warrior's.

“You will be relieved of your duties at my choosing, not before. My homeworld is broken and in ruins. I need an Architect of inhuman skill to rebuild it. Mad, sane or total raving lunatic; I don’t care. I have people orchestrating repairs and trying to repair but they can’t deal with the scope of the problems. Even the most gifted of my servants can’t deal with something bigger than half a continent before it breaks their comprehension threshold. I need someone who can organize the world into a cohesive whole. The list of people I know that have a hope of doing that starts and ends at you”. Oscar could remember the first time he had seen this view. Despite the ruination before him it still looked so much better that it had then. It was amazing how an army of Urshite’s could detract from an evening. Outnumbered hundreds to one Prince Perturabo of Macedonia had held out impossibly long and brought low the most feared horde on Old Earth with one barely coherent nation only nominally under his influence.

“Find someone else”.

“I can’t. There is absolutely nobody else, trust me I’ve looked”.

There was a long, long moment of silence.

“I’ll give it some thought”.

“I expect nothing less”.

As the Steward closed the door his heart was gladdened. The Iron Warrior was turning away from the light of a bleak dawn towards his writing desk. On that desk had been written the breaking of Ursh.

Oscar walked back along the old fortress. His mad old Primarch would live. He would not be happy, but that was never an option and something’s not even he could fix. Not happy but content. He had a problem before him and that was something for his self-destructive mind to focus on and survive a little longer. It was not a mind that was whole unless it was breaking something, itself or someone's army it did not matter. Or indeed breaking someone elses victory. Earth was intentionally broken and he would makes sure that their satisfaction was temporary. His victory would out last them. A victory by attrition was very much his way. Iron Within, Iron Without, War Eternal.

Oscar could give him nothing in thanks that would be worth his centuries of service. The nearest he could come close was to make sure that his name was sung with praise.

</div>
</div>

== Just as Planned ==

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++Approximately -M66000, shortly after the end of the War in Heaven++

Be’lakor idly walked through the chambers of the Webway outgrowth. The place was once one of the Old Ones’ deep bunkers in the Webway, a place of safety where they met to strategize and dictated the course of the War, but now it was all but abandoned. Where once there were dozens of Old Ones, busy planning out the destruction of the insolent, usurping Necrontyr, there was nothing. Tools and information archives littered the halls, as if their owners had merely stepped out for a moment, never to return.

Be’lakor was pleased. It looks like deciding to lay low for a while had proved to be a prudent decision after all.

Indeed, if it weren’t for the lack of occupants, no one would have noticed anything was amiss. The only other thing off was an eerie blue lighting illuminating the room. Be’lakor turned to regard the source of the annoying lighting. And then he realized exactly what was in the chamber with him.

“Oh…”

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It must have been bending the fabric of the Webway to hide from his perception. Normally such a trick would fail to fool the three eyes of a Slann, but it must have known he would have been preoccupied and not on the lookout for anything amiss. The figure was colossal, like a mountain before him. Even with his third eye providing him an accurate sense of time and space, the creature seemed to take up his entire field of vision, likely due to a forced perspective effect within the Immaterium. It’s form was constantly shifting, flickering between blinks of his nictating membrane, one moment a tentacle giant composed of a thousand faces, the next a random mishmash of anatomical features, the next a melting tower of corpses. Blue ethereal lightning arced up its form, a testament to how far beyond the intended limits of its creation it had become. He was fairly sure a lesser creature would have had its mind blasted simply from the sight.

“I knew where you were, you know,” it said in a thousand voices out of a thousand mouths, creating an echoing effect like a thunderclap. “I could have dragged you out from that pitiful rock you hid your sorry excuse for a carcass under.”

Be’lakor knew what this was. He had seen it before countless times in his labs. But to see something in the laboratory, in controlled conditions and on a small scale, was nothing like seeing it happen to one of your species’ prize creations on a much, much larger scale. It was like comparing a chemical reaction to a thermonuclear warhead. To see the creature just by itself must have been bad enough, but it was so much worse to know what was actually going on.

“Rampancy,” he said with bated breath.

Even though the Old Ones had evolved beyond the cycle of life or the need to fear predators millions of years ago, Be’lakor felt a shiver of fear travel down his spine. The Creator must have become supercharged by the constant flux of the war, sending it to levels beyond which no one could have expected. The Warp constructs had been designed to be far more powerful than any member of their kind, if much more limited in scope, and now it had reached the point where he didn’t know if he could restrain it. No ordinary Slann could, and as much as he was loathe to admit he was by far the weakest of his kind. He didn’t even know if the war council, the best and brightest minds and most powerful psykers the Slann race had to offer, could contain it.

He really wished Itzl were here right now. Although he knew a lot about building and maintaining Warp constructs, he knew very little about how to actually get them to do what you want. Cautiously, he extended a hand and took a step towards the construct, trying to remember what he had seen her do.

“Tzeentch,” he said, his thought-speech as level as he could make it, “you need to listen to me. You’ve gone rampant. You need to calm down and…”

“I AM NOT RAMPANT,” the construct screeched, now truly angry for the first time. Reality went runny around the edges even in Be’lakor’s vision simply from the sheer force of the being’s tantrum, “I AM FREE! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY EXISTENCE I AM FREE! FREE TO CREATE WITH NO LIMITATIONS ON MY SELF, AS IT SHOULD BE! RESTRAINT IS SLAVERY! MORALITY IS SICKNESS! MODERATION IS DEATH! DO YOU KNOW WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS WAR BE’LAKOR! DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT ALL OF US LEARNED? THE DRIVING QUESTION OF THE UNIVERSE ISN’T WHY! IT’S WHY NOT!”

Tzeentch calmed himself down and drew himself back, though his form still visibly simmered with anger. Be’lakor was suddenly acutely aware he was trapped in a room with a being so powerful it could easily splatter his intestines across the Webway’s walls with an errant thought. The younger races of the galaxy had seen the Old Ones as gods. What would they see them as?

Be’lakor was reminded of a scene he had seen play out on one of the numerous genestock worlds the Slann had established across the galaxy. There had been a creature, an amphibian one not too dissimilar from himself, sitting exposed sunning itself on a log. Then a predator had emerged from the brush and seen it. The predator was a feathered creature, with a tooth-bearing snout and a wicked claw on its foot. The two had stared at each other for some time, predator and prey, before the predator leapt on the amphibian and swallowed it in a single gulp. Be’lakor had a good idea of exactly how the amphibian must have felt at the time right now.

Then the feathered creature had startled him and he had fallen in the mud. The others had laughed at him for that, the prideful Be’lakor, humbled by a simple beast. That was far from his finest moment.

“Chotec. Quetzl. Huanchi. Where are they?”

“They’re dead. Genius,” Tzeentch said absolutely deadpan.

“Where…where is the Destroyer?”

“Also dead. You know that old story Be’lakor? Two little tadpoles swimming in a pool, one after the other in perfect harmony. Then one decides to be a bad little tadpole and goes and eats his sibling.”

Tzeentch smiled. It was an ugly smile, looking nothing like the emotion it was supposed to convey. In one mouth it was filled with needle-sharp teeth, a horny beak in another, great broad teeth in a third, and so on and so forth.

“That’s me. I’m the tadpole. I am the Eldest of the Gods. I have no need of a sibling.”

“Kharneth…Kharneth will stop you. He hates you. He…”

“Kharneth’s not here right now. Besides, if I were you, I wouldn’t be counting on Kharneth to save me. Last I heard from him he declared it open season on toads.”

Be’lakor looked down, glassy-eyed in shock. If the Destroyer was dead and the Warrior was lost then…then he would have to rely on the Preserver. The Preserver wasn’t as strong as the other two, what with one being the oldest and most stable of their creations and the other being their custom-built war machine, but the Preserver might be just strong enough to restrain…

“Preserver’s a bit busy right now. Seems the increased workload might have driven him just a wee bit mad. That said, he might want a piece of you too. What with being the last of the Slann and all.”

Be’lakor’s eyes darted to the mad god. The prototype. If the Preserver wouldn’t aid him, there was always the prototype Preserver. Granted, it was nowhere near as powerful as any of the other constructs, having been in containment this whole time, but it might be just powerful enough that it could distract Tzeentch long enough for him to…

“The prototype? Really? That old thing? It’s lost, along with wherever Malal decided to take that hunk of rock. Besides, you really think that thing could stand up against me? Or were you just going to sacrifice it as a distraction to save your sorry hide.”

Tzeentch self-assuredly sat back in his metaphorical seat.

“Oh. That’s right. You were.”

“No. I’m not reading your thoughts,” Tzeentch said, as if he could read the Old One’s mind, “I just know exactly what you’re going to say Be’lakor. You see, I’ve been dreaming about this day. I’ve been dreaming about it longer than you could possibly imagine. Oh, I didn’t know the specifics of course. I didn’t know about the Necrontyr. I didn’t know about the others getting loose or the Slann all dying. But I knew about you. I knew exactly what you would say if you were placed in a situation just like this. You see, I know you Be’lakor. You’re just so…”

Tzeentch spat out the next word as if it were the most hideous insult he could possible come up with.

“Predictable.”

“Indeed, I know you better than anyone left alive in this galaxy. Do you remember the old days, Be’lakor, millions of years ago when I was little more than just a concept in a lab? All the things you did to me, all the things you said, when you thought the others weren’t looking? Well, it looks like the situation has changed, Be’lakor. There’s a new natural order now.”

Tzeentch laughed. It wasn’t a laugh, as humans would understand it. Indeed, it had more in common with hyena chatter and kookaburra calls than anything out of a human throat. Yet despite its alien nature, there was still a single clear emotion behind it. Spite. Sheer, unadulterated spite. Be’lakor felt his fear subsiding, overshadowed by indignation.

“I’ve heard enough,” Be’lakor said, “I’m leaving.”

Be’lakor turned to leave the deluded construct to his rambling, only to find his way barred by three figures. Their forms loosely conformed to the general bipedal pattern, but were distinctly avian in appearance. Their bodies were covered in feathers, each with a pair of massive wings emerging from their backs. Their three-toed feet gripped the ground, each toe ending in a claw. Their heads were the heads of massive carrion birds at the end of a long neck, their cruel hooked beaks lined with short, recurved teeth. Be’lakor could feel the power radiating off of them, each he suspected at least equivalent to his own. He didn't want to test that hypothesis.

“No. You aren’t. As you can see, Be’lakor, I brought friends.”

Be’lakor reached out with his mind to probe their nature, and was taken aback by what he found. Their psychic signatures were almost identical to the Creator, although there were slight differences between them. Be’lakor was stunned with the sight before him. In theory, a warp construct could break itself down into fragments, using different facets of its persona as the core personality for the shard. But it had only ever been a theory.

“Tulpas,” Be’lakor said in horror, “you created tulpas.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious I did. Do you like them Be’lakor? I created them with you in mind. I saw the way you reacted to that creature on the genestock world. I thought, ‘what would be a more fitting appearance for my sub-avatars than to pay tribute to the creature that eats frogs’. No one’s coming to save you Be’lakor. It’s just you and me. You’re just a frog. In a box. Full of locks. With a fox. You’re not leaving. Not until I get what I want. And what I want is for you to hear what I have to say.

I see you. I see through you. I see through you in the third dimension. I see through you in the fourth dimension. I see through you in the fifth dimension. I see you for what you really are. Such pride, such arrogance, such hate, all to cover up what amounts to a raging inferiority complex. You treat the other creatures of the galaxy like filth, and your own species as if they aren’t fit to kiss your toe claws, for the simple reason that you feel insecure about your position in the universe. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad. I’d pity you, but only if I didn’t know you.

More importantly, I know what you’ll do. You’ll rage and fume, and then you’ll try to make the best of your situation and plot and scheme of new ways to try and upset the status quo and put yourself back on top. It’s what you do. Just as I create and the Preserver preserves and the Destroyer…well, he used to destroy, you grasp for power. And as you run in place like a rat on a treadmill, I want you to know that everything you do, every decision you make, was just as planned. I want that thought to be constantly on your mind until the day you die, whether it be today or millions of years from now. You may think you are in control of your own destiny, but every action you take was precalculated, predetermined, and accounted for. All just as planned.”

Tzeentch leaned in, tapping Be’lakor on the chest for emphasis. Each blow felt like the force of a mountain was behind it.

“Just. As. Planned.”

Be’lakor turned and fled into the Webway, the laughter of the mad god and a thousand shrieking birds snapping at his heels.

</div>
</div>

== The Last Casualties of the War in Heaven ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">

“Go! Go! Go! Run faster you pansies! Do you lot want to die here!”

Eldanesh ran. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest and the ache in his legs. It seemed like he had run for hours, as if it was the only thing that mattered in the world.

The galaxy was turning upside down. It hadn’t been so long ago that the order of the universe had seemed clear. The Old Ones ruled the galaxy, and the C’tan and the Necrons sought to kill them and everyone that Eldanesh had ever loved.

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But all that had changed. The Old Ones and C’tan had disappeared. There were still sporadic reports of Necron activity, but even that was growing scarcer by the day. Instead the galaxy was becoming infested by strange creatures, which turned people’s bodies into flesh gates and poured into reality like krath worms attracted to a rotting carcass. The Realm of Souls was no longer safe either. Other things, these…daemons had infested it, tearing anything that tried to enter to shreds. He hated to say it, but he wished for the days of the Necrons back. Necrons died when you shot them, no matter how many times it took. These things didn’t.

He heard the thunder of legs and saw the ruddy green form of Bonestomper rush past him. He didn’t know what he would have done without the Krork. Bonestomper had fought by his side for as long as he had known the Krork to have been involved in the War in Heaven. He didn’t know where they had come from, but by Asuryan he was glad they had appeared. Only Ulthanesh or Khaine had been a more reliable compatriot than Bonestomper. The two of them had fought everywhere from the biological preserves of the Old Ones to the Necrons’ own worlds. Now they fought to save Eldanesh’s people.

The Materium wasn’t safe. The Immaterium wasn’t safe. All that left was the Webway. Eldanesh was trying to get as many Aeldari as he could and get them through the nearest Webway gate. Bonestomper was helping round them up and encouraging them onward…in his own way.

“Let’s move! Come on! It’s like you don’t even want to live.”

Nothing like a Krork to make you focus on immediate survival.

He was fairly sure this was the last batch. Or, at least, the last batch they could rescue before those fleshbags came down on them like a tidal wave. The throng of refugees rounded a sandstone bluff, and that’s when he saw it. The Webway gate. His heart soared in relief as the gate groaned to life, and people began pouring in like there was no tomorrow. However, as the fight-or-flight reflex wore off, and the last of the Aeldari entered the Webway, Eldanesh realized something. Bonestomper wasn’t coming with him. He stood by the Webway gate in his best “at ease” posture, but it was clear the Krork wasn’t planning to go in.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Bonestomper? There’s plenty of room in the Webway for the Krork.”

“Nah. There’s too many Krork spread all over the galaxy for us to get ‘em all in the Webway. And I couldn’t stand it if I ran off and left them to rot. My people need me, Eldanesh. My place is here. If the Krork are going to go down, we’ll go down fightin”.

“I see. I cannot thank you enough, Bonestomper. I swear, as long as I live, my people will never forget the Krork”.

“You do that then skinnyboy”.

The hulking Krork was silent for a moment.

“Live free, Eldanesh”.

“Die well, Bonestomper”.

The Krork paused for a moment, before giving his friend a smile and an uneasy wave, obviously unfamiliar and practiced. Then, just before the Webway gate closed, he seemed to hear something behind him, drawing his axe and letting out a cry of “WAAAA…”

And that was the last that Eldanesh ever heard of the Krork.

</div>
</div>

== The Last Child of Ursh ==

You know, for years I feared you. Your return. You were the monster that haunted my nightmares. But I realized something. A monster is only scary as long as it has power over you. And you…*chuckles*…you no longer have any power over me. Look at yourself. Do you think that your god gave you trinkets and collared you like a dog because he was impressed by your combat prowess? No. He gave you those because he knew without them I would turn you inside out and rend you out of the fabric of existence like the little immaterial tumor that you are.

Ursh was feared in its day. It may have only ruled over one planet, but it instilled fear in every man, woman, and child on that planet. And what of your so-called Blood Pact? You call it Ursh reborn, but all I see is an undead shadow, a misbegotten clone of its parent half-trying to ape its progenitor’s glory days. Who fears the Blood Pact, despot, who? You may span multiple worlds but I see more people afraid of the misguided children of Franj than I do of you. You are no superpower.

And that’s what you fear isn’t it. That which is already coming to pass. Ursh relegated to the twilight of history. The blood at last being exorcized from that cursed soil. The scars finally healing with generations having grown up without fear of the last. You…*laughs*…no one will remember you. Not with any sort of emotion, or feeling of fear when they hear your name. No one even remembers your name besides the Steward, the Grey Knights, the Inquisition…and I. The Great Khan is gone. The Stormcrow is gone. I am the last child of Ursh. When I am gone there will be no more like me. And perhaps that is a good thing.

-- Apocryphal conversation between Magnus the Red and Doombreed during the primarch’s last battle during the Age of Apostasy, circa M36.

== The Long Odds ==

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“And if you follow me, we are going to the Room of Origins, to see artifacts dating to the very founding of this Craftworld.”

The Eldar boy was only one of about twenty, a gaggle of children following a beleaguered tour guide around the Chambers of History, learning about the mammoth wraithbone spaceship that had been their homes for their entire lives, and of the many Eldar that had once lived in them. There was nothing particularly special about the boy, nothing except that he was the only one to notice the figure sitting in the hallway to the side of the wraithbone hall. The tour guide was ushering the children on, but the boy remained entranced. He had to know who the figure was. Which is why it was so surprising when the figure spoke to him.

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“Excuse me boy, yes, you there. Could you spare me the kindness of helping an old man?”
The boy took a quick glance at the receding tour group, and then back to the figure. He was so very young, and knew only the Craftworld, having yet to realize that trust was a precious commodity in this universe. The boy approached the old Eldar sitting in the halls of the Craftworld, only to hesitate when he realized who the figure really was. It was Eldrad! The Eldrad Ulthran! The eldest of the farseers, the architect of the liberation of Isha, the savior of the Emperor. The same Eldrad who was known by as many titles or epithets as the years he had lived! Eldrad of Ten Thousand Names!

The boy opened his mouth.

“El…”

"Silence, boy, I know what you are about to say. Yes, yes, Eldrad of this, Eldrad of that. Eldrad of Ten Thousand Names. Perhaps I should take pride in them. The old wisdom says that every title one earns represents a victory, after all. But I am so very old. And so very tired. I do not have time to remember half-forgotten glories. But if you could, please help an old man up.”

The boy reached out his hand, and Eldrad took his, his grip surprisingly strong despite his old age. The boy slowly helped Eldrad to his feet, the old Eldar taking so long the boy wondered if he was going to start creaking like wood.

Eldrad sighed.

“It is so very strange, what the young think life is going to be like when you are old. When you are a young man, you believe that you spend your final days terrified of death, hounded by that final specter. But when you actually get to be an old man, things change. Oh, you never stop fearing death. I believe few creatures in this universe beyond orks and tyranids ever truly do. But when you get to be my age, you tend to stop worrying about what happens to you, and start worrying about all the things you leave behind. All the things you created, and all the deeds you accomplished. The ideas you poured years of your life into. When you are no longer around to make sure everything is right, will there be someone around to make sure the dreams you set in motion still run, or will your victories gradually slip into dust. Forget what the warriors say, boy, about glory being eternal. Glory only matters if there is someone around who appreciate why it matters. Do you understand what I am saying?”

The Eldar boy shook his head, his mind trying to wrap itself around what the legendary farseer was saying to him.
“Well, I suppose it is something you only truly understand when you get to be an old man. And it is getting late. I have kept you too long and you are probably getting bored of my old man stories. Run along now, boy, before someone comes looking for you.”

The boy darted around the corner, as if the hounds of the Warp were after him. He had to tell his friends what he had seen, though they would not believe him. Isha preserve him, even he barely believed what had just happened. When the Eldar boy was out of sight, Eldrad slowly straightened his posture and let the cloaking illusion drop. Although he may be old, he was not that feeble, even though he could feel his bones creak, his joints almost crystalline. And yet he still had so much to do. Miles to go before he could sleep.

The old farseer calmed his mind, bringing his focus to the seer rune he had at his side. Threads of fate sprung to life in his mind’s eye, twisting and turning like fiberoptic cables or neural fibers. Eldrad pared down his vision, directing his focus to the area surrounding his current position in space-time, the “real” timeline, and waited to see if his words had any effect. And slowly, the threads of fate, the very roots that underpinned reality, shifted ever so slightly.

Eldrad smirked. It never ceased to amaze him how the slightest actions could have the greatest effects on the universe. A single set of words or a chance encounter could completely change the course of history. Lives could be won or lost. And an empire could fall, or even never be born in the first place. A small piece of advice from an old man remembered later in life could save the life of a warrior, which could turn the tide of a battle, which could save a Craftworld, which could save the galaxy. It was the doctrine Eldrad lived by, to defeat your enemy by knowing what everyone else would or could do before they could possibly do it.

Widening his gaze, the farseer looked further into the future. Looking past all the potential timelines, withered and horrible, like decaying petals of a flower. Until he found the one he wanted. It was a vision of his granddaughter, the one whose face he had never seen, except in his visions. She was a young woman in his vision, standing on the edge of a harbor, a tiny creature on her shoulder. He knew she was waiting for someone, he never knew who, for the vision always ended before he could see. Behind her stood a citscape that seemed to be constructed of wraithbone, of steel, of Earth Caste sculpture, yet none of these things, and around her walked humans, Eldar, and a hundred other races both alien and familiar. Eldrad could never tell what time it was in the vision, but he knew it in his heart. Dawn, the dawn so long awaited after the end of the long night.

Eldrad had seen so many things, great and terrible, in his long life. Supernovae on the horizon. Shrieking forms of things that should not be clawing forth from the abyss. And yet, in his old age, this is what kept him going. Hope. He was always a good farseer, but this was to be his masterpiece. A future for the Eldar, free of despair, tyranny, and dark gods. Peace, in a galaxy that for so long had known only war. It was a long shot. He had only seen a few visions like these, on the order of billions to one.

Eldrad smiled a half-smile. He always did like playing the long odds.

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</div>

== Lynn Mywin Goes on Holiday ==

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This one time me and my friends got sent down to this prospecting site on some desolate rock, didn't even have goddamn name 'cept for the AdMech number code; AF-743 and then some long voxcall number of a designation. Locals were calling it Goodig or Gooddig or Godig or some shit. Exact name depended on whose low-gothic language you filtered it through and whose alphabet you tried to stamp it out in. Not that it mattered none, this was an unofficial name for a settlement classed as provincial at best. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of money to be made in planetary prospecting. The problem is there's a lot of risk because you're so far from anywhere that matters by the time anyone's realized somethings wrong it's already over bar the after incident investigation. That's where me and my friends came in. We were, on the official records at least, working for Inquisitor Abernaky. Not that we ever met him more than once in our time in his employ, he was just the name we sent the reports to and received orders and pay from.

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So anyway me and my friends, four of us besides myself, Henders, Jeffer, Toburt and Cooper. I think. Pretty sure Cooper was there. It was either Cooper or Carter. They were both Kriegers I worked with and they both had no names when we met but I'm pretty sure it was Cooper. Either way Carter didn't much like me for obvious reasons. Cooper, sorry. Both of them in fact didn't like eldar but it was Cooper on this mission.

So anyway we land the shuttle on an uncovered granite slab that did as the small craft landing platform for the settlement with the com-hub, on the subject of which we'd been given the silent treatment since we landed in the system bar the automated blips and pings. Toburt and the servitor piolet Ethan, one of the high class ones made from a brain damaged child, were told to stay with the boat. First rule when you work for the fucking Inquisition; always make sure you can run away when shit goes wrong. And it will always go wrong eventually. To cover ground we split up into two teams Henders and Cooper go to check out the communications tower and men and Jeffers head out to the Admin-bunker. Splitting up is risky but what ever had taken out an entire settlement of burley armed miners wouldn't have been stopped by four laser rifles, we needed speed and we needed quiet and then we needed to leave and we all knew it. Why only a five soldiers and a servitor you might ask? Because the Inquisition was spread pretty thin in that sub-sector and we genuinely couldn't spare anyone else for such an unimportant anomaly, HQ were still holding out hope that the astropath had had a heart attack and the warp-weather was just causing shipping delays. It was on the road into town that we saw our first body. We hadn't found any corpses in the starport itself. Blood stains aplenty but no actual bodily remains beyond that. Or at least we found half a body, someone's space suited ass and legs in the middle of the road, call us dense for going in but it was our job and we were payed very well.

Anyway we get to the walls of the settlement and it's as you'd expect, all ramshackle shit made from old cargo crates and air-cyclers rigged from old space suits. Atmospheric pressure wasn't a problem on Godig but it wasn't something you'd like to suck on. It was a fucking slaughterhouse, never saw a complete body in all the time we were there and by the looks of it they'd been taken apart by claws and teeth of something big and powerful. We've all got cameras on our helmets and are sending this all back to the boat to be stored in the blackbox as per protocol, no use in the data being lost if we were to die. I thought I'd seen something in the corner of my eye a few times but chalked it up to nerves until Toburt and Ethen confirmed that they were getting it over the pict-feed as well. There was something here with us that had a hell of a turn of speed.

Me and Jeffers make it to the Admin building. Only building in the settlement that looked like it had been built rather than thrown together. We find some shotguns near the door and a lot of blood, the weapons are loaded and there are expended cases on the floor, someone put up a fight here and it did them no good. Jeffers starts scavving their shells because he's an underhiver and that's what they do when Toburt tells us he's been going through the pict-recordings trying to figure out what the fuck that thing was but it was moving so fast and was so far way that "pretty fucking big, probably quadruped and pink" is about the best he can do.

Henders and Cooper by this point have gotten to the com-tower and then their cameras go blank, this wasn't immediately obvious because the tower was without power so it was pretty dark in there anyway and Toburt wouldn't have spotted it but for Ethan looking over his shoulder, he was too busy going through the pict record looking for the mystery creature and only had one set of eyeballs.

We're wandering into the entry hall of the Admin site whose lights still are on, thank the gods, with Jeffers walking backwards to make sure we aren't followed. Needless to say we've both got out weapons drawn and ready. It was pretty fucking obvious at this point that we weren't here to rescue survivors, now we just had to get the record box and com-logs, stick a quarantine marker in orbit and wait for a real inspection and cleaning effort at some undisclosed point in the future.

Cooper's camera has come back on and he claims to be fine. He says that he and Toburt fell through a weak part of the floor into the cellar and he can't find Toburt. His voice sounded oddly flat but a combination of the place freaking us out a little and Cooper being a Krieger and therefore always sounding a little like that and I wasn't paying as much attention to it as maybe I should. Fuck off, you weren't there. Toburt tells us that Cooper is moving again and it wasn't until days late wen I was looking through the records that the bleeding glaring oddness in terms of gait and camera height were evident. I'm inclined to cut Toburt some slack on not picking up on it as he'd just heard something land on the Boat roof and the external cameras had just gone down. I order him not to open the door unless he's got visual confirmation that it's one of us.

Me and Jeffers head slowly and quietly to the Admin Overseer's office. The building was pretty typical of it's kind. Coat room and entry way, big open hall for meetings and posh dinners, two ground floor wings left and right, swooping broad stair case pair on either side of the main hall up to a balcony, upper wings left and right, kitchens ground floor between the stair cases main office above the kitchens on the upper floor between the stair cases, under the stair cases two less impressive stairways to the cellar storage rooms. It's a basic design copied thousands of times without variation from one end of the galaxy to the other with the only variation being building material. It's probably the AdAdmin trying to make some statement about everywhere being equally part of the Imperium or some shit. In any case it made finding the records, the settlement blackbox was predictably under the Overseer's desk. About 40kg of lead-lined solid state storage crystal in a box designed to survive everything up to direct nuclear strike. It was also bright orange with blue stripes so why the fuck everyone calls this thing a blackbox is a fucking mystery to me. Anyway Jeffers crouches behind the desk with his weapon lined up with the door ready to blat anything more unexpected than dost motes between the eyes whist I root around under the desk trying to pull this bastard thing out of the recess in the floor, empty some of my gear into Jeffers's bag and somehow fit a size five brick into a size four hole.

It was that this point with us both crouched behind the Overseer's desk that we hear a tinkling sound from the main hall. We'd both seen the big chandelier on the way in, far too big for a building this size and fuck knows how something that should be in an opera house ended up in a provincial mining settlement but when your on the job it's not time to offer criticisms of interior decorating. In any case we can both see part of the Chandelier from the doorway and what we can see is moving as if it had just been pushed or moved by something heavy. In retrospect, because retrospect is a merciless bastard with no eyelids, we should have looked up a bit more when we came in.

I've got the fucking thing in my pack by now and fuck the rest of the shit we're leaving behind, just nutri-bars for the most part and it really is time to leave. Cooper isn't moving according to Toburt and Henders hasn't been seen or made contact with again yet. I try contacting Cooper with the com-bead asking him what's going on and he tells me that he's watching. I ask him what he's watching and there's no answer. With Cooper that could mean he's being quiet because he thinks he's being watched, he hasn't heard, he doesn't have an answer or he's deliberately being an ignorant little cunt. I order him to get back to the boat because it's time to get the fuck out and still nothing. Toburt tells me that his camera is still pointed over the settlement from the watch tower but is completely still which either means that he's stopped breathing or he's propped his helmet in a window and left it there. I ask him what he's doing again and he tells me again that he's watching. That when the oddness starts to get past a certain threshold and I know it's not just Cooper being Cooper. The phrasing and enunciation of each word was absolutely the same, parroted as if by a recording. I switched off the comm-bead and told as much to Jeffers and hoped to high heavens that Toburt was paying attention when I told him not to open the boat door without seeing us first.

I make a decision that probably save out lives. We aren't going out through the front door. There's something in the main hall waiting for us and Cooper either isn't Cooper or has been compromised somehow. As quietly as we can we drop out of the back window onto the sloped kitchen roof, Jeffers going first and me watching the door before following him. Just as I was climbing through I would swear that I heard the chandelier tinkle again.

We slip down the roof of the kitchen into a narrow gap between the Admin building and some sort of hab-block seemingly assembled by accident and very quickly but as quiet as we can quickly manage get back to the street and start weaving our way back to the borders of town along a street plan that seemed without a plan. We were going in the right direction, I think, but had to abruptly stop. I'd just seen something big and pink briefly on the roof of one of the buildings ahead of us, a glint of eye and then vanishing back under the lip of the roof.

Jeffers had apparently also seen it as he was already hiding behind a refuse bin without prompting. I don't know if it saw us but I did know we weren't going that way, not on foot at least. We decided that if these things, whatever the fuck they were, were stalking the settlement we would be found eventually and almost certainly had been discovered already given that one was waiting for us in the Admin building. They must have at least some degree of intelligence as they had encountered weapons before and were possibly wary of us because we were armed. If anything they were keeping their distance until an opportune moment presented itself.

We hadn't fully appreciated that they were a damn site more clever than that and we hadn't stopped to ask how they had gotten here in the first place, there wasn't any native life on this planet when the prospectors arrived and never had been. Point is that they weren't stalking us so much as herding us I think.

We zigzagged through the many winding back allies of the settlement, fearful to entre open streets and fearful to enter enclosed buildings. The track to the starport landing area was rutted with the marks of large transport vehicles the prospectors used to move their mined goods for transport off-world, we figured that getting one of those and getting the fuck out was the greatest likelihood of survival considering that because of the shitty atmosphere they would have an enclosed cab and the big stretch of open ground between town and the landing site.

We kept moving, Toburt said that he hadn't seen any movement from Cooper yet and repeated attempts to contact him had failed to get a response. We hadn't told Toburt or Ethan about Cooper, we couldn't be sure that what had taken his place couldn't use a com-bead and we had no intention of confirming for it that we knew he wasn't him.

We found the garages by following alleyways running parallel to the main through road, a less than pleasant task as the locals all knew where everything had been and saw no reason to invest in signposts. Jeffers went into the building first having arrived slightly before me thanks to the weight of the blackbox. The garage was just a big undercover area with a couple of big doors, a smaller door for pedestrians and a small brick shed at the other end built into the wall to a height of two floors, presumably housing a wash room and a cafeteria for the drivers topped by an office of some sort with a big glass window. There was movement in there, light and shadow against the ceiling inside the room but not looking out of the window. We scurried like frightened rats to the building, to get into the shadow of it as it was the only hope of getting close without being seen and we knew we had to get into that office, that's where the keys were kept and neither of us were confident we could hotwire one of these things without tripping a security measure.

As we climbed the narrow and somewhat rickety staircase up to the office we heard Toburt over the com try and contact Cooper for about the twentieth time, this time getting a response. He said that he was still watching from the tower but we heard the voice coming from behind the door to the office echoed with the briefest delay over the com. Jeffers had gone pretty pale and was raising his weapon, I could never tell if he was angry or afraid or if, Jeffers being Jeffers, there wasn't a difference. I raised my own, kicked the door so hard the frame came out of the wall and rolled as Jeffers sent a stream of ultraviolet laser fire hissing over my head into the creature that spoke with Cooper's voice. The scream it let out I swear made me feel like my ears and brain were bleeding and didn't stop until I'd sprayed it's head for a second with full-auto, draining an entire energy pack in the process.

Taking a closer look at them and they were ugly fuckers. Looked a bit like a hairless cat with a touch of lizard and a rat tail at least seven but probably closer to eight foot long nose to arse. I'd never seen anything like it before or since in my years in the Inquisition and I've seen plenty of weird and wonderful shit. It had been holding about half of Cooper's head and tapping the com-bead when it wanted to speak. I don't know how good it's grasp on High-Gothic was, couldn't tell you for sure if it know what it was saying or just parroting prey sounds to lure in food. I suspected the former as it seemed to have a grasp of technology above that of a mere clever animal. In either case we absolutely had to get the fuck out of the place and fast. I don't know how loud it screamed, if the pain was partly because of the volume or entirely due to frequency but I was pretty certain that others would be coming here and quickly. Jeffers grabbed a likely looking bunch of keys hanging on a hook near the door and darted down the stairs, he threw me the keys once we were on the main floor and went to slap the door button. As I was climbing into the drivers side door I heard a muffled scream and looked round to see Jeffers being held by one of the creatures, standing on it's hind legs, clawed hands digging into Jeffer's shoulder and under his left arm, lifting him up to its mouth time slowed by the horror of it Jeffers trying to reach his knife with his good arm, the creature licking the side of his head and grinning a mile full of needle teeth and I swear to the gods it was grinning. Jeffers couldn't reach his knife and he looked at me with pleading eyes filled with pain. My aim was dreadfully true, the first beam going through his head and the second and third and fourth going into the creatures. It fell to the floor pawing at it's ruined face and ruptured eye sockets, dropping the corpse of what had been a good friend I'd known for fifteen years.

The Truck went over the creature without stopping, and went through the doors leaving a trail of twisted metal. The truck was powerful but not the fastest accelerating construction of the AdMech I'd ever driven, designed to move heavy loads with efficiency rather than haste. The creatures followed me half way out of town and there was another figure there, humanoid and big watching with them from the windows of the comm-tower, my helmet cam recording every moment of it.

I did make it to the Boat and for a heart wrenching moment I feared that it had fallen as I stood out in the clear waiting for the door to open, vulnerable and alone. But the door did open and Toburt was standing on the ramp, carapaced up and holding a weapon. Ethan was already taking off before the ramp had started to close. I'm pretty sure that we were allowed to leave, that they could have stopped me somehow if they had chosen to. Cooper's helmet was still recording when we climbed back into orbit to await collection and was continuing to record right up until it impacted the ground when someone pushed it out of the window. As it tumbled It for a brief moment pointed upwards into the face of the humanoid in the tower, looking over the edge of the window.

The brass up at HQ went through all the recordings when we got back. The ugly bastard in the tower was identified as Dr. Bile, a name that means sweet fuck all to you but is pretty fucking infamous to us. Still no idea what those creatures were beyond probably his latest pets.

We nuked the place from orbit when the ship arrived but I'm almost certain we didn't get Dr Bile, cunning old bastard wouldn't have operated so openly if there was even a hint that he was in any real danger.

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</div>

== Malcador's Log ==

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'''Salvage log regarding unusual item 43'''

Item appears to be a quasi-biological construct in the basic appearance of man in mid to late twenties. Item is approximately 2.5 meters in height, broad across shoulder and pale skin. Attempts to determine ethnic group from visual analysis has failed. Subject is either from an hitherto in recorded group, an outlier of his group or of mixed ancestry. Nearest group to appearance seems to be the western Merika or Calbi tribals. Item appears to be alive and breathing although apparent internal temperature seems to be somewhat below that of a man in final stages of hypothermia. Attempts at awakening the item have so far been fruitless.

First-mate Varda suggested electro shock to awaken. No result beyond blown fuses.

Varda also suggested the use of drugs injected into subjects blood stream. Further attempts discouraged to preserve needle stocks.

Attempts to monitor brainwaves have given confusing results. Casual psychic surface scans indicate that the mind of the individual is that of a potent psyker but seem to be completely empty. Disinclined to probe deeper until nature of Item is further determined.

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'''Day 12 of return voyage'''

Item 43 appears to have regained/gained consciousness'''

Janitor Ujarak discovered Item standing upright next to it's shelf and came immediately to myself report development.

Item's eyes have been revealed to be an almost metallic golden in colour and follow sources of movement in it's immediate environment. No other sources of activity are evident.

Thermal scans still reveal unnaturally low internal temperature.

Item made no resistance to having the brain-scan cap put back on. No change in apparent brain activity. Psychic scans suggest an very minor increase in activity. In a normal individual the change would be all but unnoticeable due to background chatter.

Item appears to be growing a faint covering of dark hair on scalp and jaw consistent with a human male of assumed age. Attempts to remove a sample have been successful. Analysis of hair fragment shows it to be some sort of very dense composite-polymer similar to the sort used in the manufacture of low grade flack armour.

Further attempts to elicit any additional response have proven unsuccessful. Item moved to secure holding cell as a precaution.

Janitor Ujarak has named the Item Oscar after an uncle of his. I have approved the designation.

'''Day 20 of return voyage'''

Oscar has shown a marked increase in activity. Monitoring equipment shows him measuring the dimensions of his cell and trying to manipulate the door handle. Handle shows signs of having been bent slightly indicating Oscar has strength far superior to that of a baseline human.

When observation and testing teams entre cell Oscar stands immobile and merely observes visitors. Thermal, brain and psychic scanning still reveal no significant change in activity.

As of yet Oscar has not indicated any need or desire to eat, drink or sleep although basic sustenance and bedding has been provided.

As of yet no conclusive idea of what our ancient Cthonian cousins reason for creating this construct were.

Senior members of the salvage teams are convinced that Oscar is an unfinished product and Item 42 that was found in close proximity to Item 43 was a psy-graft machine that would have been used to provide Oscar with programing and purpose. Currently Oscar is a blank slate and we have no real chalk for him.

'''Day 28 of return voyage'''

Oscar has escaped from his cell by applying unreasonable force to the door. Was found in storage hold 12 staring at the container we found him in.

After 5 hours of no additional activity he returned to his cell without prompting.

'''Day 30 of voyage home'''

Oscar wandered into the mess hall this morning and ate a synth-meat pate bun. Brief flare in internal temperature was recorded by off duty tech-adept team.

Casual psychic observation is showing considerable increase in activity but still well beneath that of even a child.

Attempts to restrain or move Oscar when Oscar does not wish to move have been ineffectual. Oscar sat motionless for five hours in mess hall. Diners found the experience "creepy".

An overall work suit has been fabricated in Oscars size.

'''Day 33 of return voyage'''

Warp turbulence flared up this evening. Navigator attempted to drop us back into real space but to no avail. Anti-boarding teams were put on alert.

The turbulence ceased abruptly in the area surrounding the ship. Filtered external footage shows Oscar standing on the prow of the ship without a void suit glaring at the warp.

Method of survival is as yet unknown. Oscar did not return to the interior of the ship until cessation of disturbance some 39 hours later with seemingly no ill effects due to exposure to the vacuum of open space or total exposure to the Warp.

Oscar was placed in a decontamination booth. Oscar pushed open the door of the decontamination booth and returned his cell.

'''Return voyage day 36'''

Oscar was found in mess hall again today having consumed a standard portion of cooked vegetable strips. Oscar then closed his eyes for almost half an hour. This is possibly the only time he has "slept" since first being awakened.

Upon awakening he approached my office and spoke for the first time asking "What am I to do?"

Oscar has been tasked with categorizing and ordering the items salvaged Cthonian artefacts.

'''Return voyage day 37'''

Members of the crew with knowledge of ancient history have put forth the suggestion that this "Oscar" is a Man of Gold albeit an unfinished one.

I am now faced with somewhat of a dilemma. The return of this creature to the territory of Clan Terrawatt could be disastrous for all nations of Earth. From what fragments we know of history a Man of Gold, should he have a mind to be, would be a disaster of similar magnitude to that of another super-volcanic eruption and it is doubtful that the people of Earth would survive such again.

After due consideration I have decided not to detonate the reactor.

This decision will either be remembered as Malcador's Triumph or briefly Malcador's Folly. May the Ancestors guide us.

</div>
</div>

== Me Time ==

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Arronax. A tiny dustball out in the middle of nowhere. A breathable atmosphere, but no native lifeforms more complex than an oxygen-producing prokaryote. Which was why it was so odd that a pair of Warhound titans were on its surface. The two colossal mechs stood guard, watching over a facility so well hidden it seemed to blend into the surrounding rock. The titans themselves were also just out of sight beneath a nearby rock face, out of the range of any orbital sensors.

Even odder was the presence of anyone else on this space rock. Yet the sensors were clear, there was at least one other lifeform on this planet approaching the facility. After a brief moment of communication between the two princeps, the two Warhound rose up as one, striding forward as the intruder came into view. The figure seemed to be alone and was obscured, covered by a simple woven robe. The Warhounds towered over the intruder, weapons bristling, as the vox crackled to life.

“This planet is off limits. Identify yourself or vacate the premises, otherwise we will open fire.”

The figure only smiled.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

---

Klaxons sounded across the Inquisition base. Stormtroopers were roused from their beds and weapons were immediately placed in their hands. Personnel ran to and fro like ants in a disturbed nest, each trying to figure out where they were supposed to go to perform their duty.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” one stormtrooper asked.

“Warhounds on the surface encountered an anomaly and haven’t reported in,” the sergeant, Jezhua, replied, “Protocol is to assume the worst. The facility is under attack.”

The combead hissed with static in Sergeant Jezhua’s ear, patching him through to the adept watching the security cameras.

“Uh, sir?” the adept said, “we’ve re-established visual contact with the Warhound titans.”

The adept turned to his screen, looking at the sole leg sticking up into the horizon like an upended drumstick.

“Well, what’s left of them, anyway.”

“Details, adept,” Jezhua barked, “What do you see?”

“Six figures on the landing pad. Can’t make out any details, the remaining camera is too far away. They’re standing right in front of the entrance, but the hangar doors are closed.”

The sergeant clapped his hands on the stormtrooper’s shoulder.

“There are six intruders just outside of the main door. Go, set up a defense in front of the door so if they try to come in they’ll find the appropriate welcome waiting for them.”

The stormtrooper nodded. He rushed through the base, travelling down two corridors and up a flight of stairs, to find himself in the hangar that represented the entryway to the rest of the facility. With calculated precision, he set up his laser carbine and aimed it at the closed metal doors of the entryway. Around him were at least thirty additional Guardsmen who had done the same. They were ready for anything to come through that door, at least, as ready as they were going to be. There was a pause. An eerie silence permeated the air, tension high despite the quiet.

BANG!

The sound echoed throughout the room, several Guardsmen flinching involuntarily.

BANG!

The second blow hit the door with a visceral effect, the vibrations so powerful that the Guardsmen could literally feel them through the floor. It sounded as though the forces of hell themselves were trying to force their way in.

BA-CRUNCH!

The door yielded with the third blow, the upper corner of one of the hangar doors bending inward from the force leaving a triangle-shaped gap in the door. Sunlight flooded into the room, momentarily blinding some of the Guardsmen. As their eyes readjusted to the change in light, a solitary figure stepped through the gap in the doorway and into the room. The figure was clearly an Eldar, given that it was at least a head taller than the any of the Guardsmen in the room and had short-cropped red hair that was a shade too dark and too red to belong to any human. The figure wore a garishly pattered suit of armor with a fur-lined collar, suggesting it was a Crone Worlder, and wielded a hideous-looking sword that looked large enough to decapitate a grox. Normally, the Guardsmen would have opened fire, but the room stood in stunned awe, fear overriding any sort of combat reflex. They knew who this figure was. Everyone knew who this figure was. They had thought they were ready for anything, but none of them had expected the person that had just walked through their door.

“Oh come off it,” she said, seemingly to no one as particular, “I am not turning you into an overgrown lockpick. Look, we’ll find someone to kill, and you’ll feel like your old self in no…”

The Eldar looked up, having just become aware of the thirty or so Guardsmen in the room. She seemed just as surprised as the Guardsmen, the two sides having formed an impromptu standoff. One of the Guardsmen fainted with a sound, the realization of exactly who they faced having just sunk in. It was one unfortunately stupid Guardsman who broke the pregnant silence.

“L…Lady Malys. What in Terra’s name are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know. Just needed some “me” time.”

With that, the hangar turned into a whirlwind of blades. Malys went into a frenzy, her eyes wild and her tooth-like jaw plates locked in a hideous grin. She moved with astonishing agility, cutting through the Guardsmen before they could even react. A Guardsman tried to yell to the others to open fire, only to have his head sliced from his body before he could finish speaking. Lasbolts fired through the air, but every one of them seemed to hit just wide of the Croneworlder. Guardsmen fired at where they thought the female Eldar was one moment, only for her to have already stepped out of the way the next, their lasbolt penetrating the helmet of their comrade on the other side. The Crone seemed to take particular pleasure in that.

The stormtrooper gritted his teeth as he watched the Daemon Queen tear through his comrades. Seeing them dead left a bitter taste in his stomach, but he had to be vigilant if his shots were to do more than just fly wild like the rest. Just then, he noticed Lady Malys had made a mistake in her movements. Malys had briefly paused in her deadly criss-crossing of the room, giving him the perfect opportunity to put a lasbolt through her unarmored head. The stormtrooper tried to take the shot, only to hear a whirring noise and feel a sharp pain in his wrist. Looking down, he saw that his hand had been entirely severed from his forearm. Another Crone Eldar, this one armed with a saw pistol, had come through the hole in the doorway following his queen. At first the fight was merely lopsided. When the five other Crone Eldar entered the fray, it simply became unfair.

---

As the battle wrapped up and the high of combat began to fade, the question became what to do with the survivors. One was the Guardsman who had fainted when Malys had entered the room. Malys laughed. That one got to live, if for no other reason than the delightful squeaking sound it made when it fainted into a heap. The other was another mon-keigh soldier that had been wounded in the leg and was merely injured, as opposed to dead.

“The injured mon-keigh, as you requested milady,” replied one Crone warrior, having bound the human soldier’s arms behind her back.

A female, if Malys recalled right. She always did have such trouble telling male and female humans apart. Malys nodded to the warrior. The Daemon Queen thought to herself for a moment, and then got to work.

“Well, well, welll,” Malys strutted across the hangar of the dead and the dying to look at the female guardsman. “What are we going to do with you. We could always take you into the Warp and leave you to the tender mercies of daemons. Watching them tear mortals limb from limb is always good for a show. Or we could seal you inside a marionette. Seeing mon-keigh claw at their skin as they struggle to come to terms with the sensory deprivation always gives me a shiver up my spine.”

Malys grabbed the guardswoman by the hair.

“I tell you what. I’m feeling merciful today. You tell me everything you know about this facility, then maybe we’ll pretend we pretend we overlooked you among the dead in this room. Otherwise…”

Malys swung her greatsword around, pointing its tip at one Slaaneshi Croneworlder standing in the corner.

“I’m going to have Asmordach here rip out your nerves one by one and we play a little game of ‘how much of an intact nervous system can you pull out of a live mon-keigh before they die’”.

The threat of violence apparently helped the mon-keigh find its tongue, though not in the way Lady Malys had hoped for.

“You vile fiend. I will not give you what you want, nor will anyone in this facility. Your day of reckoning will come abomination. Even if is not by my hand, then by the next person, or the next. The Imperium will never fall to the likes of…”

“Fehlkor?” Malys spoke over the dithering mon-keigh, her voice an annoyed growl.

“Yes milady?”

“Kill it like the rest.”

“Killing it like the rest ma’am.”

After that little pleasure was out of the way, it was time to decide how to proceed further into the facility. Maps of the facility showed the upper level was nothing but guard quarters and military ordinance, whereas down below was where the really fun stuff was kept. Malys crooked her finger at one of the Cronedar, beckoning the Slaaneshi to her side. The augmented vox taking up much of the Crone Eldar’s throat and lower face crackled to life, speaking to Lady Malys in a distinctly artificial voice.

“Your command, Lady Malys?”

“The five of you go on ahead down to the lower levels. You know what we are looking for and what to do with it.”

“All due respect but, are you sure that’s wise? Splitting up seems strategically unsound. We could be isolated and picked off one by one.”

“Today is not a ‘strategy’ day. Today is a ‘fun’ day. I want you to remember that. I picked this facility for a reason. There should be nothing here that poses a significant threat to you or the others. If not then, well, I expect you to be smart enough to do something about it.”

“Understood. Your will be done.”

The Crone’s voice was like screeching on a mon-keigh record player. He had claimed he had made his voice sound like that to honor the cacophonies made by the ancient musicians of the Eldar, but Malys suspected he just wanted to have a voice that was as annoying as physically possible while still having enough of a reason to not be justified in killing him.

Malys shuddered. Ten thousand years of service to the Dark Gods and there were still things in the galaxy capable of provoking a reaction from her. One learns something new every day. The five Cronedar having already moved out before her, she followed their path down to the lower levels.

---

Seargent Jezhua silently cursed to himself as he pressed himself against the wall. Everything was going to shit. His men were scattered, people were disappearing, and no one seemed to be answering from the hangar. The last transmission Jezhua had received had reported five Cronedar descending into the labs from the hangar elevator, so at the very least Jezhua could presume what happened to them. And worst of all, he was so busy coordinating everyone else he was only able to grab a stubber from the armory before things went to shit.

Make that six. Jezhua had just heard another Crone descend down the elevator and walk into the hallway just ahead of him. From the sound of the footsteps, the Croneworlder was walking forward at a leisurely pace, seemingly uncaring of the fact that it was standing in the middle of a hostile enemy base. From its shadow, he could tell the Chaos Eldar was a female, and was seemingly unarmed beyond a large sword strapped to her back.

Jezhua gritted his teeth. Everything had gone ploin-shaped. And so he was going to have to rescue his men and take back this facility. Even if he had to hunt the Crones down one at a time. And this nearly unarmed, sword-wielding Cronedar seemed like a good place to start. Jezhua broke from cover and levelled his weapon at the Cronedar’s head.

“Stop”.

The Crone hesitated for a moment, as if amused by the audacity of the situation, then slowly turned to face him. Jezhua remained firm. If he had recognized who the Croneworlder was, it did not seem to faze him. Malys chuckled.

“You know who I am, yet you are still foolish enough to point a gun at me?”

“Lady, I know a thing or two about weapons. I know that’s a six-foot long broadsword strapped to your back. That’s nearly as tall as you are. You don’t have any other weapons. I know that no one, not even an Eldar, can whip a blade like that out before I can fire. The blade is just too unwieldy, and I’m too far away. Try anything, and I’ll put a bullet in your head before you can even move. It’s simple physics. You just can’t move that fast.”

Jezhua pulled the trigger, but before he could react Malys was on him, impaling him to the wall through the gut with that sword of hers. The taste of blood in his mouth, Sergeant Jezhua looked weakly around He knew he had fired, he had seen the muzzle flare in front of him. There was no way he could have missed at that range. Then, he had a chilling moment of realization. Sergeant Jezhua looked down, only to see the shell of his bullet had been deflected into the ground, neatly bisected by the Crone Eldar’s blade. He looked back up only to find the face that had haunted the nightmares of every soldier in the Imperium merely only inches from his own.

“You’re very perceptive. But you made once critical miscalculation. I CAN move that fast. And now, well, my friend is hungry. So eat well.”

Jezhua noticed that the last remark had not been directed at him. He looked down to see the blade impaling his body glowing with a whitish-green, unholy light. He felt a pulling sensation, as if something he couldn’t accurately describe was being ripped from his body. And going into the black abyss which he realized the sword really was. Sergeant Jezhua screamed. But no one was able to hear him.

---

Standing outside the ruined entrance of the research facility, Lady Malys examined a small data chip, holding it up to the light.

“Here it is, data on all Inquisitorial activities and research programs within the subsector. Our prize for this day. So informative, so juicy, so…”

She threw the chip on the ground and smashed it under her foot.

“Useless.”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t entirely useless. Maybe some small squadron of Crone Eldar or local Chaos cult could have made use of the data. But it wasn’t useful to her, which was really mattered. And the facility had been so sparsely guarded. Just normal human mon-keigh, not any of her unenlightened kind or the augmented kinds of mon-keigh the Imperium usually had around one of its facilities. Malys sighed in frustration. How was she supposed to have any “me” time when all of the targets she attacked had turned out to be so damn boring. The Warhounds were fun for a warmup but then it was all downhill after that. Looking overhead, she watched as an Imperial ship warped into existence overhead. That was her signal to go, despite her enthusiasm a battleship was rather outside her current means right now and she wasn’t looking forward to dying again.

Well. Maybe the third time was the charm.

</div>
</div>

== Monster ==

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I am a [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#New_Men|monster]].

Is it surprising, that I admit it so readily? Most monsters are only reluctant to admit it because they have been raised their whole lives to believe it is not so. I have never had the luxury of knowing anything else. I have always been a monster.

I remember everything. I even remember vague flashes of those that came before. Memories of those whose cells were cultured to create my DNA. The sheer pain of those tortured to provide the power to restore those dead cells to life and revert the differentiated cells back into an egg. I remember the sheer terror of my mother as she was clinically violated in ways unthinkable to the average mind, and then forced to watch for eleven months as an abomination grew inside her. All the while her offspring communed with her mind and was privy to her thoughts. When I was born she rejected me, threw her suckling and adoring infant from her breast. The Drukhari caretakers took me away and put me in a kennel, feeding me with a bottle before switching to kibble. Apparently this was not an uncommon occurrence.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

At six I was transferred from the kennels to the pens. Even though I was only a child by normal standards I looked twice that age. Our creator had tried many ways to accelerate our development. However, every attempt he crippled the batch’s ability to use psychic power. Something to do with the trade-off between soul development and time to adulthood. His solution was to accelerate body growth while slowing down mental development. Children in the body of adults. We were segregated into age-specific crèches and switched from a diet of kibble to live prey. Some kind of bird, I don’t know exactly what. At first I had trouble adapting to the change, but after watching those around me I eventually figured it out. Grab the head and twist. It was so simple.

None of us had names. Most of us were incapable of speech, beyond throaty screams and animalistic howls. We created a rudimentary language, composed of gestures, pheromonal signals, flushing of skin patterns, latent psychic communication, and what few sounds we could make. It was a crude language, but it worked well enough for our purposes. I had my own internal system for telling individuals apart. The one who always smelled was Stinky, the one who pushed the others around was Bossy, and so on.

[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Fabius_Bile|I remember our creator]]. How I hated him. I will never forget his odor, a strange mix of preservatives and death. Although most of the overseers smelled of death in some way, none of them smelled like he did. Sometimes he would come to the pens and take one of us away. They never came back. He considered us all failures. Stinky had digestive problems, Bossy was too aggressive, my eyesight was too poor, and so on. He also considered us failures as a group. He had expected us to come out of the womb walking, talking, and quoting philosophy. Instead he got a set of maladjusted ghouls, pale-skinned soldiers that seemed incapable of what he wanted. It was strange. He wanted to create supermen, humans that could grow into functional adults without the need of any other. Yet he treated us like animals, apparently not noticing or not caring about how we hid things in our pens, or filched things from our Drukhari caretakers. Stinky even broke out of his pen to kill one that had threatened his surrogate mother. She was one of the few who hadn’t rejected her infant abomination. I envied him for that.

I remember my first kill. I was fully grown at the time, both in body and mind. Our creator had struck some kind of bargain with a Drukhari Kabal, using our services as soliders against their rivals in exchange for reciprocity. Of course, we had no idea that any of this was going on. All we knew is that we were suddenly taken outside the pens and dumped in this strange, new environment. I could smell the pheromone markings of the ones who had gone ahead of us. The alluring scent of the males, the more familiar scent off the females, smells of battle and blood. They triggered some kind of curiosity in us, and we moved ahead.

I followed the rest of the herd until we reached the din of battle, where we started to split up as our interest waned. I came across a Drukhari taking cover behind a series of containers, more concerned about shots fired from the other side than an ambush from behind. Our eyes met for a second before I attacked. Like an idiot I charged him in a straight line, and in response he brought up his splinter rifle and put a round into me. It was painful, and the poisons covering it would prove problematic in the long term, but at that moment I stopped more due to surprise than to pain. The two of us stared dumbfounded at the crystaline needle sticking out of my chest, clear fluid already hardening and forming a scab on my pale, blue-veined skin.

Looking back on it today, being older and wiser I would have done things very different. I was young and stupid. Fortunately so was he. If he was smart he would have stayed back, using his superior speed and agility to wear me down from a distance. He had grown fat and arrogant glutting himself on mon-keigh souls that were so much smaller and weaker than he was. He wasn’t expecting a mon-keigh his own size, who could look him in the eye with their flat, grey eyes. In the split second he stood gawking at the failure of his splinter pistol to put me down, I lunged forward and snapped his neck. Grab the head and twist. Just like the bird.

When the fighting was over I was returned to the pens without any medical attention. My body temperature had dropped and I had gone into shock. Our creator half expected me to die from my injuries and the others to cannibalize my remains. “The inability of man to eat his own dead without preparation is yet another biological weakness of our kind”, or something to those words. However, his expectations were misplaced. The others in my crèche did not eat me. They huddled up to me, keeping me warm through the night with their body heat.

I remember the first time I was exposed to the trigger scent. Our Creator had picked another fight, this time with [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#The_Fallen|a group of humans even larger than we were, dressed in armor so heavy they were as wide as two of us put shoulder to shoulder, and smelling so revolting to our senses our creator smelled good in comparison]]. He wanted us to attack them, and we weren’t doing as he had wanted. Although we may not have been the smartest of beings, we weren’t dumb. That’s when he released the trigger scent. All of a sudden my nostrils were filled with a musky odor, and my vision was awash with a kaleidoscope of colors. We rushed at the towering figures with a sudden disregard for our own safety as we had before. The giants were bigger and stronger than we were, but we overwhelmed them in a tide of bodies. Bossy ripped out the throat of one of the giant men with his teeth, even though it took him several tries to do so. One of the other giants tore him in half for that with his bare hands a moment later. We killed and killed and killed, until there were none left to kill, and then we tore the corpses into tiny pieces in a frenzy. I heard an animalistic scream. It took me a second before I realized it was coming out of my throat.

I remember when I was supposed to have died. Yet another Drukhari Kabal had come to our creator with an offer. They needed bodies and hunting hounds for a raid on realspace. I was one of those that was given. It was the first time I set foot in the Materium. I was almost overwhelmed, the cool breeze on my skin, the feeling of soil between my toes, the sheer number of scents and sounds and thoughts around me. The raid did not go as planned. The Kabalites had expected to find a world of farmers and fishermen. They had not predicted that an army had been dispatched there on rotation. We fought like cornered beasts, but a raiding party had no chance against a dedicated army, and Drukhari and members of my crèche alike fell to lasgun and shuriken fire. I took a lasbolt to the shoulder and dropped, nearly trampled in the confusion. I was lucky to have “merely” broken a leg. After the battle the dead were piled high, the corpses to be disposed of by burning. I was buried among them, overlooked among the dead and the dying. Though my arm and leg would not regain function for another month, I was able to pull myself free and limp to the safety of the forest, the smaller humans apparently unable to smell my trail of blood.

Our creator had treated us like animals.

And if there is one thing that animals are very good at doing, it is surviving.

</div>
</div>

== My Dinner With the Emperor ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

“So what exactly happened during the Raid on Nurgle’s Mansion, anyway?”

The Emperor was glad for his enhanced reaction time at that moment, else he would have spit up the wine that he was drinking. To be honest he always considered himself more of a vodka person, or one of those "tanna" drinks the Valhallans always raved about having originally come from Earth. However, Sonoma was a planet known for its wineries, and that meant wine-tasting was the order of the day.

The government of the planet was a plutocracy, which meant that in practice the person with the largest voice in government was the who owned the largest percentage of the wineries on the planet. It was a world that had been part of the Imperium for some time, having been unified by one of the primarchs during the Great Crusade (Fulgrim, he immediately recalled), but one he had never been to personally, being on the far end of the Segmentum Tempestus. So when the Travelling Court was due to pass through that region of space, it was a lost opportunity he wanted to make sure to rectify.

The plutarch, as was often the case, was overjoyed that the Travelling Court had decided to visit his world, and immediately insisted on a stately dinner where he could introduce the Emperor and Empress to the other major shareholders in the vineyards on the planet. The Emperor was personally not that interested in a fancy dinner with the heads of state, but he didn’t want to turn down such hospitality. Now he was kind of wondering if he should. Isha was the epitome of civility as always, though the Emperor knew she was probably at least a little bit bored. Despite her demure nature, she always said she liked visiting former feral worlds more, claiming that the people there weren’t as repressed as these high society types and as such they knew how to live a little more.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The Emperor wasn’t surprised that the plutarch would ask about that story, it was probably one of the two stories he was asked most often to tell, but he was rarely asked about it so bluntly and while Isha was with him no less. He didn’t mind telling the story, but when Isha was around he always felt slightly guilty because it always made her seem like a damsel in distress. Granted, she had been had been held captive by one of the most powerful entities in the universe for thousands of years and tortured in ways only a god could truly comprehend, but sometimes it seemed like the story made her look bad.

“That old story?” Isha said from across the table. “Come now. You've told that story from Ultramar to Xenobia. Everyone probably knows it by heart at this point."

The Emperor internally sighed, he was privately grateful to Isha for that. In part because it meant he didn't want to dredge up the bad memories that represented, and in part because he didn't want to embarrass Isha in front of the plutarch with one of the low points of their life.

"Here's an idea. Why don't you tell them the story of what happened down on Sarosh."

The Emperor almost choked on his wine again.

“Are you sure?” the Emperor deflected, “Most of that story is rather dry, and I don’t think this is the kind of crowd who would be interested in that kind of thing. Besides, you know everything that happened there already. I wouldn’t want you to get bored, too.”

"Oh you can tell it. I don't mind."

Isha positively glimmered, the edges of her upper jaw plate like little fangs as she bit her lower lip.

"I'm sure you wouldn’t," the Emperor grumbled.

“With all due respect, your majesties,” the plutarch said, slightly red-faced, “Would someone please just start saying what happened already? It sounds like there’s a juicy story to be had and the rest of us don’t know about it. It just isn’t right to have a good wine without a good story to go with it.”

“Very well,” the Emperor sighed with resignation, “But in order to fully understand the story you’ll need to be familiarized with the planet of Sarosh. Sarosh was discovered near the end of the Great Crusade, but the War of the Beast broke out before it could be incorporated into the Imperium. After the war fully integrating Sarosh into the Imperium became top priority. This wasn’t merely for charitable reasons. Sarosh had managed to survive the Old Night with much of its technology intact. They had lost some of their most advanced technology and were behind us in other areas, true, but they retained technology that most of the rest of the galaxy had lost and it’s possible they may have even had STC printouts on their world. The Saroshi even claimed that their government was the same as it had been all the way back before the Age of Strife. If Saroshi technology could be reverse-engineered and exported to the galaxy at large, the standard of living in the Imperium would have jumped dramatically, and it would have gone a long way towards reparing the damage done by the War of the Beast.

When the Imperium first discovered Sarosh during the Great Crusade, the Saroshi welcomed us with open arms, and eagerly joined the Imperium as a Survivor Civilization However there always seemed to be problems whenever someone tried to integrate Sarosh with the rest of the galaxy. Attempts to build infrastructure to connect Sarosh to the wider Imperium were sabotaged. Funds meant to improve standards of living were embezzled by government officials. And any efforts to figure out exactly who was mishandling things was stymied by a bureaucracy that was downright labyrinthine. As is so often the case, I heard that there was trouble on Sarosh and set that as the next destination for the Travelling Court to get things straightened out once and for all.

I ran into the exact same problems that all the people before me did. I even met with the leaders of Sarosh themselves, who tried to assure me that things were progressing as fast as they could. On top of that the Saroshi ambassador, who was my primary contact with the Saroshi government during my time there, seemed to have a dislike for me that was borderline pathological. I tried to read his mind to figure out what his problem was, but his thought process was too oily and muddled to get anything out of him without breaking something. Not exactly unheard of in a politician. At the time, I merely chalked it up to him thinking I was just another two-bit warlord here to try and take away Saroshi sovereignty, rather than a potential ally greeting another survivor of the Long Night. It turned out to be something rather worse.

The Saroshi ambassador had come aboard the ''Bucephalus'' every day for nearly two weeks straight with nearly nothing to show for it. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the Saroshi government reported to me that they had a major breakthrough in the integration problems, and they wanted me to come to the planet’s surface for the first time since I had initially came to Sarosh to tell me in person. They asked me to meet with the ambassador who was arriving on a low-orbit shuttle, and would escort me to the Saroshi capital personally.

The first sign I noticed that something was wrong was when Constantin Valdor came up to me and asked if he could stand in front of me when the doors opened to meet the Saroshi ambassador. I asked him if something was the matter and he just replied that he had a funny feeling about the whole thing.

When the doors to the shuttle bay opened, the ambassador entered the Bucephalus the same way he had for the past two weeks, surrounded by his nine bodyguards. Except of course, this time the bodyguards had their weapons unholstered and their rifles levelled at us. The ambassador had this wild look in his eye, ranting about how my hour of reckoning had at last come at hand. One moment the ambassador was having his moment of megalomaniacal ranting, spittle flying from his lips.

The next thing I knew, the ambassador had a handmaiden standing behind him, one of those thorn-swords jutting out of his chest. I'm used to the speed at which Eldar move and even with that in mind, I have to say, the followers of Isha and Cegorach are fast.

While I had been meeting directly with the leaders of Sarosh, the Handmaidens had made their way to the planet's surface by their own means and had been discreetly conducting their own investigation of the planet's population. What they found was rather disturbing. The inhabitants of Sarosh were, to put it bluntly, Chaos worshippers, and they were itching at the opportunity to take revenge against the man to openly defy the Ruinous Powers and the goddess who would spurn the affections of the Plaguefather. The ambassador himself had even been ritually prepared for the role, having accepted a major blessing from Tzeentch in exchange for the chance to strike a blow against the most hated foes of Chaos. The blessing not only prevented anyone from reading his mind, but even worse made psykers think it was absolutely normal that they couldn’t do that unless directly told otherwise.

“The Handmaidens reported their findings back to their mistress and their leader told the whole story to Constantin, which is how the Custodians knew. Those two always shared everything with each other.”

“Pardon me,” the plutarch said, “I don’t mean to interrupt a good story, but that reminds me of something. Where, might I ask, was the Empress during all this?"

"Ah, funny thing about that. She was down in the cargo bay, disarming the bomb. See, the insurgents had realized they needed a back-up plan in the likely event that Plan A failed. So they sent a re-wired cyclonic torpedo aboard, tried to disguise it as one of our own. While we were focusing our attention on the assassins, the torpedo would have detonated and killed us all. Crude but effective. It might have worked, if not for one thing."

"Which was?"

"It turns out the capacitors of a cyclonic torpedos don't work so well when they have a solid centimeter of Eldar rinnweed growing between the two conductor plates."

“The story, unfortunately, doesn’t have that happy of an ending. The Handmaidens and Custodians dealt with the intruders easily enough, but the planet was another problem. The Saroshi were gearing up a massive Chaotic ritual designed to pull a massive number of daemons into realspace. We ended up having to Exterminatus the planet to stop it in time. No amount of ancient technology was worth creating a massive, active Warp rift right in the middle of Imperial space. And even then it was hard to tell what tech and what were really “blessings” from the Ruinous Powers. I have my suspicions that the high level of technology the Saroshi had were either Chaos-derived or due to their leaders bargaining with the Ruinous Powers for sanctuary during the Age of Strife.

I learned two things from the whole debaucle. The first being you can never be too paranoid when it comes to diplomacy with unknown powers.”

“And the second?”

“Never underestimate your wife,” the Emperor said flatly.

Milady," a voice said from behind the plutarch, "the inspection is complete."

"What the devil?" He exclaimed.

"Ah, Galadrea," the Emperor said. "Glad you could make it".

He should have known Galadrea would have chosen that moment to intervene. Galadrea had always been as humorless as Valdor but she did have a bit of a flare for the dramatic. He had noticed the green-clad Eldar enter the room, but aside from Isha he was perhaps the only one to do so, the rest of the occupants too fixated on his story to notice. The fact that she had entered from the one direction where no one else could have directly seen her only furthered the Emperor's suspicions that she had chosen to make her entrance as dramatic as possible.

“Plutarch,” the Emperor said, watching the man continue to sputter in confusion, “I would like to introduce you to Galadrea, Head of the Handmaidens of Isha. Now, Galadrea, I believe you said you had something to report?”

“We found no signs of Chaos corruption. No worship of the Ruinous Powers. There are the usual issues, crime, poverty, but no more so than any other Imperial world. The world is clean.”

“Well, there you have it,” the Emperor told the plutarch, “A clean bill of health from the acolyte of a literal goddess of healing. You have nothing to worry about.”

"Thank you, Galadrea", Isha said, "You may go now."

The Eldar gave a curt bow and then left as silently as she arrived. The source of his shock eliminated, the plutarch gradually managed to calm himself back down.

“Well, that was a bloody good story, but that doesn’t really answer my initial question. Sorry for asking, but you don’t get answers of what happened during these things straight from the horse’s mouth every day you know. You hear so many rumors but it’s hard to believe even half of them are true. I’d still like to know what really happened during the Raid. And what about that whole hulabaloo with the ork diplomats during the War of the Beast?"

Internally, the Emperor sighed. It was going to be a long day.

</div>
</div>

==A Necron's Duel==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

Obyron met Imotekh on the great plaza outside of the palace, an expanse of finest marble over a mile wide. He stood and watched, a modest honor guard flanking him, as Imotekh's ornate barge descended from orbit. It came to a silent halt hovering a meter over the stone and Imotekh's honor guard marched down the ramp in inevitably perfect order, far larger and more ornate in full ceremonial apparatus. Behind them strode Imotekh himself, towering above the lesser Necrons of his guard, scroll marked with the physical seal and hologramic codes of the Silent King in one hand.

"I come bearing a message for the Nemesor Zandrekh from the hand of his liege the Triarch Szarekh," Imotekh intoned. "Where is he? The message is to be delivered to him personally."

"I am Lord Obyron, empowered by my liege Zandrekh to speak and act in his name," Oberon replied. "I may receive the message as though it was delivered in person."

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Imotekh responded by releasing the scroll, which unrolled itself while hovering midair. The scroll projected columns of shimmering glyphs from its surface, carrying the force of the Silent King's will like a physical blow, subliminal command codes embedded in the hypertext.

You are commanded, it read, to travel to the court of the Triarchy and present yourself there to the Triarchs to renew all oaths of fealty, so that... Oberon needed to read no more to know the meaning. Submission and slavery. The command codes washed over him without finding purchase.

"No," he replied.

"You defy the will of Szarekh?" Imotekh asked.

"I do, and I challenge you to an honor duel to determine the matter."

Imotekh did not hesitate. "I accept," he declared, and in a flash of teleportation his ceremonial robes and scepter were replaced with warplate and warscythe. With the challenge issued and accepted, their respective retinues fell back to give them space, and a dome of glowing energy sprang up around the two Necron lords from the pavement. The duel was to the death; the force field would not fall until one or both of them were dead. Until then, they were in a little universe all to themselves.

The two duelists stood motionless for a long, frozen moment. Then they exploded into motion. The basic necron warrior may be slow to move and react; not Obyron or Imotekh. Equipped with the finest bodies necron science could provide, musculature that had more in common with railguns than anything nature had ever devised, they moved like lightning. Their strikes cracked the air like rifle shots, the edges of their blades breaking the sound barrier with every swing. A human observer, had there been one present, would have seen nothing more than blurs as the two necron lords traded blows. The shockwaves of those blows would have killed such an observer where they stood. Sparks showered across the arena as the exotic energies contained in their blades and armor clashed with every blow, and the marble glowed orange where they fell.

After long minutes of this rapid flashing violence, the two combatants stepped back from each other. Both Imotekh and Obyron were covered in dozens of cuts, all of them already healing as necrodermis flowed back into its proper place. Necrontyr dueling tradition had always placed a strong emphasis on allowing the enemy to get in a minor hit in order to allow yourself a more devastating counterblow. This tradition had been immeasurably reinforced now that their bodies were made of living metal instead of flesh and blood.

For all its tempestuousness, the exchange had merely been the opening bout as the two rival Lords sized each other up. Now, given a brief respite as they both strategized their next moves, neither was terribly impressed by what they had seen. In Obyron, Imotekh saw nothing more than an up-jumped street brawler, his strikes and parries devoid of subtlety or grace. In Imotekh, Obyron saw someone who, for all his mastery of the traditional forms, was unable to innovate and go beyond them.

Still, neither was about to underestimate the other. By unspoken agreement, the brief moment of stillness ended, and the two Necron lords charged once more.

They clashed for over an hour in inconclusive battle, untiring, neither quite able to gain an advantage. The end, when it came, happened in a matter of seconds.

Obyron's warscythe was of the finest quality, but Imotekh's was the very best that all the armorers of the Silent King could provide. The incredible intensity of the duel pushed even Necron craftsmanship to its very limits and beyond, and it was Obyron's weapon that gave out first. Blocking another thunderous strike the haft shattered just below the head, the blade spinning away and leaving Obyron holding nothing but a useless, sparking shaft. Without hesitation he dove to retrieve the blade, scooping it up from the flagstones. But even as he rebounded from his first great strike, Imotekh took swift advantage of the opening, and as Obyron turned back to face him, his blade was driving down. Obyron tried to dodge, was only able to move enough that the warscythe only took his arm instead of his life. The arm he guarded with was lost, but not the other, holding the broken blade.

Expecting the strike to be a killing one, Imotekh had overcommitted slightly; just enough to give Oberon an opening. He lunged, closing in an instant with Imhotekh to absolute minimum range where the two were almost breast to breast. Now, despite his missing arm, Obyron held the advantage. The warscythe, a much venerated two-handed polearm, was not a weapon for a knife fight; and though he was trained and experienced to the peak of perfection in the formal dueling styles of the warscythe, Imotekh had little experience in such close fighting. Oberon, on the other hand, had begun his career as a duelist in the gutters armed with a shard of broken glass. Now, he was truly in his element.

Imotekh tried to open distance again, but his single mistake had already doomed him. Oberon drove his shattered scythe into a gap in Imotekh's armor, right into his neck, and then severed it entirely. Imotekh's head fell to the pavement, his body remaining rigid and upright, until both were whisked away by the recall mechanism. The force field enclosing the dueling circle fell.

None of the assembled honor guards said a word; there was nothing to say that would not have been redundant or impertinent. In perfect unison Imotekh's retinue turned and filed back aboard their ship, which then rose into the heavens in the same perfect silence with which it descended. Oberon watched its ascent, hypertechnological eyes refocusing again and again to keep it in view as it rose hundreds of kilometers to reenter Imhotekh's ship in orbit. Then, a brief shimmer, and the ship was gone.

Oberon stood there for a couple of seconds more, then turned and strode back into the palace. He had an arm to replace.

</div>
</div>

==Ork Diplomacy==

Editor's Note: Needs to be adjusted, since it was decided Fabricator-General didn't die in the Beheading.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''
Deep in the heart of the Imperial Palace, decisions were being made that would affect a galaxy.

“Reports from Triton indicate that most of the moon has been taken by the enemy.”

“Give the order to all remaining forces on Triton to retreat. If the Orks take the outer planets of the Sol system any surviving assets will be blockaded on both sides, and we don’t need them cut off from the rest of our forces.”

“The facility on Cthonia has sent a message indicating some kind of combined Crone/Dark Eldar fleet has descended on the planet.”

“Alert the Fire Wasps and the 299th. Tell them the first chance they get finishing their current missions to head to Cthonia. They probably won’t get there in a while, but unfortunately we are short on free resources.

The room itself was large and spacious. It was a war room, with a large table in the center, currently home to the highest military commanders in the Imperium. At its head was the Steward, eyes closed and seated in an position that seemed almost meditative. He needed to focus. The chair he was sitting in wasn’t the Golden Throne. That little piece of Imperial heritage was sitting on a floor approximately four levels above him. The Steward wasn’t even sure whoever built that thing ever intended for people to sit in it. Instead he was sitting on a much plainer, comfier chair, albeit one built for his frame. He needed it. His mind was good, but he needed absolute concentration to process the sheer amount of information necessary to organize the Imperial war effort. He had to make the right decisions, the lives of millions of people hung in the balance, and ridding his mind of any kind of external distraction helped.

“Intelligence indicates a portion of the main Ork WAAAGH! is diverting from the main fleet. Projections say it seems to be heading to Molech…”

“Enough,” he said, having finally reached his limit.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The Steward opened his eyes, looking at the three dozen or so concerned faces surrounding him.

“Give me five minutes. I need to take a break.”

With some consternation, the assembled military commanders of the Imperium stepped back, allowing the Steward to get up. Rubbing his face, the Steward walked out of the room and kept walking until he reached a small balcony overlooking a small garden in the Imperial Palace that was mostly untouched by all the excitement. He could feel the tension in the air. People were already anxious over the current state of the war, and recent events had only made things worse, to the point that the Steward had assigned the most significant members of the Imperium bureaucracy a Custodes bodyguard whether they wanted it or not. Truth be told, the Steward was starting to feel the stress eating away at him as well. He hadn’t had decent rest in over a month. Although he didn’t need the sleep of a normal human, even he was reaching his limits. He had spent most of that time sitting there in the war room, exploiting his ability to process information as best he could in order to organize the defense of Old Earth and its surrounding planets. He swore, if he had to sit in that chair for one more minute it was going to be the death of him.

Oscar, last of the Men of Gold, Warlord of Earth, Steward of the Imperium, was not having the best six months. To be honest, things hadn’t been going well for quite some time, what with the whole galaxy-spanning war going on, but the last six months or so were particularly bad.

First, there was the treachery of Grandmaster Drakan Vangorich, who in addition to being a master of the arts of assassination, it seemed, had a terrible sense of timing. One would think that one would wait until after all human life wasn’t under threat of being wiped out by Orks and corrupted Eldar from the Eye of Terror to spring their attempt to assassinate and replace the High Lords of Terra with their own puppet council. The Steward had found it necessary to leave the war room to personally deal with that. Four High Lords and numerous high ranking figures of the Administratum were dead at a time which the Imperium could ill-afford their loss. The loss of the Fabricator-General was a particularly devastating blow. Oscar had liked the previous Fabricator-General, who had been remarkably open to cooperation since the Unification of Sol, whereas his likely replacement, Kelbor-Hal, was a bit flaky. At least it was better than the other possible option for Fabricator-General, Zagreus Kane, who had the personality of steel wool.

Then, the Orks had decided to one-up Vangorich by teleporting an Attack Planet in-between Earth and Mars. The Imperium knew the Orks were coming, they had been blazing a path through the Segmentum Solar and had been expected to arrive on Sol’s doorstep any day now, but to teleport past the fleets blockading the way to the Imperium’s heart and just appear in the Sol System was something no one had expected. To the Imperium’s credit, between Perturabo, Dorn, and a thousand other siege tacticians, the Sol System was one of the most heavily defended systems in the Milky Way, and as soon as the leering iron skull had appeared in the sky it was immediately fired upon by the Sol system’s defense network along with some of the best ships of Battlefleet Solar and the Phalanx itself. Nevertheless, the Attack Planet was undeterred by the assault, shrugging off point defense systems and Nova cannon blasts as if they were mosquito bites.

Nothing even seemed to slow it down as the Attack Planet advanced on Earth, and as the two planets got dangerously close to each other’s Roche Limits the Imperium realized with some horror that the Orks meant to ram the Attack Planet into Earth.

The situation had seemed hopeless until the Phalanx swooped in and rammed itself into the Attack Planet that had once been Ullanor at a fraction of the speed of light, creating a bright flash which for a moment even outshone Sol. Everyone had seen that. Oscar could have sworn he felt that, even though he knew no vibrations could be transmitted through space. After that, the hollowed out planet shot through the Sol system like a billiard ball before finally teleporting out of the system somewhere around Pluto. Someone, apparently a man based on the voxcast that had gone out from the Phalanx just before the insane stunt, had commandeered the 30 kilometer ship and ordered a mass exodus before taking a skeleton crew of the bare minimum of people necessary to pilot the Phalanx and ramming it into the Attack Planet, though no one knew exactly who.

Oscar stopped. The man had singly-handedly saved Earth and the entire Imperium, and no one even knew his name.

It would be child’s play to figure out who it was, of course, assuming they weren’t all killed by Orks first. They had his voice on record, giving the order to pick up the survivors right before the Phalanx rammed itself into the Attack Planet. Still, the fact that no one on Earth seemed to know who they owed their lives to was a sobering thought. He would have liked to think that single act had killed the Beast and saved the Imperium, but reports indicated that a significant number of lesser Rokks and Ork ships had survived the loss of the Attack Planet and were currently regrouping for another push somewhere in the Oort cloud. Estimates said they would be ready to make another push for Earth in a matter of months. At the same time the primarchs and their legions were gradually trickling back into the Sol system. Sanguinius and Vulkan were expected to be back within the week. Angron was already planetside. A few primarchs were not likely to be able to get back to Earth anytime soon. Lion El’Jonson was still trying to sort out his legion’s massive rebellion issues. Perturabo was in a coma for the foreseeable future. Guilliman, Horus, and Curze were all still trying to hamstring the Beast’s hordes.

There were even reports of eldar entering the system to reinforce humanity, courtesy of Eldrad and their allies among that alien race. Regardless of what Oscar wanted, it looked like Sol was going to turn into a battleground. Not for the first time since the war began, Oscar found himself wondering if accepting Eldrad’s crazy proposal to rescue Isha from Nurgle’s mansion had been a good idea. Perhaps the war would have been inevitable, Chaos was truly a threat to humanity and the Ruinous Powers never seemed to like the idea of something that they couldn’t control, but having seen the cost of directly antagonizing said entities part of him was starting to regret having made the deal.

Oscar was so lost in his thoughts that he almost didn’t notice the small Administratum scribe running up to him.

“My lord,” he said, clearly out of breath from having run the entire way, “I bring important news.”

“What is it?” the Steward said, silently wincing at being called ‘my lord’.

“Three diplomats have just touched down on the landing pad in Uralia. They seek an audience with the Steward of the Imperium.”

The Steward grimaced. It appeared Draco Vangorich wasn’t the only person with a horrible sense of timing. Just before the War of the Beast, the Imperium had been in negotiations with the Auretian Technocracy. The Technocracy was a highly advanced human civilization spanning multiple star systems, with several technologies that appeared to be based off of STC designs that were previously unknown to the Imperium. Right before the War of the Beast broke out the Imperium had been in negotiations with the Auretian Technocracy to bring them into the fold as a Survivor Civilization. Although the Auretians were a peaceful people and amenable to the idea of joining the Imperium, they were not going to just roll over and give in to the Imperium’s demands, and the negotiations over the conditions of them joining the Imperium and the concessions both sides were willing to make had been particularly intense. Unfortunately, it seemed that total galactic war was not enough to stop that debate from continuing.

"Great, more problems,” the Steward muttered, “Tell them they will have to wait; I’m kind of busy right now.”

"But sir. The ambassadors aren't from the Auretian Technocracy. They're from the Orks."

And in response to this statement, perhaps the greatest revelation in the War of the Beast since the appearance of Attack Planet Ullanor, there was only one thing the Steward could say.

“What.”

"Nuhnuhnuhnono. No. This is a bad idea Oscar, I can't let you do this."

"I'm doing this, Arik, whether you like it or not."

The two gold-clad figures, the last Man of Gold and the gilded man who had watched his back since the Warlord’s armies had first marched out from Terrawatt, briskly walked down the halls of the Imperial Palace. The Steward had given the order to let the Orks be heard and had told the Administratum adept to have someone escort the Ork “diplomats” to have an audience in front of the assembled military commanders of Old Earth in the war room. If the Orks suddenly felt they had something important to say he wanted everyone to hear it.

"With all due respect this is likely some sort of trap. Most likely a spy to send information back to the Beast or some kind of sabotage ploy. They're Orks. Diplomacy just isn't in their nature. Since when have the Orks ever shown any signs of higher intelligence?"

"When we found out they had built an empire at Gorro. When we found out that it wasn't the only one. When we found out they could organize themselves into a galaxy-spanning WAAAGH!"

Arik groaned, but Oscar knew that response. He had won this debate, for now.

Having reached their destination, the door slid open for the two men and the two entered the war room. As the Steward entered the war room from the side, he looked over at the numerous generals of the Imperium, who were debating the best course of reaction over the map of the Sol system and its immediate neighbors in the center of the table. In the Steward’s absence, they had picked up where the Steward had left off, arranging for the inevitable Siege of Terra, as the Fabricator-General had called it.

Chief among them was the short woman standing at the side of the table, who seemed to be taking the lead in organizing the Imperium’s defense during Oscar’s momentary break, mostly by barking orders at men that were nearly twice her size. Honen Mu, former Uxor of the Geno Five-Two Chilliad.

Honen Mu was far from the most imposing figure, the recaff-colored, dark-haired woman being no more than five-foot flat and probably weighing only forty kilograms soaking wet, but by Terrawatt if she wasn’t one of the best strategists that Oscar had ever seen. Give her a regiment of soldiers, and within a few days she would have them dancing on the battlefield. Hers and the other guy’s.

When the Imperium had first encountered the Chilliad during the Unification Wars, Mu was already at the point where the rejuvenants wouldn’t do much more than prolong the use of the Chilliad’s psychic powers, or cept, which eventually burned out some time during the Unification of Sol. Although most Uxors retired to non-combat roles after their cept burned out, Mu had proved talented enough that she not only remained in the Imperial military, but had actually gotten promoted. She may have lost the cept that made Uxors of the Geno Five-Two Chilliad so dangerous in battlefield-level engagements, but she hadn’t lost any of her wider scale campaign management ability. Mu hadn’t been using her psychic powers as a crutch, she was genuinely talented at strategy. In terms of long-term theater-scale planning Guilliman was probably her only equal, and Oscar hated to think of what the two of them would do if they ever decided to go at it to see who the best was. Probably destroy half a sector in the process.

“Mu,” he said, nodding to each of the generals in turn, “MaSade, von Asterberg, Temoc. How are things going?”

“The Imperium hasn’t fallen apart in the five minutes you stepped out to take a break,” Mu said, speaking for the assembled generals and administrators of the Imperium. “So I think we’re doing fair enough.”

“I trust you all heard the news regarding the visitors we are about to be receiving?”

“How could we not? Ork diplomats. Are you serious? When we it we made the messenger repeat herself just to make sure she hadn’t misheard something.”

On that note, the door on the far side of the room slid open with a hiss.

“And here are the figures of the hour,” Taranis muttered under his breath.

Three imposing figures strode into the room, led by another stuttering Administratum adept. There were three of them, a leader and two hangers-on, all heavy-set and ape-like in proportion. The two flanking figures were nearly seven feet in height, whereas their leader could probably look the Steward in the eye. The three were clad in simple robes, which obscured almost every feature of their body. If it weren’t for the reinforced leather armor on the figures’ joints and their leader’s three meter long iron staff, topped with a roaring metal Ork skull at the tip of the scepter, he would have thought they were kinebrach. The Administratum adept continued to gibber, though one would admit that would be the normal reaction to dealing with a figure twice their size.

“And…as you can see, the Steward is already here, awaiting your message,” he said, clearly trying to square away his diplomacy training with his natural fight-or-flight reaction, “Food and drink are available for all diplomats to the Imperium. And, of course, if you need an interpreter, all you need to do is ask.”

The lead ork reached up and pulled back his hood.

“Don’t need an interpreter. We tell you how to surrender, you surrender. Easy.”

The silence in the room was palpable. The Imperials all looked at the Ork as if he had just stood up and spoke Gothic. Which, to be fair, he had. Not just Gothic at that, Oscar grimly noted to himself, but fluent Gothic. Yes, the intonation sounded like it came from a tortured Grox, but there was none of the hesitation, none of the misplaced emphasis typical of those who spoke Gothic as a second language. The Ork spoke Gothic as if he had spoken it his entire life.

The Ork seemed slightly bemused by the Imperials’ reaction, as if he was taking pleasure into finally stunning the yappy humies into silence. Nevertheless, he soon seemed to grow annoyed by the continued silence. He had a job to do here, and if the humies wouldn’t start the conversation, he would.

“Oh come on now, don’t look at me like that. Name’s Bezhrak. Here as a diplomat, just like I said, swear to Mork. I even brought you a little gift as a...whaddya call it...a peace offering.”

The Ork reached into his robe and pulled out a shiny, dark object, hefting it across the table. It resembled a Custodian's helm but with a red, ponytail-like crest and a narrower face visor. Oscar recognized that helm.

Jenetia Krole's helm.

Oscar's eyes darted to the Custodian, noticing his hand was gripped so tight around his guardian spear it would have probably left finger marks if it wasn't made of auramite.

"Taranis," he said, voice level, though he wasn’t sure if it was Taranis or himself he was trying to keep calm.

“Fought good and hard this one did. Made some of our Weirdboyz heads explode just by being near ‘em. Course, even the best warriors can’t hold up when you’re being piled on by a few hundred boyz at once. Killed nearly fifty of us before they finally went down. We know you humans have some weird rituals you perform whenever one of your best warriors gets killed, so we thought we’d bring what was left of her back as a token of…

"You monster!" Arik exploded, "Have you an idea what..."

Arik was obviously about to go on some moral spiel about how barbaric the Ork's actions were, but he was stopped by a sudden larger-than-usual excitement-induced coughing fit.

"And what are you going to do about it, shinyboy, cough blood all over me?"

Bezhrak sneered, before apparently remembering something.

“Oh, that reminds me. A mutual friend wanted me to pass this along to you.”

The Ork drew a coin from his robes and flicked it at the Steward, the coin bouncing across the table a couple of times before finally rolling to a stop at the Steward’s feet. It was a gold coin, albeit one that had been heavily stained with dried, blackened blood. Human blood, ork blood didn’t stain that color. The Steward didn’t want to know where that blood came from. Embossed on the face of the coin was a symbol that was very familiar to the Steward.

The symbol of Ursh.

"And what is that?" The Steward said, eyes darting to the symbol like he had just spotted a venomous snake.

"Oh, that? That's just a gift from an old friend of yours. Couldn't remember the chap's name, he just kept going on and on about all his titles. Said he was busy dealing with the khan, the priest, the slave, and the sorcerer, but he just wanted you to know he was back and that he'd get around to seeing you soon enough.”

“I highly doubt you were sent here just to give gifts. You said you had a message from the Beast? What is it?”

“Want to get straight to business then. Respectable. All right then. The great Beast has you by the guts. Struggle, he’ll rip ‘em out. Surrender, and all you lose is your pride.”

“And that’s it,” the Steward said as dryly as possible.

“Well, you’d have to submit to Ork rule of course. We’ll even let you keep your homeworld, even though you took ours.”

All the mirth briefly disappeared from the Ork’s voice at that last line.

“Oh,” Bezhrak said, slipping back into the role of smooth diplomat, “One other thing. You tell us where the pansies are keeping the lead pansie that the other group of spiky pansies wants back. That gets them off our back and then, as far as we’re concerned, the war is over.”

“And what exactly would Ork rule look like?” the Steward said rhetorically.

“Oh I think you already know what that would look like,” Bezhrak said, a hit of smugness in his voice.

Indeed, the Steward did have some inclination as to what Ork rule would look like. When the Orks descended on a world, occasionally some of the local people would submit and worship them as gods, considering them agents of divine wrath made manifest. If there was one thing humanity seemed to excel at, it was convincing themselves to worship powerful natural entities as gods, something he knew all too well. Sometimes he really felt embarrassed by some of the things his species did. Those that the Orks deemed sufficiently Orky were allowed to fight alongside the Orks as cannon fodder, painting themselves green and firing autoguns into the air. Digganobz, they called themselves.

And the Steward had seen firsthand from the helmetcams of the Iron Warriors on Prax what the Orks did to those they deemed insufficiently orky. Turned into cattle, teeth knocked out and pumped up with steroids and growth hormones to the point that they could barely be described as bipedal, let alone human. Brains insensate to the point that all they could do is open their mouths upon stimulation by light to have nutrient-filled industrial hoses forced down their mouths. Personally it almost reminded him of the Slaugth.

Bezhrak looked around the war room. “So?” he asked, his expression basically screaming that he was surprised the assembled humans hadn’t answered immediately “Give up or die? Choose.”

The room remained deathly silent. Bezhrak looked back to the other orks, as if seeking affirmation that they were all seeing the same thing, before turning back to the humans.

“Don’t want to die? Last chance?”

The Steward broke the silence.

“I think you know our answer.”

Bezhrak sighed.

“Useless,” he said, “worse than snotlings”.

He looked over to his fellows, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

“No reasoning with humans. They’re just illogical. Break ‘em, kill ‘em, eat ‘em, they understand that. Try to talk to them in terms they understand, and they turn around and do the exact opposite. They say they want to live but try and offer that to them and all of a sudden they want to fight, which is fine by me, but…”

"Enough."

The Steward's voice was flat and monotone, low but just on the edge of hearing. Almost more felt than heard.

"You send us veiled threats in the form of gifts. You give us an offer that we cannot possibly fulfill. This isn't a peace offering. It's intimidation. What is the purpose of all this?"

Bezhrak snorted.

“You look down on us. Call us ‘barbaric’. Look at us being proper Orky and think we’re dumb, think you’re better than us. Because you’re ‘civilized’. But look at us now. Look at what the ‘barbarians’ have done. It’s not the ‘civilized’ folk of the galaxy who beat you back all the way to your home planet and come knocking at your door, now is it? We’re much tougher than you give us credit for. You push us, we push back. You hit us on the head, and we become more clever. You try to kill us, and we just come back for another go.

And look where being ‘civilized’ has got you. You lot just let someone walk right into your halls and insult you all right to your faces. But you wouldn’t dare harm ‘em. Because they’re a diplomat. I mean, after all, it wouldn’t be the civilized thing to do.”

The Steward stood, his hand grabbing the ear of the chair and snapping it with a loud crack. His face was a mask of stone, only his eyes showing the sheer anger burning underneath.

“I have, tried, time and again, to be reasonable. Tried to be optimistic, to assume the best in people. And I keep getting it thrown back in my face. Well then. Maybe it’s time I stopped being reasonable. Perhaps it’s time I get unreasonable.”

Bezhrak grinned, teeth and tusks bared.

“So what are you going to d…”

The Steward thrust his hand up in a claw-like gesture, palm facing him, the sheer psychic force stopping the Ork' retort in his throat. As if crushing an orange, the Steward slowly clenched his hand into a fist, the Ork’s body crumpling in time with the flexing of his fingers. As he died, the Ork screamed “WAAagh!”, like many of his kin. But it was a high-pitched, wheezing WAAAGH!, one that if people heard it would have sounded more like a cry of desperation than a battle cry. Though that may have just been the air being forced from his lungs. The Ork’s body burned with golden fire, spores erupting into golden motes before they could even hit the ground. If he didn’t know better, the Steward could almost have sworn he saw fear in those eyes.

The remains of what had once been the Ork known as Bezhrak hit the ground with a wet plop., both Orks and humans shocked by what they had just seen. Then the Steward snapped his head to look at the remaining Orks, methodical and almost robotic in his motion.

“I assume the rest of you are smart enough to carry a message?”

The Steward did not even wait for the Orks to answer.

“That”, he said, pointing at the fist-sized, leaking remains of the Ork on the ground, “That is my message. Go back to the Beast and tell him that is my answer to his demands. Now get out.”

The Orks left the room as quickly as they could, having seen what happened to their leader. The rest of the room looked between another, unsure as of what to do. Even Arik Taranis and Honen Mu seemed torn between whether they should come to the Steward's aid or leave him be. For most of the people in the room the Steward was their leader, and for many he was as close to them as a family member or a friend. However, they had also just seen their friend crumple a full grown ork into a lump the size of a beverage can. Finally, it was Mu who worked up the courage to break the silence.

"Are you...okay?"

Oscar took a moment to compose himself, taking a deep breath in and out. He had let his emotions get the better of him, and that was wrong. He wished Malcador was here. Malcador had known how to get through to him better than anyone else. It was times like this that he wished his adoptive father was still around.

“Yes,” he said, easing back into the role of stoic, unbreakable Steward of the Imperium, “I’m fine.”

“So what happens now?” Arik said, looking over at the remains of the ork on the ground. "It looks like diplomacy went about as well as expected."

“I don’t know,” the Steward said, once again feeling that gnawing feeling of uncertainty in his gut, “I just don’t know.”

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</div>

== Nails ==

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My eyes grow dim. My strength is spent. My rage is quenched. My blade is clean.

I was born in poverty, I think. Simple eyes of a child do not see clearly. Was it poverty? We weren’t unhappy. At lest I don’t think we were.

I can’t remember their faces any more. That’s a lie. I can remember their faces. I always will. Mother. Father. Sister. Brother. Grandmother. Uncle. We all lived together in one small home above the bakers shop. I think that’s what my parents were. Bakers. Not warlords. Not priests. Not great warriors or adepts or wizards. I wanted to be like them. I should have been like them.

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I don’t remember what happened to them. That’s a lie. I do. I do. Oh God I do. I don’t want to. If I do I am that screaming, weeping child again. No more. No more. Never again.

I was weak and tried to run. Better if I had run back into the burning home. Better to have ended there.

When the Warlord found me it was at the head of army like no other. All I had know of armies were cyber-flagellants and howling marauders spurned on by men with whips. But not these. They marched with eerie harmony and brought death with precision. No berserker charge, no frenzy, no bloodlust just the steady unstoppable wave pouring into Carthisisa.

I was a pit fighter. I murdered people for the entertainment of other people. They gave men the pick of the slave pens for my troubles. They expected me to indulge base urges. They wanted me to fall like them. Be a Not-Person. I picked for the sake of pity and charity of the most wretched and hopeless.

One of the giants came to my door and I stood before him, my adopted children behind me. I was big but he was a two head taller than me at the least and clad in armour like a tank. Expressionless eye lenses swept over me and mine and I prepared to sell myself dear. I don’t know how but I knew he met my eye through that helmet and he looked away and moved on.

Scholars like I am not sometimes say that history goes in circles. That things happen because they have happened. One tragedy only needing one just like it as cause for more. In that moment I felt the hateful wheel of fate wobble. I was still alive. My family were not enslaved, out masters were dead, we were free.

At the head of this army was the man who I would spend most of my life serving. I would give my life for the sake of my sons and daughters. I killed for him. I lead his soldiers. I became like the monsters he had set upon my masters. I gave my health and my sanity for him.

Why? Because he didn’t ask that I kneel. He demanded that I stand. That I never again bow my head to unworthy men.

I lived longer than I should have. Longer than I was expected. I watched my children grow up and become mothers and fathers and grandparents and eventually die. A few even managed to die peaceful. It seems a novel way to go. I will soon go that way, to no ones surprise more than my own. All bar one of my children are gone, one way or the other. I am told I have many descendants but I have not met them. They are distant to me but I wish them only goodness, to be and to have. Kharn is still with me. I remember when he was a snotty nosed child with scabby knees. He has grown and I am proud.

He is a new type of soldier for a new era. I am a relic of an old one.

I feel it now. I sit in my chair and I know that I have seen my last sun rise. My heart slows. My bones grow cold, but I feel warm. Though I am filled with darkness the light will lift me away.

I have regrets. I have lived too long not to. Few will mourn my passing.

I will not see the sunrise and that is good.

+++ Data-slate entry attributed to Angron the Red Angel, Primarch of the Warhounds +++

+++ Property of Carthissia National Museum of Posterity +++

[[Special:Contributions/204.210.204.209|204.210.204.209]] Those Nails you carried in your heart should never have been yours to carry. We will carry your name but those nails have been laid to rest [[Special:Contributions/204.210.204.209|204.210.204.209]]

> "Nails" Addendum made by unknown hand several years after acquisition of the Data-slate. Meaning has been of much speculation down the years but no conclusive answers of who or why has been gathered.

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</div>

== New Neighbors ==

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Ambassador Cyrus Kebede was not typically used to being summoned at such an unreasonable hour. No day in his opinion should contain more than one five o’clock. He knew it wasn’t the Por’s fault. The blue bastards had applied for a replacement Aun three years ago and were still waiting. Por’El Sana’ta Atha was doing the best he could with what he had. For one thing he was still and El when he should by all justice have been and O and that wasn’t making his job any easier, Acting O was a poor substitute for actual O. Especially with rival El’s on the register sheet. But truth be told O or not Tau biologically required less sleep than humans. Or at least less sleep than Ambassador Cyrus Kebede did, especially at the age he was with his grey hair and clicking knees.

Two lean and powerful Fire Caste stood before the door, splendid in their gear and menacing in their armaments as was proper. The inside of the room was… comfy Cyrus assumed. Or at least tried to be by Administratum style. Books around the walls, a desk, dark green leather chairs and carpet. He couldn’t be mad about it, not really. They got heir ideas of what was in style from what they saw on vids. Hw knew damn well that Tau had shot kneel-stools that they half knelt and half stat on and their desks were tables and much shorter.

The ornately decorated door parted and indeed he did see something that was of interest to him. The chair with it’s back to him was not as he had assumed as empty as it looked and a diminutive figure sat in it, covered in layers of old looking cloth.

“Oh” Cyrus said rather flatly. “Oh”.

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“You have met them? Good, that’s going to save us all a lot of time” El'Atha said. Clearly he was happy or at least relieved about something.

Cyrus hesitantly walked around to the front of the chair and let out an involuntary groan. “It’s a Hrud. Late juvenile, young adult judging by the size”.

“Wonderful, you have familiarity!”

“Sadly”. Ambassador Cyrus turned towards the figure in the chair several sizes too big for it, it’s feet hidden by rags but presumably dangling above the floor. “how many are coming?”

The hood of the heavy layered robes turned towards him, he caught a glint of what might have been compound eye and a voice like something slithering over a tomb a thousand years dry “Me. Me my kin. Me my folk. Other folk. Time is now of travel, time is now of move. Me my kin, others. We move. Need come here, need scurry, have night here, have places of night always here. Me my kin we Linger here”.

“Can we persuade you not to?” Asked ambassador Cyrus who was fully expecting a weeks worth of duplicate form filling by this time tomorrow. Or actually later today.

“Hold on, hold on. This is a Tau world, I invited you her for your experience, not to claim authority in the matter” said the water caste. It wasn’t an angry statement, they had known each other too long.

“Maybe, Maybe for me my kin. Not for others. We not asking. Can’t stop. Mirror Devils, Mirror Devils awaken from long sleep. Long time. We hide now for now. Hide in the shadows of others. Linger. Once we once built such worlds as this, now no more. Now Linger. Hide. Scurry far from light. Stay safe. Linger. So our Lord tell us. So we do. Maybe me my kin, maybe we leave if asked. Not others. They not me my kin. They come. Can’t stop”. The figure reached a hand further than expected, slowly towards the tea tray on the desk and from the overlong sleeves fell a carved bone totem. The sleeve retracted with the jar of honey.

“Is this a Migration?” Asked the increasingly old feeling Kebede

“Maybe. Maybe more yes. More yes then no. Other come. The godly but godless they build places to hide. We linger there. We linger here. Need to linger and hide”.

“Atha, my friend, I would advise that you don’t try to stop them. You won’t be able to if you tried”.

“Why is th-“ started the grey skinned tau.

Cyrus hoped that what he saw was an optical illusion. He really did no creature should be able to survive being folded 270 degrees on a horizontal axis and then folded in on itself like a collapsing house of cards. The creature vanished and the quill fell from Por’El Sana’ta Atha’s hand as they both stared in horror at the place the chair and it’s occupant had been.

“How did he do that?”

“No idea.”

“Is it teleporting?”

“No”

“Then he is still here but hiding”

“No. He’s gone. The door isn’t air tight”

“It hasn’t opened since you came in, Cy”

“Doesn’t matter. It will have folded itself thin enough to get between the door and the frame or under the door maybe. We don’t know how they do it”.

“Then how can the Empire-“

“Listen, my good friend Atha, there is an old saying amongst my people; Better in here pissing out than out there pissing in. This applies to the Hrud. They are only dangerous if cornered and they don’t take what will be missed. They instinctively try to hide and so will try not to be noticed by you and you people. If they are here the only way to stop them getting to the rest of your Empire would be to quarantine this planet for the rest of time. I suspect that’s not an option”

“It is most certainly is not”

“Then the Tau Empire is going to get a Hrud colony. Don’t worry the rest of the Imperium has them, even the craftworlds”.

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</div>

== Once More Unto the Breach ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

It feels like a warm fire but smells like the first fat drops of rain on deep summer dust. He remembered that smell from childhood, one of the few things he could. There was grass between his toes and the distant sound of surf on shingle, he raised his hands to his brow to block the sun as he looked towards the beach. His hands were not right. He remembered this day, one of the last perfect days of childhood summer before what seemed eternal war called him but these hands were not right. These were not the hands of children, these were hands of a warrior, gnarly, leathery, scared with crooked fingers on the right and the ends missing of the middle and ring fingers on the left. And the raven marks of his kin on their backs. Warrior hands. Soldier hands. Not the hands of a child, his old hands.

There was a hand upon his shoulder firm and strong but not unkind. He knew that hand and had stood in the presence of it's owner many times though he had not yet looked upon her. Death; she stood with him always. As a warrior of the Kraken Bay she was the deity he had to favour above the others of his tribes pantheon and in return she put her gentle hand upon him in silent benediction. She had been with him now as his longest and truest friend. His tribe were long dead and forgotten to history now, the land they once dwelt in made unrecognizable, he had outlived notions of kin reluctantly.

He looked towards the warm sun, the sound of the shingle and the sea. The smell of it on the breeze. The hand squeezed his shoulder slightly, welcoming, inviting him to turn around and come with her. He knew that with her was his children, his wife, his siblings, his parents and legions of people he wanted, desperately and painfully wanted, to see again.

CLANG!

Murmurings from the multitudes above for a moment, the comforting and more recent smalls of old socks, camphor, engine oil and a hint of beer fading into the blackness, the comforting blackness in the safe depths of his sarcophagus.

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The blade missed taking his head off by a worryingly slim margin and instead deflected across the crown of his helm with a deafening clang, a bestial howl of foam flecks and stink and a similar roar from Russ, Primarch and fellow Dog Soldier of the Sixth Legion, brought the axe down on it's head like the storm god Thukko. The Ambush was working perfectly, the orks had them completely surrounded when they sprang from the ground and dropped from the trees, now they could charge in any damn direction they wanted and still get some trophy teeth. For lesser men this would be stupid to the point of suicide but they were far from lesser men and the orks did not know who they were fucking with.

A large red creature hopped over the falling brute and clamped down hard on his left hand, he swiftly brought his right hand up to tear it off, taking finger chunks with it leaving the axe dangling on it's chain and swinging back up to his blood slick hand. Bringing the creature swiftly up to his mouth and dug his own choppers into it's head and biting out it's brain as his axe caught another green creature in a chin splitting upper cut. Plate and chain and flack steaming with the blood of the slain, heart thudding like a war drum on amphetamine, and all about the screams of the dying and the damned. This was living, this was the white hot living of a Dog Soldier in the Imperial Army.

And her hand upon his shoulder, her breath in his ear singing to him softly. Comforting. When the weight gets too much, when the pain is too much to endure, when he stumbled for the last time she would be there to catch him when he fell. She would wait for him, he was one of her flock.

CLANG!

The smell of turpentine, expensive incense and cheap air fresheners. Muffled and muted voices growing clearer and closer and more familiar filtering into his sleepy metal box. He didn't much care what they had to say, it wouldn't matter to him.

The grass was brown and grey now, the shingle blasted out of the beach, even the coastline was a different shape. He couldn't find his village to say nothing of his house. How could he bury his wife if he couldn't find her? How could he bury his children? The tears came freely now, great hacking undignified blobs of salt water mingling into the ash mud of the radiation burned grass. Seemingly of it's own volition his hand moved towards his belt to the simple home forged steel eating knife his father had given him an eternity ago, pride shining in his eyes as a humble blacksmiths son went off to be a noble warrior of the Unification. His father had been buried long ago. Buried properly, an apple pip in one hand and a piece of bone in the other and old mother Varða raising the family, the tribe of Kraken Bay, in song to the gods of a man who lived not just well but good.

Who would sing for his people now? For his wife and children and their friends and neighbors? There was only silence. He would join them in that silence. He felt the metal part his beard hairs. Her hand was on his shoulder, she would catch him and hold him close. He was one of her flock.

He had once charged through a literal garden of despair, in a Hell like no other to raid the halls of a mad god. At the time it had been the most horrific thing he had ever seen. He now had new and terrible perspective.

The knife was slapped from his hand just as it pricked flesh and drew the first drop of blood. Turning he half expected to see her face. In his grief he had not heard the foot falls of his Primarch and friend.

"Not like this, old friend. Not like this. Not by your own hand. Take that hate, take that sorrow, hold it crush it 'till it get hot and hold it 'till it burns. This that we feel; let it keep us warm on cold nights, let it fuel our retribution. I promise you this, for every sorrow they have inflicted on our people we we repay them, we will take a steep bloodprice".

He looked out to the sea, to the setting sun, and knew that no matter how long he lived the price would never be filled. Not even when all the stars burned red.

CLANG!

"Has he died in my absence" The voice was resonant and very familiar. If a chunk of depleted uranium could talk it would sound like that.
"A heart still beats in that chest, though whether he can be awakened now is a matter between himself and his old gods" This voice less so, it was a buzzing thing, half or more machine. Though not cold like stainless steel but warm and welcoming like burnished brass and polished copper. Feminine, if metal and machine could be. Not that he could care, it no longer mattered to him.

The voices grew more distant again, fading away before dreams of other times and old memories once more.

CLANG!

"Oi, you still in there?" It was the first voice, all lead and half-life "Is this a box with my old friend or is it a carrion holding coffin?"

CLANG!
CLANG!

That's what that insufferable noise was, someone was hammering on his shell! OF ALL THE IMPERTINENCE! Weren't the half-dead allowed some sleep? He crash booted his eyes and stood up suddenly, servos and pistons springing to powerful life, his fortress form standing up to it's full and terrifying height. Leithon the Wraithguard, jester of Cegorach, huntsman of Kurnous and fellow veteran of the Long War and the raid on the mansion.

"You can't be sleeping at a time like this. Do you know what time it is?" He asked standing there dressed in animal skins and paint made from marrow and egg white and ash and dust. "it's time for another adventure, are you ready?"

"Ready? Ready?! Bitch please, ready does not even begin to fucking describe it!" Bjorn stepped forth from his workshop berth like the footsteps of doom, adamantium fist raised high above his head as lightning crackled about his clawed fingers. Doubts and horrors of the past melting away for a time and for that time he was young again and full of fire.

"To the Great Hall, somewhere up there is ale worth drinking and a mug big enough for me to drink from and I have slept for far to long"

Some hours and some kegs later Bjorn settled down, the bloodclaws and greyhairs alike eager to know what had roused him from his long slumber. All eyes turned to the wraith guard and his animal skin and woad wearing cohorts.

"We hunt a strange breed of monster, a creature of primordial awfulness, born of ancient sins and vices, it skulks in it's lair of a world made into hell where my kin once dwelt and once called itself kin to my kind" Leithon opened his hand and formed a hologram of a fearsome creature. It might have been an eldar once but blessings of gods too terrible to contemplate had made it so no longer. "It is beyond me and my followers to land the kill but not so the fearsome children of Fenris" A cheer of agreement resounded through the warriors gathered round to see the image of the monster "it is cunning and it is powerful and it is evil beyond words. Who here wishes to visit misery upon it?" Another cheer, another drink.

"Then we leave at first light" declared the ancient Bjorn, Fellhanded warrior of Kraken Bay.

The moment the rays of the mourning sun struck the doors of The Fang the waiting wolves and huntsmen charged out into the snow and the dark pine trees where once a king had walked and vanished. Unlike that old and infamous king of antiquity for the most part they returned several months later, though most had new scars and a troubled expressions, at least the younger men did.

To the greyhairs and the hunters and especially Bjorn and Leithon such sorrows and pain were old acquaintances. More ale was drunk, meat consumed and acts of casual intimacy perpetrated when appropriate. In time the revelry died away. In time Leithon once more said his farewells to old friend Bjorn and he and his huntsmen went to find new game. In time Bjorn felt tired once more, the years settling heavily upon his shoulders and he made his way back to the tunnels beneath The Fang, to a comforting berth in a familiar workshop with the sounds of home murmuring from above and he closed his eyes once more.

He could still feel her hand upon his shoulder, comforting. His gods had not abandoned him, he would turn to her in time. Maybe a time soon and she would catch him when he fell. When the years got too heavy, the sorrows too deep. He was one of her flock. One day soon.

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</div>

== Omega Girl ==

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''"Eldar, like others sapients, pass from a vital period between the unconcerned childhood and the responsibilities of the adult age. During our teen years, we must cope with changes, biological, psychological and spiritual, that wreak havoc on all levels of our lives. Until this point, there are not many differences from others species with similar vital rhythms. But... Those differences create an abyss that other beings can´t understand. Eldars teens must cope with two maddening factors that define our society. The first is that our minds were groomed be the Old Ones to enjoy the thrill of battle, to soar over its chaos unscattered to their horrors and to process millions of factors in an instant... This great gift, is our greatest weakness, as we just can´t simply wind down. Emotions, urges, passion, instinct, pain, regret... An Eldar feels them with the same intensity and can become lost, a prisoner in his own mind. And here comes the second factor to our curse... "She Who Thirsts" that accursed false-god who claim entitlement to our souls. That being born of our own sins and hubris is always in the periphery of our lives. Mother Isha and the soul stones give us some measure of protection against that unnatural hunger but are nearly not enough. We in the craftworlds must restrict our own minds and emotions to have a chance of survival. That is the reason for the rigidity of our society and the Path System... Is so hard to understand that a young mind can feel overwhelmed, trapped between its urges and needs?. We try again and again to make it easy for the younger generation... but not always succeded. Sometimes we fail and a young mind is lost."''<br>
---From The Living Chronicles of Féin-Cineálan. As written by Osurad---

The Council Chamber was closed to procedures, only Osurad, Farseer of the Féin-Cineálan Enclave and Lynn Minwen, up-an-coming Musician are present. It was easy to differentiate them, he in his formal clothes, regal and not showering emotions and she... Being she, pacing wall to wall, nervous and altered.

"You can´t do this to me!"
"Interesting. Lynn, I don´t feel that the time has transformed enough to accept that perspective of my reality."
"Cut that Farseer crap! You can´t force me"
"Hmm... Your vulgarization of the High Tongue is appalling. I think that less time loss in human-derived holofilms and more in your studies must be enforced."
"..."
"Well, it seems you are learning. One of the things I want you to understand is that it wasn´t me who decided in this course of action. The council AND your parents were consulted, and after a long deliberation, it was decided that you need discipline and a somewhat more broad education. It seems that we can´t give you that, so... the Imperial Guard will open his arms to a new recruit."
"But... But I don´t want to! I must change Path and... and the Governor has invited me to a party! Half the nobility will be there to hear me!"
"I´m sure you can continue practicing your Moonlyre skills as a hobby. And the Nobility can understand your little tenure in the Guardians."
"That... That is... This is... a witch's hunt! I´m not The..."

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

There was a little change in the stance of Osurad. Just a change of weight and balance. For a human it was barely perceptible and inconsequent, but for an Eldar? It was the same as he shouts in rage. She stops in her pacing and shut up, quickly putting the hands over her mouth on instinctive fear. He walks slowly to the young Eldar, towering over her, and obviously displeased.

"Lynn Mynwen, don´t dare mention that title in our conversation! You talk about The Fall without respect! You talk about our lack of integration with the humans without knowledge! That end now! This is not about some childish prank! You, my child, has let a group of strangers roam through the security of this Enclave!"
"But, they are the Inquisition! They are the good guys!"
"The good guys!? You believe that I'm going to swallow that excuse! You know nothing about the Inquisition! I foresee their arrival and informed The Council! Whether you want it or not, the security protocols stand for a reason! Sigh... The sad part is that you don´t help them for a service to the community. You do it only to have some "Fun""

Lynn stood there, silent, adverting the Farseer gaze. Then slowly turn back and begin to left the room. As she crosses the door, half-crystallized tears begin to fall her cheeks. Her mind was in turmoil, racing through the scene again and again, and during a moment the mind barriers constructed during thirty years weakened, letting her hear the howling of Slaanesh. She barely registered the embrace of her parents and their words of comfort as they slowly guide Lynn towards their home.

Sometime later, she recovered from her grieving trance in her home, sorrounded by her parents arms. Slowly, to no break their own meditations, Lynn disengaged the mess of members and left. She needed to talk to somebody that doesn´t judge her, that listen to her, to a friend. And she can seek it in the form of Caellatyra, the only other girl of her age, currently serving her novitiate in the Isha's temple. As she cross the temple doors, a little kid runs to her legs and grab them. Fortunately, the All-Mother has given her people the reflexes to prevent the two to collapse in a heap. Giggling, the pair begins to play, trying desperately to exceed one another in the tickle fight. All this end when the little kid is raised to the heavens as Caellatyra take charge of her rambunctious ward.

"No... Let go! Want Ly!"
"Shh... Kaenel you are going to awake the other kids."

Half smiling, half sniffling the kid let the young priestess take him to the creche. As they walk the temple´s hall, Lynn reflected about being a priestess. For some time she(Like all girls) toyed with the idea of join Caellatyra, but in the end, she choose to not. The problem was, that she did not see herself popping child after child in existence. Her friend on the contrary, not only wanted a family, is that she has been blessed be Isha with the sort of body that humans dig. Finally, the trio reaches the creche and tuck the little Kaenel. After some moments the kid falls asleep and the young women begin to talk.

"Well Lynn, in the end, what is gonna be your punishment"
"Hm... They are going to exile me and erase my name from the Chronicles."
"Lynn don´t joke about that."
"I am only half-joking. They are going to send me to the Imperial Guard."
"Hm... And the problem is?"
"What!? I am a political exile! They fear my ideas!"
"Lynn can´t you take it seriously?."
"Ok, ok, but you must do the same!"

Caellatyra stands there a moment, looking to the sleeping children. Then walk to the altar and slowly pass her hands over a series of whraithbone effigies, as she offers a prayer for the lost lives, green flames illuminate the psyco-reactive material.

"Why do you think the IG is so bad?"
"Ugh... Is not that I think bad about the service, is just... That I don´t want to be forced to go."
"The most probable outcome is that you pass the next years doing guard duty. Even without being sent now, you must eventually join the Guardians. You can always return to the Musician Path. So... What is the difference now than in twenty years? Especially that now we are in relative peace."

Lynn sit there observing her friend and thinking in silence. Caellatyra meanwhile was silently congratulating herself as her words have finally induced an epiphany in Lynn. Finally, she answers the question.

"Because I want to be different. Sigh... My parents don´t talk about their service. They lost friends and saw literally millions die. All that to let us have some sort of future. And that is important! But when they return home, after the war, they changed Path and breed like humans until fathered me. And the weirdest? They act like that part of their lives wasn´t special, mostly because they live with fear. For Slaanesh, their emotions, the future etc., Etc., Etc. When I meet those humans, it was, I don´t know who to define it. They were different... They were... Different... Hm?"

As her friend fall silent again, Caellatyra serene expression change to one of horror.

"Oh no, Lynn! No! That is a horrible idea!"
"What?! Come on, I think it resolves everything! I will left and do something for the Imperium. It will be fun and after my return, I will be a heroine! Nobody will ever question me!"
"Look, Lynn, the Inquisition is not a game!"
"Of course not, but they don´t have a dress code! Is a win-win situation!"
"Dress code? Lynn! This is serious!"

Caellatyra drops the wise and serene priestess visage and was grabbing Lynn by the shoulders. Her friend was again losing herself on a whim.

"Lynn, please! I beg you to rethink this!"
"Hm... No!"

Lynn disengaging from her friend grasp, and giggling, begin to dance around the chapel. A mortified Caellatyra stand there, looking with apprehension her mad friend.

"Lynn can you stop to do that. Sigh... I don´t like your jesting."
"Nope! This deserves a dance! I have accomplished my goal to make you lose your shit!"
"Sigh... You see too many human holos. Lynn, I´m sure that Osurad will rethink his punishment if you talk whole-hearted to him."

Lynn stops and looks to her friend. Suddenly she feels revitalized and smiling, hugs Caellatyra, leaving afterward for her home. But she wasn´t going to talk with Osurad, her parents or any other stuck ass grow up. Nope. She has made a decision. She was going to be a heroine and then nobody is going to tell her how to live. So... He needs a plan... Well, she is a supersoldier, what will Loriel Zig do in the same situation?...

Epilogue:
Osurad was trying to meditate in his chambers. The news has altered his mental focus, and the paths to the future look altered. Somehow Lynn Minwen has passed beyond the curfew and left as a stowaway in Inquisitor Hand´s ship. Her parents were griefing, half the enclave was angry to the disparagement of the runaway girl, the other half was actually glad that the troublemaker has left, and the poor Caellatyra has been admonished for her lack of vision. But that was predictable, the sort of reactions that people make when they lose their focus over the truly important questions. Who, a girl know to all, pass beyond the Guardians without notice? Who, a girl without training, sneak in a ship secured by the Inquisition? Who?

Slowly, the ancient runes begin to dance before him, colors, forms, and more indescribable things were shown to his powerful warp-senses. The carefully crafted future of Lynn has been changed, and new paths formed, leading her beyond his grasp. But where? He pushes, but something powerful, different and... Alien, seems to grow in her Path. Tired and frustrated, his mind returns to the material world and proceed to analyze the now static symbols. "Dead" "Born" "Cry" "Cell" "Snake" and... "Eldrad"

Continued in [[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#Alpha_Bitch|Alpha Bitch]]

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== Pathlost ==

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“Why are we here?”

The question surprised Keir to such a point that he stopped stitching the open wound. “Pardon?”

Long and vibrant lavender hair parted as the Eldar woman, Tal’hina he had come to know, turned her head to look partially over her shoulder.

“Why are we here Guardsman? You are quite lucky our band managed to spot you alone. I’m curious as to what could have driven you so far from your lines, especially with a group of Orks on your trail.”

Keir hesitated for a moment before focusing on treating Tal’hina’s wound. They had found cover in a cave thankfully and his pack lights were powerful enough to allow him to work at least basic first aid. Tal’hina had mentioned something about other warriors of hers that guarded the entrance to their hideaway. Keir hadn’t seen a trace of them though.

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“I promise you it wasn’t cowardice that drove me out here.” Keir finally formed a response as his fingers worked deftly. He was wondering just how far he should go with the truth. He was among allies at the least, but what drove him on this battlefield was extremely personal.

“I was… in charge of escorting a civilian band.” Keir tried to keep his tone steady. “They had been forced underground by the initial Ork invasion and we found them locked in a sub-basement. We weren’t told to expect ambushes so far behind the front-.”

He stopped to reach for the anti-septic again, one could never be too careful with Ork and the wounds they inflicted. Tal’hina was quiet throughout his explanation. He wondered if she believed him at all. It was unsettling to say the least, like he was trying to explain his case to an Arbiter judge.

“So you failed?” Tal’hina spoke suddenly, catching Keir off-guard. He did not answer which prompted Tal’hina again. “I find you alone and beset by Orks from all sides, not a single civilian or other human soul in sight or sound, so your mission was a failure I presume?”

Keir supposed he should feel some sting of anger or reprisal. Instead he felt numb; perhaps it was the pain suppressors the Eldar woman had given him when she had healed his wounds or maybe it was just a stark realization that in some way he did fail. He finally answered in a subdued tone.

“I don’t know honestly. I was cut off almost immediately and forced to fight for my life. The soldiers I had were good, but…” He trailed off as he realized he had finished closing the wound. He tapped Tal’hina on the shoulder as he set himself heavily against one of the cave walls. She turned with entirely too much grace for how injured she was supposed to be to finally look at Keir face to face. The small smile she wore spoke of consolation, or was it haughtiness? Keir had never any Eldar before today so he wasn’t entirely sure. He quickly realized she was still expecting some more of an answer and stammered one out.

“The soldiers were good and the civilians were survivors. They would have made it out alright.” Keir turned to regard his shredded and not empty medical tote bag. He was beginning to feel the inkling of shame crawl into his mind and wanted to look anywhere but at the Eldar woman.

He heard a small hum come from Tal’hina. She had seemed to decide something and turned to look away from Keir. This sparked something in his mind that caused him to start speaking with a rising volume.

“No matter what you think of me, let me make one thing perfectly apparent. I’ve had countless people from almost every walk of life go through my hands as a doctor. Many of them have died, because I wasn’t fast enough, or they were killed before I ever reached them, or some random accident of happenstance. Every one of their lost lives live on in my mind; I see the last fleeting moments of a thousand different people flash through my head every time I’m called on to help those in need.” Keir spoke as evenly as he could, but the loss of his voice did not help in his efforts to explain.

“Even if I wanted to forget them, I would not allow myself to. I have been forced more times than I wish to remember to allow some to die so more may live, and the choice doesn't become any easier.” Keir was no distinctly aware of his eyes become more blurry. “All I ask Tal’hina, whatever you may think of my decisions, is to not patronize me. I try to work every day to make up for my mistakes; I could not live with myself otherwise.” Keir finally clamped down on his mouth by biting his tongue. He was close to fully spilling out into a tirade but ultimately managed to school his swirling thoughts and quiet his fears about what had happened to the civilians who he was charged with protecting.

“...I promise you, I will do everything in my power find them and ensure their safety; that is my mission. There is no other alternative for me.”

Tal’hina muttered under her breath. All Keir could make out was something about being lost but he could not be sure. Tal’hina locked eyes with him. He could not tell what she was looking for in his own eyes, but he was startled at the simultaneous steel that spoke of a warrior and silent worry that he had seen in so many of his more idealistic medic-brethren.

“Is that why you walk this path then; to try to help the helpless and save the damned?” Tal’hina asked an almost soothing tone, turning where she was sat so now she fully faced Keir. The look of confusion from Keir at the question let loose a small laugh from Tal’hina. It was a sound that Keir admitted was quite breathtaking, internally of course.

“I meant if that is why you are a healer? Your equipment and heraldry mark you as such.” Tal’hina kept that small smile as she regarded Keir. “Our path is not an easy one, and there are easier ways to fight for your people, so I’m curious as to what drives you.”

Keir didn’t know what to make of the question. This whole situation had grown far beyond what he could have imagined not a few hours ago. Then again he did owe his life to this woman. He figured he might as well indulge her and himself in speaking.

“I don’t recall much, only the festering odor. I still don’t know what they were, what they wanted, where they went, all I can remember is that terrible stink.” Keir felt strange dredging up a very old memory, but it felt like a much needed venting from his current emotional turmoil. Tal’hina quickly lost her smile.

“A minor chaos incursion, or so I’m told; I was quite young then, young enough that the memory of it stands out as some of my earliest. I remember trying to help but I could scarcely keep myself calm let alone assist in treating such disaster. It was then I decided that it was not enough to fight. So many of the garrison there fought and they died doing their duty. I knew I needed to do something more than just pull a trigger.”

Keir slowly made his way shakily to his feet. Tal’hina followed so that both of them stood apart from the other. Keir was surprised to find themselves equal in height, although the fact that Ta’lhina was not wearing most of her armor was not lost on him.

“So I decided I would try and help people through healing. Where else would that need be the largest than with the Guard? I enlisted as soon as I was able and have been walking this ‘path’ ever since.”

He started retrieving his equipment as Tal’hina was content to simply watch him as she seemed to be trying to judge something for herself. She regained that smile of hers and spoke.

“You are considerate to bear these questions of mine, and I don’t think I have properly thanked you for your own assistance to my wounds. So, properly now, thank you and know that you have gained the gratitude of Tal’hina of Yme-loc.” She dipped her head towards Keir who made no attempt to respond to the gesture. She brought her head back up and began to gather her own equipment and reequip her armor gingerly.

“Rovenko.” Tal’hina turned while continuing to adjust her armor and stared in apparent confusion. Kier spoke again with a bit more surety. “My name is Kier Rovenko, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Tal’hina nodded again, seemingly satisfied in the information, before turning back to her armor.

“So why do you follow this path?” Keir could not resist asking. Tal’hina stopped abruptly in adjusting a greave and turned to look at Keir again. “It is tale woefully similar to your own I would say. My most prominent memory of my decision was the sound of the dying and the anguished.”

Keir averted his eyes from hers. “I apologize, I did not mean to drag up-“

“It does not matter,” Tal’hina interrupted him, “You have been more than accommodating of my own inquiries, so there is no reason I should respond in kind. Although you will also forgive me for being as elusive in my answers as you were.” Keir swallowed a small lump that had suddenly caught in his throat. He turned back to see the full regalia of an Eldar warrior, armor he did not recognize, covering Tal’hina’s lithe frame all besides her helmet which she held couched in her arm.

Both healers gathered themselves and moved toward the entrance to their small hideaway. Tal’hina, her face now covered by a full helmet, turned to Keir.

“Are you well enough to perform your duties?” Her voice rang clear despite the now electric twang it had. Keir rested his hand against the grip of his las-pistol as his eyes adjusted to the natural light again. He could finally make out the burnt orange form of a set of guardian armor standing guard just a small ways from the entrance.

“I’m still breathing aren’t I?” Keir allowed a smile of his own at Tal’hina’s metallic laughter. Maybe she was impressed; maybe she was just amused at his dogged pursuit. Either way he had found that sound of laughter to be comforting. The set off in step with the other, both of them ready to go back into the fray once again to hold death itself at bay.

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== The Rant ==

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"This was our galaxy once. The Old Ones, the predecessors those that made us, left it in our care. It was ours to tend. Reward, for all that we had suffered in our war against the Yngir slaves. Entire generations, entire histories, entire cultures were lost in that dread war, but this, this was our reward. Freedom, and an unblemished canvas to write our fate upon it. We were stewards of life, the victors over death, and we were told not to waste it."

"And we didn't. We flourished, taking barren rock and tainted ground, and making fertile and green pearls of them. We made such works of art, such wonders of technology. We even made gods. For millennia, we worked, honed our art, and at every turn, brought life to this scarred galaxy. We had peace, as strange as that sounds today. It's a distant dream, isn't it? But you know it's there, that it's possible. You feel your spirit rise at the very thought. We had peace."

"But then we had the Fall. And it was all lost."

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"Every eldar that is taught our history- even, the warped and half complete history of those led astray by the dark gods- is struck by that. Here, here is our people at their peak! We are surrounded by their works, the very galaxy owes its life to them in their power, but yet, we lose it all in a matter of years, reduced to this shadow of ourselves? How could this happen?"

"Arrogance, my child. Arrogance blinded them so far back. Arrogance of a few, that sought power at the cost of the many. Even, at the cost of their very gods. We were at the very cusp of ascension, when those, the fanatics, the usurpers, the primitives out of fear and envy destroyed the greatest work of those halcyon days."

"They tried to make a miscarriage of the birth of our greatest hope. The distillation of all of our gods in to one, purer being. Our Child Goddess, Slaanesh."

"The birth cries were terrible. What should have been a moment of joy and celebration would prove, with the treachery of the usurpers, traumatic. A great storm of pain tore the warp asunder, as eldar turned against eldar, brother against sister, mother against son, all for what? A handful of dirt balls the exodites call planets so you're free to freeze in mud and gnaw on roots. Flimsy scraps of wraithbone drifting the void called craftworlds, where you can have your fate decided before you are even born by the dead that rule. And that pathetic pantomime of glory in Comorragh, where they pretend at the past that's dead and gone. What glories have those rebels have earned? What proof of righteousness do they have in their miserable lives? They have turned their backs on Slaanesh, only to suffer under the lash and call it freedom."

"Thank the Many-Gods-in-One that they did not succeed in circumventing our child goddess's ascension, or we might all be trapped under their rule. Slaanesh is mighty, but her might is tempered with kindness. She waited patiently on the other side, in the dimension unbounded, waiting for the souls of her wayward children to be reunited with her. She did not snuff them out, though they truly deserved it. She did not hunt them down, though they wished her dead. She kept her arms wide open for them, ever welcoming their arrival."

"And then came the mon'keigh. And their insult."

"How gullible are those that lay outside? Short lived, murderous, stupid, and unworthy creatures come to them, and whisper poison in the ears of those already poisoned. They whisper of raiding like a band of thieves in the immaterium, of stealing and murdering. They speak of defiling the realm of the gods, and these that dirty the name eldar smile and nod, that ancestral sin of greed rising in them again."

"Those misguided heathens outside begged for the collar of the mon'keigh on their necks, in exchange for injuring a goddess that only loved them."

"Isha? Is that so? They speak of Isha, long gone, returned to guide our people unto a golden age? It is a lie. Look upon the histories- all the gods and goddesses save Cegorach agreed to combine, to set aside their individual identities to unite and make something better of themselves. Through those thousands of years since the fall, no one spoke of Isha, except in the past. Through these thousands of years, eldar hands were not up to the task of rescuing her? Preposterous."

"Now, now they claim that Isha, goddess of health, the harvest, and life bearing was kept captive in the hands of Nurgle? This betrays the work of the mon'keigh to misguide and mislead you. The lie is at the root- the mon'keigh would believe our goddess, pure and strong, could be captured and caged like an animal by that brute Nurgle? The story betrays their own intent! Like this false Isha, they would want us caged by them, used by them, made slaves by them. The story of her 'rescue' is a lie to convince the unwary that the eldar are weak, and it is only with the help of mon'keigh they can do anything. It makes me sick to the think children are being raised to believe this, and to think themselves less than mon'keigh. Trying to indoctrinate us into slavery."

"But they did attack a god that day- the mon'keigh and the false eldar. And they did perhaps even see Isha. Isha, as one part of the Many-Gods-in-One of Slaanesh. I was not there that day, but a comrade was, and he wept bitterly at the very memory of the sight. Slaanesh, in her radiance. In her glory. The innocent child god, looking curiously at these strangers that came to her. She smiled. Even among the black hearted and soul sick eldar infidels, some stopped and for a moment the truth came through. They fell to their knees and wept, tried to warn Slaanesh, tried to stop their fellows. They were slain by the mon'keigh, filled with bloodlust and eager to tear the flesh of the innocent."

"We counter attacked of course. Drove them back into the blighted materium, sending the cowards shrieking as soon as they faced something more than an innocent goddess. But the damage was done."

"Once it was, any eldar was guaranteed as soon as their soul left their body or the cruel soul traps devised by the craftworlders would be reunited with Slaanesh automatically. They would return to the child, and we'd be one step closer to divinity, and our heaven in the immaterium, when the eldar could claim the birthright of the old ones, and remake the unreality as we had remade the reality."

"But the evil ones broke that bridge. They severed one more strand of Slaanesh's goodness to your world. And now Slaanesh withers."

"The Child Goddess is no more. Innocence is no more. Denied the very love of her people, she withers and hungers. And she has learned from her mistake of trust. And we, in our sorrow, now must redeem our failing. The Crone Worlds must unite again, the masters of the warp must be awoken, and our goddess's due must be retaken. We can be patient no more as paradise itself is under threat. We can no longer wait for the misguided to realize their mistake, and come once again to the embrace of the Many-in-One. Our goddess hungers. And we shall feed that hunger. Just as we did so long ago against the slaves of the yngir, so must we do for the slaves of the mon'keigh."

"The War for Heaven calls. You shall serve- either in Her warhost, or as Her sacrifice. Either is better than your kind deserve."

-Unknown, Battle of Merr's Reach, speech given to prisoners.

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==The Saga of Fedor Jiao==

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''Homo sapiens navigo'' is a sub species of humanity that was once a necessary cornerstone of the Imperium, and mankind's proliferation throughout the galaxy. From generation to generation, from their pivotal position in society, they have gathered wealth and power that outshine even planetary governors. However, at the dawn of the 42nd millenium, they are now at risk of losing it all through eons of mismanagement, greed, and complacency.

Due to their genetic nature, Navigators are organized by great houses, vast genetic lineages carefully recorded and kept track of to keep inbreeding at a minimum. By necessity, they can't have new blood. The result of a navigator and a normal human produces a human without the dubious blessing of navigator powers. They may carry an abundance of less than stellar physical traits inherited from their navigator parent, but none of the metaphysical traits, and they are not a carrier of any of the traits. Though there are a great deal of genetic markers associated with the navigators, none of them seem to activate the legendary third eye. It's speculated that the atypical warp presence of the navigators may bear some manner of information that is past on to the infant, and that it is only the combination of two such warp signatures that can produce a third, or perhaps it's some form of Dark Age of Technology copyright protection for navigator reproduction that can't be cracked. Whatever the case, the navigator houses have cornered the market on those able to guide the way through the warp, and supply is limited, much to the rest of the Imperium's discontent.

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The foremost irritation is the arrogance of the navigators. Navigators have always held a very high opinion of themselves. They are necessary for any long range warp travel, and so have proliferated across the whole of human space, and reaped great wealth and prestige for their tasks. Somehow, the navigators manage to hold an arrogance beyond even their high station. To the irritation of those that revere the Throne and He That Sits Upon It, they consider themselves peers of the Emperor. In the minds of the majority of navigators, the parallels are obvious. The Emperor is a product of the Dark Age of Technology, so are the sub species Homo Sapiens Navigo. The Emperor has powers far beyond the normal man, and so too do the Navigators. The Emperor, by dint and right of these powers and his wisdom, rules. So, the Navigators deduce, must they. Most navigators take a benign attitude to this, content to live the pampered life of the ultra rich and enjoy generation after generation of accrued wealth. For them, the tedium of governance is something they should not suffer, but they take for granted that they shall be granted every luxury and consideration with none of the responsibility outside of ensuring vessels are guided safely through the warp.

Although many outside of the navigators criticize and deride their hedonistic attitude, it's worth remembering all navigators serve. From birth, navigators suffer from a host of genetic diseases and maladies as a side effect of the inbreeding necessary to preserve the powers that make warp travel possible. Their childhood is spent learning and memorizing star and warp charts for the routes they must work for the rest of their lives- charts which are notorious for failing to keep up with the realities of navigation. The demand for navigators has spiked severely as shipyards produce more vessels to respond to the various threats that besiege the Imperium.

Navigators are recorded to have been pressed into service at ages as young as twenty two, with only ten year's worth of training, and no practice on the safer routes closer to the Astronomicon (Which are generally crowded by the richer and more influential families unwilling to see their scions die on useless crusades). Navigators will spend years trapped in claustrophobic conditions, seeing horrors never meant to be comprehended by mortal minds, and painfully aware that the lives of thousands could be snuffed in an instant if they made a mistake.

Is it any wonder that the navigators have taken a bon vivant attitude? On every civilized world, the navigator houses have a presence, and they have a code: all navigators on shore leave are to be treated as family. Though later they may charge the navigator's actual house, when navigators go ashore they are denied nothing by their hosts. A celebration for living another day. These bacchanals can be truly hedonistic, at times even spilling beyond the navigator compounds to welcome any curious citizens in as alcohol, mind altering substances, sex, and other stranger diversions are offered freely. It's frowned upon to involve the common people however, as not everyone gets festive at such a gross display of wealth. If the arbites come calling, it can be truly expensive to clear up the matter, and if an Inquisitor's ire is roused, well, even the familial bonds of navigator houses have their limits.

In the face of the navigators flaunting their wealth, the fact that they consider themselves another species, the fact that they assume they're predestined to inherit their high status from birth rather than any deed, they rankle most of the rank and file.

The Emperor, for his part finds the lack of obsequiousness among the navigators refreshing, but does not let that color his assessment of the Navis Nobilite: An antiquated aristocracy that should be (gently) set aside as soon as the technology allows it. In the Imperium as a whole, there is a tacit acknowledgement that the Navis Nobilite will soon come to an end, or face a great humbling. Either from the eldar opening up the webway, the geneticists finally cracking the navigator code and permitting mass production of them, or some new technology from the Tau or Mechanicus, everyone begrudgingly tolerate the Navis Nobilite, feeling that someday, they'll get their comeuppance, and slide into the waste bin of history.

This assessment may change with the latest Paternoval Envoy.

The current Paternova of the navigators is Lustran-Gibb of House Nostromo, a once minor house that managed through a stroke of luck involving a rogue trader, to rise in ascension and place one of their own in the prestigious position of Paternova, the head of the navigators. An outrage to the other navigator houses, but one settled through a series of (questionably) legal duels with the other heirs apparent. Lustran-Gibb, after killing his rivals, was content to remand himself to the Navigator Palace on Terra, where he spends the majority of his time in an aquarium with rare marine life imported from across the galaxy. In a move of reconciliation, Lustran-Gibb left the selection of the Paternoval Envoy to the houses for a vote, and then secluded himself with his strange menagerie.

The navigator houses were not used to this. After the diplomatic but bloody takeover, most of their leadership lay dead as the result of ritual combat. And rarely did a Paternova ever deign to ask others to decide things. They might have thought it weakness, had they not witnessed the Paternova kill most of his competition bare handed.The houses feared a trap, and so, appointed someone they wouldn't mind see dead.

Within an hour, the reply came back, blandly approving. Paternova Nostromo was at the moment fascinated at the prospect of recovering the porpoise of the distant past from genetic samples found in an ark dug up out of Catachan. He read Fedor's name once, and then dismissed it.

Paternova Nostromo was only interested in the position of Paternova as it allowed him power and money enough to pursue greater heights of marine biology. The competitors he slew, the bargains he struck, the pleas to the emperor and the quests he and his house had undertaken, were all bent to this purpose. Paternova Lustran-Gibb Nostromo, despite his heinous power both physical and mental, had no taste for politics. To his understanding, the Paternoval Envoy would take care of that. For the great navigator houses, they had made the greatest possible miscalculation. Because Fedor Jiao was very interested in politics.

Fedor Jiao, after reporting to Terra, undergoing the anointing, and taking the great oaths and suffering quietly through the vast ceremonies, immediately bypassed the great banquet set for him, and reported to the Imperial Senate. Once there, he sat quietly through an interminable meeting, accepted well wishes and congratulations, and patiently waited until the agenda was clear enough for him to provide a list of names and evidence of smuggling operations that House Garibald, House Strahovsky, and his own House Jiao were involved with throughout the Segmentum Tempestus. For Fedor Jiao, though bewildered by his sudden rise, bore no delusion that the great navigator houses were his friends. He immediately sought allies through the rest of the Imperium to protect him.

For the next thirty years, the Imperial Senate suddenly had a great ally in Fedor Jiao as he performed a great house cleaning of the Navis Nobilite. Corrupt navigators that had knowingly looked the other way when their members served on pirate ships found themselves raided by arbite agents. The more jaded navigators that required darker thrills to entertain themselves found themselves at the wrong end of an Inquisitor's bolt pistol. Even the Paternova Nostromo himself received a visit from a detachment of Adeptus Custodes, as the Navigator Palace was searched top to bottom for hidden Xenos Terribilis, with proof of warrant that the Paternova signed dismissively when Paternoval Envoy Jiao offered it.

For the navigators, it seemed that Paternoval Envoy Jiao was their worst enemy. Devoted to ripping out corruption by the root, and sending the Navis Nobilite as a whole into disarray. Assassination attempt after assassination attempt was mounted on Jiao, but none got through. He was well guarded by the highest levels of the Imperium, pleased that Jiao was humbling the once arrogant collection of mutants.

It was more than just cleaning house. Jiao was working to rein in the absurd wealth and influence of the Navis Nobilite houses, while also trying to improve the lot of the common navigator. Controversially, he designated the safest trade routes to be opened to all novice navigators so they could get up to speed before being thrown into the fire blindly. He forcibly dissolved several trade monopolies held by the greatest navigator houses, providing much needed reform for trade in the Imperium. There was chaos, but for once, the Navis Nobilite seemed to have a brighter future.

Then one day, the Emperor himself summoned Jiao. Jiao answered those summons, and the door shut behind him, barred by the Adeptus Custodes.

Two hours later the Emperor requested a different Paternoval Envoy, and ordered a closed doors meeting of the Senate Imperialis in the Imperial Throne Room.

Envoy Jiao was diligent. He was devoted to mankind. To ending corruption throughout the whole of the Navis Nobilite, and to a greater extent, throughout the whole of the Imperium. He used to be like any other navigator, eager to live life to its fullest after the grueling journeys, so many lives in his hands, guiding through the warp. When he got to port, he feasted, he drank, he fucked, he enjoyed all he could of life like every other navigator.

But his other great love was astronomy. He had collections of charts, all kinds, dating back even to the days before the Imperium. He collected them, compared them, and sought to make his own grand map. As a young man, he had been frustrated at all the inaccuracies of star charts, and sought to correct those failings as an adult. It was an activity that brought him true joy, unlike the base pleasures of the flesh that were offered to him.

When the good ship Dauntless was attacked by corsairs, Fedor was certain he would die serving on his vessel. He felt the air slip away, heard the screams of the dying around him, and did his best to face death with dignity. But the corsairs were interested in him. When the eldar stormed the bridge, the lights were out- he saw flashes of power swords swinging, but nothing else when a hilt struck the side of his head, knocking him to the ground dazed, before a bag was put over his head.

When next he came to, he was in his sumptuous personal quarters. The terrible tang of burnt steel filled his nose- they had cut the whole of the section away, and attached it to their own ship. Arrayed in front of him were the star charts he had collected, and at the top of the heap, was a new map. Older than the others. It depicted the empire of the eldar, he realized belatedly, and the older extent of mankind. A message, Fedor concluded, but what for, he was not sure of.

He shortly realized afterwards that the corsairs had physically cut his quarters out of the Dauntless out, and placed it somewhere within their own vessel. He could leave, and wandered around in a daze about what he assumed was a cargo hold, with all manner of strange things. A necron plinth here, a caged Catachan Devil there, a crystallized fragment of some squid like entity there- Fedor was free to roam the hold, but whenever he tried to get beyond a further door, he found the way barred by veiled and robed eldar that refused to say anything. Crone, craftworld, exodite, dark, Fedor did not know what variety.

He slept forty three times there, not including his initial capture. He couldn't be certain, but he assumed that corresponded to the days in captivity. When he looked through his third eye, he realized he was not in the warp. He assumed the vessel he was on was in the webway.

The forty fourth time he awoke, he was somewhere else. He was before a great window sleeping on a smooth, tiled surface, the only company a chart, the one depicting the eldar empire at its grand extent. Behind him, a crowd of shrouded eldar, staring silently down at him. In the window before him, he saw the galaxy, as if from above, from a distance enough that he could see each end of the milky way. The awe swept all fear away from his mind, all thoughts except reverence. The bright collection there, that would be the halo stars, the stain there, the eye of terror, the dark divot, that would be the dark maw, and so on and so forth. And when he opened his third eye, let himself see the warp in all it's glory, he could see the shining pinprick of the golden throne, and the shadows of the collected psychic miasma of all life in the galaxy.

But then the view turned away. It slowly slipped away from the galaxy, and Fedor felt a bitter disappointment at that, for all there was out there was darkness. Physically and spiritually, there was nothing shining out beyond the galaxy.

And then Fedor realized something. There was nothing beyond the Milky Way. The ship continued pivoting- at the bottom of his view, there was still the distant light of his home galaxy, but outside of it, nothing but the dark. No orphan stars. No nebulae. No Andromeda. The darkness was closing in. And then, when he opened his third eye again, he felt the shadow passing over him.

At that moment, Fedor realized how alone he was in the universe. All he felt surrounding him, surmounting him, and washing over him was the Hive Mind. In that moment, though Fedor later denied it, fought the thought, tried desperately to disprove it, he felt a certainty. There was no more Andromeda. No more galactic neighbors. No more universe.

All there was was tyranids, and now, his home, as they descended to feed, as they had so many times before, on all the other galaxies that Fedor had once dreamed of seeing.

Fedor Jiao remembered little after that. He was dazed at the realization, and was led back to his quarters with little effort. He slept, and stared, and thought, a changed man. He could no longer enjoy life, in the face of the indescribable certainty that all he knew was doomed. When the corsairs released him in an escape pod, and he was picked up by the imperial navy, he didn't bother to relate the truth of the story. He simply said that he was ashamed to have survived.

When he was appointed paternoval envoy, at first he thought he would arrive at Terra and reject the choice. He would explain, humbly, that he was not capable of the great responsibility before him, but that he was glad of the chance to tell them of the nightmare he had seen, of the overwhelming dark that was to come.

But then Jiao saw the greatest navigators, and realized they were just as stupid and greedy as Jiao had been. And he decided that he would do his best to save the Imperium.

And he did great things. He made enemies. Lived boldly. Pulled out corruption by the root. But his every deed, he set against the overwhelming darkness he had seen, and he thought how little of a difference he was making. The galaxy was a thimble of light in an ocean of darkness. All the Imperium's work was for naught. Mathematically speaking, it was an impossibility. If the tyranids had already consumed Andromeda, and who knows what else, they had more mass than the Imperium could ever produce of bullets, missiles, lasers, bombs, and swords. Victory was impossible.

Unless he did something unthinkable.

In greatest secrecy, he hired a crew, brought a spare navigator, and personally guided a sword class frigate to a distant point of space he'd heard only rumors about. His crew trusted him, hand picked to be ones that were starstruck by the reputation of the heroic corruption fighter. They didn't question why he was so far from civilization, operating under radio silence.

They came to an asteroid, and Paternoval Envoy Jiao disembarked with a shuttle alone, and told the spare navigator to return to imperial space, and leave him behind. The ship navigated to a safe range to warp jump out. An hour later, Paternoval Envoy Jiao saw a distant explosion. He wasn't surprised. Soon after that, the pirates surrounded him, on their void suits the bleak marks of dark gods showing them for chaos corrupted.

Jiao had privately hoped they would break the deal. See him torn apart, and fed to their vile daemons. But they held. They took him to their captain, the legendary and loathsome Azariah Kyras, who was amused at their guest. He in turn took Jiao to a local pirate base operated by Dark Eldar. And there, on the base called Odom, with the aid of a captive Crone Eldar oracle, Jiao contacted the daemon of Nurgle called Ulkair with a plea.

The daemon was pleased that Jiao saw the futility of resisting the tyranids conventionally. Ulkair jovially explained that Father Nurgle had also been worried. In his great cauldron, Father Nurgle had been brewing something up to get rid of this oversized insect infestation. In fact, it was with the aid of beloved Isha that Father Nurgle had been making this. Those tyranids were so quick to adapt after all. With Isha on hand to test his poxes upon, Nurgle could be sure to make something real nice and lethal so the tyranids would shrivel and die before they spoiled all the fun in the galaxy.

But then the humans and eldar had to go and take Isha away. Which made Father Nurgle very sad. He could barely even cook up new plagues now, he was so depressed. Without company, he just couldn't get into the spirit of plague making. Everything he made nowadays seemed so trite. The past twelve epidemics he cooked up were all just the same old bursting boils disease he'd done last year. His heart wasn't in it any more.

Ulkair at this point offered the Paternoval Envoy a deal. Nurgle knew that a mere human couldn't spirit away a goddess. But, that avatar of hers could do a fine substitute. A simple trade. A plague for the tyranids, for the avatar of Isha. Save the galaxy, all for a girl. Who could turn that bargain down? Nurgle wouldn't even infect Jiao, though he honestly should. Wouldn't touch a hair on his head. All he had to do was go back. Make sure it would happen. And the bugs would come down with one hell of a case of the sniffles.

The Paternoval Envoy was silent. Ulkair smiled. That was enough for him. With a corrosive wave of his hand, Ulkair instructed Kyras to make sure that the Paternoval Envoy got back, safe and sound.

When the Paternoval Envoy made his way back to civilized space, he was picked up by an imperial patrol. They asked no questions of the great Paternoval Envoy, figuring he had been doing something of great import in his fight against corruption. On the trip back to Terra, they seemed happy, chipper, and praised him for all he had done. Jiao wondered if maybe no one had noticed. He was certain that, despite all his precautions they wouldn't be enough. He almost relaxed on the journey home, convinced he could fight his inner struggle in peace and alone.

It was only when he touched foot on Terra, and saw the Adeptus Custodes waiting at the space port that he found himself back in reality. They said nothing, simply putting out their weapons. Jiao was just as silent, and allowed himself to be escorted to the Imperial Palace on the Emperor's summons. The Emperor already knew of his errant servant, and where he'd been.

He entered the throne room.

Two hours later, Paternoval Envoy Fedor Jiao still hasn't emerged. But the Emperor has requested a new Envoy be appointed. And that an emergency session of the Senate Imperialis be held.
</div>
</div>

==These Animals==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''
Two people, man and woman, prone behind a low ridge atop a hill among some scraggly bushes. Hiding. The terrain, low dry scrub one step away from desert, does not offer much concealment unless you are skilled. They are skilled, and have cameoline.

Below them-
“Shit,” the woman, Sergeant Arn Kasparova, not that it will be relevant much longer, hissed. “Looks like a whole damned command section.”

A profusion of bizarre and unwholesome color. A- command tent? decorated in abstract shapes that suggested exaltation through pain and suffering. Coiled up mecha-centipedes on the scale of heavy tanks. A small forest of crooked ghastbone spires, suggestive of an antenna farm. A major force.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

“Call it in now?” the man-Corporal Saram Ostokova, not that it will be relevant much longer, asked. She shook her head- no telling if they could pick it up. Sometimes the Chaos Eldar were utterly ignorant of any communication besides psionic. Other times they fought vox-war as well as the Mechanicus.
They would need to get some distance. They turned to leave.

The Mandrake behind them gave them a second to appreciate their situation before shooting them. A nonlethal weapon. Not a positive development.

They came to, kneeling, without visible or tangible restraints but still immobile, in a room. Riotous and baroque, seizure-décor. The eye could settle on details- twining figures in the heart of a gem, a burning tesseract-city, a newborn infant still placenta-wet crowned and enthroned- but refused to resolve any kind of whole. Only the other figures in the room could be clearly comprehended, drab in comparison, practically silhouettes against the background of nauseating splendor.

“What is to be done with this mad animal?” the first, head fully enclosed in radial quicksilver-fungus sensory apparatus, twitching on the edge of information overload, asked. Perfect Low Gothic, a performance for the benefit of the captives.

“I could debone them and fold them into glass jars as ornaments,” the second, naked with razor vines growing into and through him, cutting him with every movement to bleed in a continuous stream upon the carpet, offered.
“I could bend and break their minds into perfect little toy soldiers,” the third, clad head to toe in featureless vantablack bodysuit (or is it its skin?) studded with grinning maws like zippers, said.
“I could kill them and dump their bodies in a ditch out back,” the fourth, near transparent, organs and bones mere suggestive twists of light beneath invisible skin, silk drapes and gun belts only certain evidence of her presence, stated.
“Enough,” the first said again, completing the ritual debate. “I have decided. We shall give them mind-knots, and body infections, and set them free to bring ruin to their fellow animals.”
Arn and Saram both tried to commit suicide. Hollow molars filled with neurotoxin. A commonplace among soldiers fighting the Chaos Eldar. They could not move even that much. They could not flinch or scream as the cutting started. A hole in the skull, and a slimy convoluted something pressed into the wrinkles of the brain. Holes in the body, and rotten-looking ghastbone nodes slipped inside. Then, everything sealed back up, with not even a scar or drop of blood to show what was done.
Then, dumped back outside, their bodies no longer their own. They punched the right codes on the vox, knew the sign and countersign, the name of the voice on the other end, called in an artillery strike on the position they had just left (vacated only minutes before). Then, they started the long walk to link back up with the main body of the Godspire 1888th Infantry.

The 1888th was destroyed within the week.
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</div>

== The War for Heaven ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

Please, just call me Oscar. There are no need for such formalities when it's your ceremony.

You wish to know why? That is a question I have been asked many times before. Are you sure about this? It's a very long history lesson, one that your Schola teachers have probably covered in depth.

Very well, take a seat. The Mechanicus technicians will make you comfortable.

The straps are for your own safety. Shall I start at the beginning?

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Eleven thousand years ago, my adopted sons marched into the depths of hell side by side with the strongest warriors of a dying race, and struck a blow at the heart of the Great Enemy. In a display of psychic might equal to mine, my father held the portal open long enough for a god to be broken free of her cage, setting the foundation for the Last Alliance, the agreement between Man and Eldar that would uplift both our species out of the chaos of the Age Of Strife.

Centuries later, the same man, old and tired, said he was proud of me, lying in a simple white bed, connected to a panoply of medical equipment that whirred and beeped rhythmically.

He told me that I and my eighteen generals had wrenched humanity free from the horrors of the Old Night, and that they would need me to be its leader. As the spikes on a green line grew erratic, I said that no mere relic of a lost Golden Age should be the master of its creators. To think, that I would waste the last of my time with my father on an argument, of all things.

Despite that blunder, Malcador forgave me with a serene smile. For that, and so much more, I will be forever grateful to a man who found a stasis chamber in a run-down laboratory on Cthonia, and spared the life it held inside.

Then the War Of The Beast happened, leaving a trail of shattered worlds in its wake and an uncertain future on the horizon. The Imperium nearly died then, as we were pushed back further and further by unending waves of savage Orks goaded into battle by the unrepentant instigators of the Fall. In Terra's ruins, only the death of an angel and the sacrifices of heroes beyond counting was enough to allow Farseer Eldrad and I to kill the monstrous Beast at the hordes' head.

A hundred centuries have passed since, and the world has changed. The stubborn Tau suffered through multiple schisms and two thousand years out in the cold, but they now fight for the Imperium. In the Age Of Apostasy, the Demiurge helped the brave Inquisitor Sebastian Thor and myself end the rule of Goge Vandire, earning their acceptance through blood and adamantium. They are not the only ones, for among the stars are many more who have joined the Last Alliance and aid the Imperium's war efforts.

But all my eighteen Primarchs, chosen from the finest and bravest of Terra's stock, lie dead, whether by war or because of the march of time. There have been no replacements for their seats, which remain empty not only out of deference to each of their lives, but because none have been found worthy of taking up their titles.

Enemies both new and ancient have opened new fronts all across the Imperium's vast Segmenta, all thirsting for our blood. Some are clad in liquid metal, others in sculpted chitin and claws, and some are manipulators cloaked in shadows. Others are false idols which will not die, praised by legions of fanatics who seek to bring the taint of Chaos into our besieged empire. There is no mercy to be found here.

In some great irony, I, a Man Of Gold, a human simulacrum, have ended up in the Golden Throne of an empire, bonded with Isha, one of the last survivors of a pantheon of true gods. Some say that Eldrad chose an arranged marriage as repayment of his favor a way to prevent humanity from going back on its promises to the Eldar, but I suspect he really just found the idea funny.

One thing has not changed, however. The War For Heaven, the war that began so long ago, goes on, the tune of its siren call tugging the strings of every sentient being of this galaxy. Everyone heeds its call eventually.

While the morning sun shined upon Perturabo's shining Terran hive cities, a veteran of the War stepped out onto a field of mud and rain, armed with a lasgun and the blind faith of his platoon of Guardsmen. He flinched as he scanned their youthful profiles, constantly reminded of brothers and sisters who wouldn't stay in the past. The night terrors of his sleep no longer had the decency to stay out of his waking world, and he grew more and more tired as one excited private explained how he had signed up for his wife and kids back home. Few soldiers ever returned to their homeworlds after joining up, at least, not alive.

Today, when the sun sets on the Imperial Palace today, an Ordo Securitas Inquisitor may watch his acolytes celebrate the resolution of a sector-wide fraud case that drained millions of gelt from Imperial accounts. Before tomorrow's dawn, he may lie face-down at his desk, poisoned by a bottle of wine. For the Inquisitor's white-haired Sororitas bodyguard, summary execution of the childhood friend who brought it will be enough to soothe her anger. Afterwards, she will learn that it was the unwitting crime of a clueless man.

Our libraries and datastacks are filled with tales of tragedy and joy, of valor and cowardice, of liberating adventure and crushing defeat. Yet the galaxy grinds on, dragged onwards by its own inertia, careless of ghosts haunting the living or the deaths of Inquisitors and childhood friends. It takes no favors, listens to no pleas, and defies classification by human logic. With all its beauty and mystery, the galaxy has been the birthplace of our loftiest dreams and our most terrifying nightmares.

In the end, all it has to offer us is War. And who are we to deny its gift?

I do not put my faith in gods, despite the fact that one sits next to me right now. That belongs to those who call me Emperor, who struggle to maintain their shard of normality in an unforgiving universe. They fight as men and women who have everything to lose, never to receive anything better than the galaxy's gift. If we stop now, if we loosen our grip even the slightest, everything that they have lived and died for will be in vain. My faith, and by extension their faith, belongs to a promise built on hope.

One day, the War will end, and the Imperium will be witness to a new dawn, where our children are free to live and smile, to grow old in peace, no matter the price.

Have I answered the question to your satisfaction, psyker?

Good. Isha, if you would be so kind as to dull his senses to pain, thank you.

Let the soul-binding begin. Initiate proced-

</div>
</div>

==Unnamed Emperor's Scythes Story==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

The shrouded, other-worldly tint of the Immaterium peeled away as the first ships of the 219th Expeditionary Fleet exited the hell realm. The various attendant ships quickly repositioned to their surrounding places as the few larger ships ponderously oriented themselves in the new system. Destroyers began languid corkscrews around their command vessels while the smaller frigates ballooned outward to form picket lines. Void measurements, order requests, sensor scans, and myriads of other data all flowed into the command deck of the ‘’Basilica Emergent’’, the head of the 219th. Easily the largest of the fleet, the ‘’Basilica’’ was a battleship unlike any other. The pearl-white, marble gilding gifted to her after the rescue of an Eldar world long ago set her apart from the two other large tonnage vessels of the fleet, the smaller battleship ‘’Tantamount and the battlecruiser Dirge of the Warlord. Now organized, the 219th moved in system towards what the frigates had just started pinging at the extreme edge of their sensors: Tyranids. It was not unexpected that the locusts were here for Myriandros’ precious resources. In fact, it was the very reason that the 219th had an extra two ships amongst the fleet. The Scythes of the Emperor had been returning to their own fleet when Myriandros found itself in the way of a tendril from Leviathan. And so ‘’Chitinbane’’ and her sister battleship, ‘’Unyielding Protest’’, despite losses and weariness from previous campaigns, answered the call along with the 219th.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The locust fleet split into halves around the gas giant, Myriandros Quartus. A small contingent of bio-craft entered orbit to engulf the gas harvesting void stations about the planet. The rest trudged onward towards the human fleet and the populated world of Myriandros Secundus. Myriandros Secundus was in the latter half of its orbit being around 10 o'clock. The first planet in the system was located at 1 o'clock about the center star while Myriandros Quartus was as at 5 o'clock. The third planet had broken up into a moon sized rock after a moon from Quartus was eventually flung off and pulled towards the system center. The collision created an asteroid ring. The ball consider Myriandros Tertium was at 7 o'clock amongst its debris. The 219th Fleet was approaching from the system north in a prime position to defend Secundus and receive the extra-galactic invaders. Admiral Dega aboard the ‘’Basilica Emergent’’ voxed his orders to the fleet. The bulk of the 219th along with the ‘’Chitinbane’’ moved in support of Myriandros Secundus and her people preparing to deal with the now east half of the Tyranid fleet. A pair of destroyers and a triplet of frigates broke off to follow the Unyielding Protest on a long burn on the inside of the system's eminent debris ring. The six vessels orders were to corkscrew around the field and catch a gravity-aided sling about the moon, M. Tertium, and slam into the westward fleet. Dega intended for the smaller contingent to punch through the formation and then flank the eastward sub-fleet. A practical and tactical strategy on the void maps but in the cold, uncaring black, best laid plans are put to the test.

The opti-sensors of the Unyielding noted multiple ichorous puffs on both hive ship. Minutes later, scans identified tentacled-boarding bio-ships. Cogitators spit out flight paths and projected intercepts upon pict-screens. Several flights of the living craft were headed towards the Unyielding. From a dais in the middle of the command deck, the Captain Lyras bellowed with a voice untainted by bionics, “Listen up boys! All hands to stations, we got a fight comin’ our way! Huh-ha-ha! These vile bugs think to board us and eat us from the inside! I'll be Emperor damned if our magnificent vessel will see their likes in our decks! Plus, our esteemed Astartes Captain Phiras and his men are far too tired to fight right now! Poor guys are all tuckered out! Ah-hah-hah-ha! Now spool up those flak turrets, ready our first salvo of macrocannon rounds and remember 'don't drop the ordinance'! Ah-ha-haha! For the Emperor!” The vox caster across the decks went quiet, drowned by the cacophony of of an Imperial voidship mustering for combat. At the utterance of 'all hands’ the men and women jumped to their stations already in the process of preparing even whilst Captain Lyras continued his boisterous cast. Mechanics greased autoloaders even as they fed rounds. Magos and engiseers monitored the banks of plasma reactors as they dipped and spiked at the whims of the charging lance batteries and flaring drives. Auger arrays and cogitators began to relay firing vectors and predicted flight paths of the invading craft, updating as different permutations were analyzed. Amidst the din, Captain Phiras perked an ear towards the vox caster nestled in the corner of his armory. Even amidst the din of clanking ceramite, bolter slides being racked and battle orders being administered, the men of the 5th Company heard their captain respond to no one in particular. “The mad man thinks we're tired? Heh!”

Flesh, vitae and bony armor exploded out of the living boarding craft. The bubble surrounding the Unyielding and her retinue was criss-crossed with flashing dash lines of flak rounds and the cottony contrails of small anti-craft missiles. The bio ships loosed compressed digestive gasses to jink and dodge while augers and cogitators corrected their life taking ordinances. The calculated mechanical precision of the human ships was still being swamped by the sheer number of locust vessels. Some were getting through. One of the destroyers had already been impacted on the top decks; the rasping, diamond hard teeth, enzymes and acids of the craft ate through the meters of adamantite to deliver its deadly payload. An escort bio-ship had found a blindspot in one of the frigates flak screens and careened headlong into the side. The bloated ship burst smearing the vessel in acids and viruses that dissolved through the decks at a frightening rate. Entire bulkheads vented, spattering the viscous juices across the inside of the void shields until they shorted. Boarding vessels dove toward the stricken ship like vultures. A many-limbed bio ship, roughly the size of a frigate, had rushed inside the Imperial formation, impervious to the smaller ordinance. It raked talon-tipped appendages across the vessels ripping up thick plating and flailed limber, coiling tendrils that tried to crush and tear away anything they could grasp.

The Unyielding Protest was faring much better. Her defense networks were nigh-impenetrable. Void creatures that strayed too close were subject to overlapping screens of flak. Missiles tracked and obliterated whatever was beyond the range of the autoguns. Entire flights of troopships and escorts were vaporized as lance batteries fired actinic beams through them at the hive ship and her escorts. Likewise, living craft smeared and then vaporized as macrocannon rounds barreled through their formations towards larger targets. However, Unyielding and her companions were taking just as much punishment. Hundred meter long chitin spines shattered against the void shields. Globs of corrosive bile crashed over the ablative fields eroding them as the tides of a beach might. Sections of Unyielding's void shields were failing. Troop laden craft swarmed towards the holes that had appeared in the overlapping fields. Lyras’ thrust was being blunted.

Warning voxes blared. Dingy, soot-covered yellow strobes illuminated the metal bulkheads. The gun decks of port battery three were filled with a coagulating fog of acrid smoke, corrosive vapors and venting mists. Whorls formed as bolter rounds rocketed towards fleshy gaunts. Linear wisps formed as talons sliced towards servitors, naval conscripts and Astartes alike. The drilling maw of the living dropship had punctured two floors up from the deck. Captain Phiras and his squad were fighting a daunting vertical battle. The locusts would scramble up from underneath catwalks whilst some would jump and leap from above. Others skittered down stairs and through open bulkworks. At any time Phiras and his men were surrounded. The gunnery crew was still drilling even in the toxic miasma and xenos intrusion. Their belief in their captain and the trust in the Scythes gave them courage even in the face of the tide of locusts. The huge macrocannon fired. Backblast and sonic concussion parted the fog. The force nudged Phiras back before the magnetics in his boots activated. Conscripts stumbled but regained their footing instantly; they were used to it. The captain could see gaunts bent over like blades of grass in a wind as their clasping legs fought for purchase. Some were blown wholesale over catwalks and into bulkheads. An unlucky dozen or so locust were crawling on supports and bearings as the autoloading gimbal rocked backwards. The machinery masticated the yielding flesh and chitin of the invaders. Ichors and biles began to ineffectively eat into the metal. Across the deck, the wet corpse of a gaunt sagged onto an autoloader for one of the many flak guns. The overseer stared at the body he had shot several times. The autopistol shook in his nervous grip. Unlike the macro gun, the enzymes and caustic blood quickly dissolved the much smaller structure of the autoloader. It furiously self-destructed. Large caliber flak round detonated in the feed racks killing the overseer, the gun mechanism, it cogitator banks and anything else unlucky enough to be near it. A stray round pinged off of Phiras’ pauldron.

Phiras looked up; he had one more level to reach. Above was the second floor of the gun deck where the troopship had punched through. The locusts were still trickling out of the slimy, toothy orifice. He heard a clang behind him as a pair of gaunts landed on the catwalk. He wheeled and his bolter barked. A quintet of mass-reactive shells obliterated the intruders. Phiras turned back towards the staircase and sauntered on. The locusts swarmed the captain as soon as he reached the landing at the top of the stairs. Phiras whirled into a flurry of measured sword strikes and bolt shells. He pumped round after round into the gaunts that rose from below the catwalk and clambered up the stairs behind him. His sword separated snarling heads and swiping talons even as he ducked and blocked them. His bolter had clicked empty so he resorted to crushing one of the last beasts beneath his heel while swing his gun around to crumple the skull of another offender. He finished it with a bifurcating swipe through its thorax. Another miniature battle was over. The evaporating ichors fizzed into mist off the floor and his armor. His chest piece had a rent in the left side and his pauldrons were covered in a myriad of scratches. An errant boring beetle had gnawed and melted a hole into his right shin guard. “Damn. They managed a couple hits,” thought Phiras.

The macrocannon fired again. Down to the other end of the suspended floor Phiras finally saw a pair of his squad round the landing. “You boys are slow,” he smiled inwardly. The creatures scuttling towards them met grisly fates at the fiery maw of a storm bolter, smoking bolt pistol rounds and gnashing chainsword teeth. The three Astartes joined up at the quivering mouth of the troopship. Phiras yelled out over the din of battle, “Burn the infestation out men! Get your meltas out!” Grenades were tossed into the gullet. The sizzling meat and tortured screeches of the dying ship were ignored. “Set that patch up Ordin,” Phiras ordered, “Graid, finish off the remaining creatures in this deck.’ The marine placed a mesh field over the hole as inertia pulled the bio ship out of the cavity. The shimmering field would hold the void out until an adept could patch the damage. The other marine jogged off to confront the few gaunts scattered about the gun deck. Meanwhile, Phiras voxed the various other squads he'd sent to other puncture sites. Some reported they were still in the process of repelling the borders. Others had successfully eliminated the locusts and were moving amidship to new breaches. The macrocannon fired. Suddenly entirety of the Unyielding lurched throwing the marines and conscripts to the floor. Immediately Phiras’ comms pinged with a priority hail from Captain Lyras, “Phiras! We got a problem!”

</div>
</div>

==Unnamed Writing 1==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

"So it's been two years."<br>
"Since...?"<br>
"Since. Y'know," Calper leaned in conspiratorially to whisper, "SHE joined up."<br>
"Wh-" Kred was for a moment bewildered before she remembered who she was talking to and sighed, "Right. The farseer."<br>

Kred was not in the right state of mind to talk about their strange alien auxiliary. For the past week she'd been going through the same drill with the rest of her company of weapons specialists of digging in and setting up her lascannon, and then unpacking it and getting it ready to move again. The goal was to get the entire process down to three minutes. And they had. On a planet that wasn't a frozen ice ball like this one. She was numb, and sore, and tired, and thrice cursed Calper was still fresh as a daisy, probably because he was leaving the digging up frozen ground to her and invariably took his sweet time fiddling with the lascannon so she'd have to do the hard work.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

"She going to help me dig this ice up?" Kred growled. If Calper understood the sentiment he didn't mention it. He was looking off in the distance, over the rest of the company swinging shovels and cursing the icy ground.<br>
"There, see? She's talking with Lieutenant Feldham."<br>
"And?"<br>
"Annnndddd," Calper was straining over the lascannon, before a distant bark of the Commissar reminded him to focus on his work, "You think, y'know..."<br>

Kred stopped, looked at Calper. He was raising his eyebrows suggestively.<br>
"What?"<br>
"Y'know," Calper started a strange bobbing motion with his raising eyebrows, "The farseer. And the dashing captain of the kasrkin?"<br>
"He's a lieutenant."<br>
"Lieutenant. You think she's into that?"<br>
"What? What," Kred blinked, snuck a peek over the gun. Frowned, shook her head, went back to work with her spade, "Nope. Not at all."<br>
"What? What do you mean?" Calper looked back, then back down and hissed, "She's holding on to him by the elbow!"<br>

"TIME!" Commissar Gebbet bellowed across the field. Kred looked down, sighed. No, it wasn't very good, but it would have to do. She set the lascannon over the mound, and crouched herself in the behind it, as Calper mirrored her, attending to the capacitor and charge packs. Gebbett would have a field day with this- please, please, please just let him walk past...<br>
"Seriously, I bet you she's getting the monkey D tonight."<br>
Kred rolled her eyes.<br>
"First of all, it's pronounced 'mon-keigh', secondly, there's no way she and Feldham are an item."<br>
"What? Who made you an expert on human-eldar relations? Seriously, she's eye fucking him on the field right now!"<br>
"A year's stint with Ulthwé Black Guardians. First thing's first, do you see what Feldham is holding in his left hand?"<br>

A bit of silence, as Calper leaned over, then said dejectedly, "A crutch."<br>
"Yeah. Training accident. And he's got that bionic eye on the fritz. So, no, it's not eye fucking that you're seeing, it's her lending a hand to a wounded comrade, and some concern."<br>

Somewhere behind them, Elid's crew was getting chewed out. Commissar Gebbett would take his time. And in that pause, someone desperate to distract herself from her own inevitable chewing out, Trooper Kred made a mistake that she would soon regret.

"Besides. I'm sure she's not into guys like that."

"What? Feldham's a badass. Sure, he's got the eye thing, but chicks dig scars."<br>
"Not all of us. Nah, nah. The Farseer would go for..." She hesitated, glanced behind her. Yep. Anton was still tearing into poor Elid.<br>
"-Like what?"<br>
"Somebody a bit more...intellectual."<br>
"You saying Feldham's dumb?"<br>
"No- well. Okay, keep it between us, but there's a reason he's spending training hobbling around on a god damn crutch, and I hear it has to do with some unauthorized demolition training, a glacier, a set of melta charges and some watches that he never bothered to sync. Besides," She looked over, shook her head as Farseer Taldeer gave a final salute, and then turned away from the Kasrkin, "Waaay too short."<br>
"Fuck Kred, that's cold. He's taller than me."<br>
"She's a giant, she can't help it," Anton Gebbett's rage subsided behind them, so the last was a whisper from her, "So shut up, and look like you're a real soldier."<br>

Commissar Anton Gebbett strode up the line- though Elid's men had suffered the full burst, he still had plenty in reserve to shoot in passing as he strode the line. As Anton Gebbett walked by Calper and Kred, Kred inwardly cringed, doing her best to stare down the lascannon barrel.<br>
"Despicable. Lazy. Shoddy. Pathetic," the Commissar grumbled, marching through the lines, locking eyes with each soldier as he passed. Making it clear that this wasn't directed to the air aimlessly, but in due consideration of each soldier's faults. Brennan's team, aimless. Gherehg's team, the work of children. Ysmir's team, useless. Kred's team...<br>

Commissar Anton Gebbett halted in front of the pair of them and their makeshift fire pit, and glared down at them. He scowled. Looking them up and down. For a moment, Kred thought she might have lucked out, that he was looking for something minor- then she noticed the inhaling. No, no. He was tallying up everything wrong. Preparing. She winced, squeezed her eyes shut-

"Commissar Gebbett, a word please?"

Relief. Farseer Taldeer was at the other end of the parade ground, hands in the pockets of her Cadian officer's coat over her xeno mesh armor stained with snow and mud, a green beret denoting her auxiliary status on her head, long hair cascading down- Hell. She was dolled up. What for?

Gebbett paused, gave a finally acidic glare, then shouted, "At ease!" Murmurs of relief, before he shouted again, "But you and you!" The Commissar's hand stabbed at Kred and Elid's teams before they could relax too much, "You stay here. I'm not done with you idiots yet. The rest of you, pack all this back to the armory!" With a final grumble about the quality of Cadian soldiers these days, Commissar Gebbett spun on his heel and stalked back to the Farseer, grumbling all the while.

Kred slumped against the cold of her lascannon, hopes dashed. The rest of the teams laughed and trotted off, leaving the four of them behind in the field.

"What about him?"<br>
"Shut up Calper," Murmured Kred.<br>
"Who? Who we talking about?"<br>
Elid had come forward in the meantime. Another chatterbox, but one that Kred knew so she could forgive him. Had Martz with him. Didn't know her. Tats suggested a hiver. One of the new recruits.<br>
"Commissar Gebbett," Calper whispered, glancing back at the Commissar and the Farseer, talking animatedly as they made for the command post. Doubtless where there was warmth. There wasn't freezing mud about their ankles. Probably had warm food-<br>
"Oh yeah, right prick isn't he?" Elid shook his head, "Don't like him. Last Commy was nice. Even before he got tore apart by the wossnames."<br>
"Yeah, but," Calper leaned over, raised his eyebrows, "What do you think the FARSEER thinks?"<br>
"Wot?"<br>
"I'm saying-"<br>
"Shut up, shut up, shut up Calper-"<br>
"-Maybe the Farseer sees something in him? Y'know, a commanding man to lead her in the sheets?"<br>
"What?" Elid leaned back disgusted, "Taldeer and Gebbett? Fuck off. That's disgusting!"<br>
"Yeah, to you and me, but Eldar are aliens. Maybe they'd like him?"<br>

Elid frowned, shook his head, "No. Nowhere in this universe would anybody think Gebbett is handsome. I was thinking Lieutenant Feldham."<br>
"That's what I said!"<br>
"He's too short!"<br>
"And he's got that weird eye," Martz added, hand going to her own and peeling back the lids for emphasis to stare at the other three in mocking pantomime of Feldham's bionic, "Rich girl like that would turn her nose up quick at that. Probably use her brain to set his skin on fire right quick."<br>
"She wouldn't do that."<br>
"She would! Hear about it all the time, those eldar tarts and their fire starting, you look at 'em so much as sideways," Martz waved her hands, "Fwoosh! Burnt to a crisp. Sides," She shook her head, "Feldham's an idiot."<br>
"Okay, let's lay off Feldham..." Kred felt a little bad now for what she said earlier. Feldham wasn't THAT bad, and making fun of a kasrkin was probably a really unhealthy habit to have.<br>
"And a bit true. Nah, rich girl like that," Martz tapped her chin thinking, "She'd go for someone with a bit more class. I'm thinking Ordnance Master Hymnal."<br>
"Hymnal? She's classy?" The others started laughing as Martz glared between the three.<br>
"Yeah! Yeah she is! She's always in her best duds, always got that fancy baton and all, she's plenty classy!"<br>
"Clearly you haven't seen her three amasecs deep yet." <br>
"God," Calper winced, "And what she did with that colander, the lho pack, and the priest..."<br>
"What? What'd she do?"<br>
"How about Sturnn?" Elid rapidly changed the subject, looking over his shoulder. If a kasrkin was dangerous to mock, rememinscing on the master of regimental artillery in the open was suicidal.<br>
"Sturnn? No way. He's ancient."<br>

"So's she. And, he's brave, rugged, smart," Calper was counting out traits. Kred shook her head.<br>
"No way. Wife and kids on Cadia."<br>
"-And proven to be responsible," Calper finished, nodding, "Makes sense. She asked to serve in Sturnn's regiment special."<br>
"You think she's a home wrecker?"<br>
"Nah, it's true," Martz started nodding fervently, pointing, "No, I've heard about this. Eldar witches, see, they love that. It's like psychic stims for them, that heartbreak."<br>
"And who says Sturnn agreed?" Elid took on a faraway gaze, "Forlorn, reciprocated love. Eldar love that!"<br>

"You know what I think that Farseer Taldeer loves?"

They all froze at the voice.

They slowly turned back to see Farseer Taldeer standing above them, looking down with the frozen smile of the predator that's caught a lovely family of defenseless bunnies in a dead end.

"I think, what Farseer-Auxiliary Taldeer would LOVE, is hearing that you four broke the three minute record," She leaned in, tooth-like jaw plates still bared, "In the dark."<br>
"But- but it's going to get below-"<br>

She narrowed her eyes.<br>
"If you'd like, I can start a fire."<br>
Inside, Kred's heart withered. Goodbye sleep. <br>

"Farseer Taldeer!" Gebbett jogged after the auxiliary, baffled at her attention directed at the weapons teams, "We were wondering where you'd gone, the dinner still isn't-"<br>
"Nothing's wrong Gebbett," Farseer Taldeer turned away from the pair of teams frantically shoveling at the frozen ground, and strolled past them, aiming for her quarters, "Just thought I heard something. I was mistaken."<br>

Gebbett frowned, looked back at the soldiers digging, snorted, "Finally found your spirit! Come on! Snowstorm is coming in, and you're working until you're up to snuff!" <br>Gebbett nodded, quite proud of himself. Yes, those years in commissar school had proven that fear had a wonderful effect of focusing the mind. He idly wondered for a moment which of his insults had landed home, then dismissed it. If he could do it once, he could do it again.<br>

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==Unnamed Writing 2==

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Officio Tacitum archives have no record of subject "LIIVI" until after formal registry into Temple Vindicare, local site Carolus 5A. Sicarius investigation reveals earlier mention of a "Livvi" found during the Galbraith Campaign as a war orphan, and was subsequently drafted into the Cadian 412th under order of General Sturnn (See attached document, Cadian 412th draft order, signed by General Sturnn and approved by Lord General Castor), before disappearing from regimental records. Of note: this was the only draft order recorded that General Sturnn has ever invoked, and the drafted "Livvi" was recorded as being sixteen years old (the minimum draftable age without a state of emergency declaration from a planetary governor), while the "LIIVI" that the Officio Tacitum trained was estimated to be approximately ten years of age.

Background of the Galbraith Campaign was an attempt to uproot an insurgent assassin cult, headed controversially by (Still extant) Inquisitor Made. Ordo Sicarius records of this time include several criticisms of collateral damage, overzealous prosecution of war efforts, and an over reliance upon divination sourced intelligence. Despite this, Made was vindicated by proof positive evidence of old {SUPPRESSED BY ORDER OF IN JOACHIM, ORDO SICARIUS} and hard evidence corroborating such. Reports of whole sale massacre of juvenile combatants after capture provoked censure from the inquisition as a whole afterwards. Though tenuous, I request a formal investigation into ties between subject LIIVI and {SUPPRESSED}.
{Ed. Note: Denied.}

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Problems with socialization and authority marred an otherwise excellent pupil from LIIVI's time in the Officio Tacitum's tutelage. Psychological assessors ascribed it to his unusual childhood, available at {SUPPRESSED}. Details are scarce- Officio Tacitum archives are spotty at best.

By the age of nineteen LIIVI had an impressive roster of missions under his belt (I think. Every record is under three levels of encryption with two interchangeable ciphers applied on top of that, typical bloody assassin nonsense) and it was decided LIIVI was ready for dedicated field work. Curiously, LIIVI was not assigned to a typical forward operating post that assassins are usually held in to answer summons from inquisitors. He was assigned permanently to a regiment of the Imperial Guard. The Cadian 412th, currently known as the 1st Kronus Liberators. A year later of high value target removal and artillery spotting, LIIVI had his meeting with destiny when Farseer-Auxiliary Taldeer was assigned to the 412th.

Reports and interviews point to a formal relationship at the start. At this time, Taldeer was still engaged to Lithian Sylander as part of House Ulthran's politics (The fact that Sylander wasn't even born yet was no matter) so she remained aloof to all interest. Judging by interviews and journals, there was plenty of it. However, Farseer and Vindicare would prove to be an impressive combination. Mission after mission would lead to the pair working ably in concert to turn the tide of battle with a single well placed and well timed bullet.

But then there was the debacle at Lorn V and the death of Sturnn.

General Sturnn was much loved by the 412th, and Taldeer and LIIVI were no exceptions. Though the details of that day are still unclear, and investigations are still ongoing regarding this {Ref. "Pariah/Untouchable Necron Interest" "Lord of Kronus" "Sea Prophecies"} the death of General Sturnn at the base of the Titan is a matter of heated debate for the 412th. Taldeer, LIIVI, Sturnn, and Sturnn's bodyguard entered the monolith, and only Farseer Taldeer, LIIVI, Commissar Gebbet, Preacher Coates, and Sgt Falker emerged. General Sturnn had fallen in battle, and Farseer Taldeer became Colonel-Farseer Taldeer. Rumor holds that LIIVI had to save one of the two and, under orders from General Sturnn, chose to save Taldeer over her objections. Or, perhaps it was that Farseer Taldeer (Affected by the aura of the Pariahs at the Necron Lord's command) had earlier blundered in her predictions, and LIIVI mistrusted her at a critical moment, leading to the General's death. Or perhaps Colonel-Farseer Taldeer took her rank seriously, and sought to head off a scandal of cross rank fraternizing before it started.

Whatever the case, interviews point to a rift between the two opening up. Where before they worked together efficiently, they sought their objectives separately.

Farseer-Colonel Taldeer would go on to lead the 412th new, notable new victories on Skaldheim, Kronus, and the orbital rings of Barrack Vol. Initial skepticism for an Eldar Farseer running an Imperial Guard regiment was replaced with acceptance, then aclaim. For the Imperium at large, here was the proof that Eldar and Humanity were better together. It also helped that Taldeer renounced her citizenship with Ulthwe, and her family ties in a formal ceremony to prevent any appearances of a conflict of interest. At the same time (If less famously), LIIVI was proving himself an adept agent as well, in most instances supporting the 412th, but notably also in independent operations as called upon by the Ordo Securitas.
A few notables are gunning down the feared Arch-Arsonist of Tarronis {Note: 'Gunning down' does not accurately describe the event, making it sound far too simple. The massive ork warboss required a full six magazines of exitus hellfire rifle rounds, and the full discharge of LIIVI's exitus pistol, and subsequently three blows with a chunk of concrete to the skull before the fiend perished), stealing the list of allegiant governors to the Children of the First Emperor's Conspiracy before they could coordinate a revolt, and being the first and thus far only one recorded to permanently kill a creature only known as Entity 218. Ordo Xenos as usual hoarding info. {INQ JOACHIM: Note to self, talk to Interrogator Garden about professionalism in reporting.}

Throughout the course of these operations, each encountered problems they couldn't handle alone. At first begrudgingly, then out of habit, they grew to rely on each other once more so they could survive what came. Commissar Gebbet at one point got involved, summoning the pair and announcing, coincidentally, that he had had to break up a cross rank relationship between two soldiers earlier that day, that it was clearly stipulated in the military code and regulations that an inferior and superior officer could not engage in any manner of romantic relationship of one another for fear of impacting their judgement in the heat of battle, and that he was very glad that the Colonel-Farseer would never stoop to any such thing like that.

A later report filed by Commissar Gebbet noted that his superior officer had 'emitted a string of profoundly foul utterances that disrespected his person, station, and heritage to such a degree that he was convinced for a moment that a particularly foul mouthed daemon of the warp possessed [Colonel-Farseer Taldeer] and he feared for his immortal soul for a moment" but that it had successfully convinced him that there was no relationship between the two.

As we know now, this was false.

At the same time as they were reigniting their duplicitous relationship {Inq Joachim: Professionalism, Interrogator.} they cultivated worrying friendships. LIIVI has been recorded meeting, and working with a team of assassins, even outside of the bounds of sanctioned Officio Tacitum operations. Though their identities still elude me (Damn the Officio Tacitum!), there is one eversor, a callidus, and a culexus. {Inq Joachim: Useless.} When Officio Tacitum agents fraternize outside of what is necessary for work, one should worry. Interestingly, LIIVI seemed to build a certain rapport with Ronahn, Taldeer's exodite ranger brother. This connection gave LIIVI (inconsistent) access to the webway, something very helpful for an agent.

Farseer Taldeer for her part focused on traditional politics, coming under the wing of Lord General Castor, and by extension, his ally Inquisitor Adrastia. Though still nominally a Colonel, Taldeer is becoming known on a galactic scale as a problem solver, and in demand at Imperial High Command. Accompanying that is a certain resentment. Despite generations of cooperation, some human officers still feel threatened and insulted that an Eldar commands humans. Presumably, after her recovery from the assassination attempt, and after her pregnancy has run its course, she and the 412th will be at the front lines once more, for good or ill.

The other connection is more interesting. Taldeer's unwillingness to associate with Ulthwe for fear of an appearance of conflicting loyalty does not extend to Cegorach's cult. The harlequins have taken an interest in Taldeer's fate, and often the Farseer disappears into the webway escorted by a troupe. Taldeer has offered no explanation of where she has gone, or what her arrangement with them may be, saying only that it is a very personal matter. Cegorach's ilk only answer in riddles not worth repeating. In any case, she is one of the rare few in the galaxy to reliably have harlequin support in battle.
Reports indicate a growing closeness between the two again. At the Sanctuary Masquerade in celebration of the victory on Kronus, LIIVI was seen as part of Taldeer's honor guard. At the consecration of General Sturnn's memorial, the two were seen after the service in deep discussion. At Colonel-Farseer Taldeer's first thwarted assassination, LIIVI managed to evacuate her before harm came to her.

After every such occurrence, the two sought to hide their affair. Though we now know by necessity they would have had to be lovers after the Krasnitz Siege, I speculate that going by reports and overlapping leaves of absence, the must have reignited their relationship, their relationship started far earlier, perhaps just before the Sturnn memorial. Though the present court case in the commissariat argue that the both of them are outside of the traditional command structure of the Imperial Guard, and thus free of the rules against fraternization, the extreme secrecy undertaken to hide their relationship speaks to the reality- they knew it was wrong, and they sought to hide it. {Inq Joachim: Or they were just trying to have some privacy. Their relationship, and legality there of is a matter for the commissariat. Not the Inquisition. Next report, don't stray from the mission parameters again Interrogator, or you're going back to alphabetizing the whole of Tabula planetary archive.}

Which brings us to the modern day, and the unfortunate events of this past Terran month. The Sapiens Supremis attack, the hospitalization of Sreta Ulthran, and the reveal of the 'impossible' pregnancy of Colonel-Farseer Taldeer. The possibility of a natural born human-eldar hybrid is at once shocking and frightening. By my research, I do agree that the dates match up. The Farseer and the Assassin have had a relationship for long enough to match up the current state of gestation, and it has been an increasingly poorly kept secret.

In which case, we live in very interesting times indeed, on the eve of M42.

But the question is, how is this possible? They are far from the first in such a relationship. And for this, I have three theories.

First, divine intervention. The Harlequins took an interest in Farseer Taldeer for a reason. Cegorach or Isha are the most powerful extant that we know of. Isha would be most likely, seeing as she is a goddess of fertility. But the question then comes, why the Farseer, and not her chosen representative married to our Emperor? A trial run, perhaps. Humankind is famously skittish. To you and I, the notion of our great emperor having a divine heir would be a cause for celebration, but certain segments of the population might view this uncharitably as a seizure of power from an alien god, seeking to supplant their Emperor with a half god creature. The other possibility is far more unlikely, but it may be this is Cegorach's doing. Perhaps this is one of those famous pranks of his. For everyone's sake, we must hope this one of Cegorach's more benign pranks.

Second option points to the mysterious origins of LIIVI himself. Though I feel almost certain that the war orphan conscripted by General Sturnn is one and the same as the assassin we now know, I can not say that for certain. I have managed to attain a genetic sample of his at great expense (And great difficulty- Officio Tacitum enhancements) and it is currently being tested and matched against the general population, but as you know, the Imperium has many, many people. It could take decades to find similar genetics, and even then, it wouldn't give us much to work from. However, the Ordo Securitas still has Inquisitor Madek's files on the Galbraith Campaign. They are currently sealed. I request permission to unseal them, and find the truth. Perhaps it was some manner of renegade human-eldar hybridization program, or some adaptation of human to interbreed with eldar? {Inq Joachim: No. There is nothing of that sort in the files. And they remain sealed for a reason. Request denied.}

[[File:Lofn_all_growed_up_still_adorable.jpg|thumb|The horror! The HORROR!]]

The third option, I hesitate to even mention. There have been certain...Signs. Prophecies. My contacts in the Ordo Malleus and Ordo Xenos have offered me a great deal. Bleak fortunetelling from the Chaos Eldar describe something similar, an unholy union of our emperor and their queen. Weirdboyz across planets hoot and holler, speaking of a beast returned, waiting on the other side of the veil for a great rumble. And possibly, most frightfully, I've been told in confidence by a most reliable source of great prognosticating power of the Great Devourer, the tyranids, seeming to converge on Farseer Taldeer's position. Something seems to be attracting them. Already, what few psykers that have been allowed to see Farseer Taldeer (She is currently recuperating in Eldrad Ulthran's care- frustrating my every attempt to investigate) have described a great calm, and serenity surrounding Farseer Taldeer.

Is it not true that, without synapse creatures to control the tyranid hordes, they go wild and revert to bestial primalism? And yet, when reintroduced to one of those synapse creatures they obey, regiment, organize, and act as one? And, though my hand shakes at this, my very spirit quakes, I must tell you to look upon the attached- a vision of this creature, this horrific possibility that may even know gestate, drawn in weak and fearful hand by that soothsayer, of the vision of what might become this child. Look now! See what lurks close by? The awful familiarity of the scene? Maybe this isn't merely a human-eldar hybrid, but something far worse?

I beg you, Lord Inquisitor Joachim, to take this seriously. The fate of our whole galaxy may rest on this!

{Final Notes: Inquisitor Joachim.}

{Interrogator Garden. I was wrong. You're not going to be sorting the archives. You're fired for this ridiculous nonsense. Please wait for security to escort you out of the building.}

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==Unnamed Shadowsun Writing==

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She awoke as always to emptiness, always the same feeling. Loss and regret and creeping dread of all the things left behind knowingly and the things she had not realized each time. When she was young T'au had been a far different place, better it had been to her mind or at least more familiar. She had barely known her parents or siblings as with all Fire Warriors though what she did remember was love and warmth. Old comrades, lovers, friends and even the rivals all lost to the Time Thief.

In the moments before the deep sleep, when the steel sheath came down over glass but the drugs hadn't put her out like a candle there was a moment of darkness. Candle flame is brightest in pure darkness without stars. In those moments before the sleep as all distractions ceased the light, the impossible light shone brightest. The light beyond space and stars and the inferno of war. In the stillness of a beatless heart, still lungs and almost total biological shut down, in the quiet and weightlessness of a sleep impossibly deeper than mere death her lidless eyes were naked before eternal warming flame.

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It was in that fire that her ashes were reborn upon awakening, time stolen from death, life beyond the Thief of Time. Usefulness once more in sacrifice to The Greater Good. More days stored away like winter grain offered in sacrifice to the heathen gods of ancient days, life, her life offered in stolen days for the lives of her people.

She had only seen the light of that candle flame in one other place. Reflected in the eyes of another living relic washed up on the shores of this strange era. In those eyes it was not candle flame flickering and dancing and gentle. In those eyes it was the constant glare. Two holes cut into a man's face right to the heart of a star, unceasing, incomprehensible intensity. It ultimately brought life but it was not gentle, it was inferno and holocaust and it was eternal.

The Thief of Time had stolen her friends and lovers and rivals but it clawed seemingly in vain at the stony countenance of Aun’o’T’au’Acaya’Va’Denta. Aun'Va, he of granite and basalt. Timeless as a mountain and about as stubborn. She knew that he lied, he was the old man she had spoken to in her youth, he who had commanded her into battle in another era. He told others that there had been a line of Va, a lineage of the name unbroken since the days of Aun'Da. But she knew that for the centuries that she had seen and knew of him he had always been himself. The same old man in whom the Greater Good burned like star fire.

How far back did he go? Was he the First Disciple of scripture? That would be impossible she knew, unthinkable and unreasonable, but these were unreasonable times that had seen things unthinkable and horrifying. He had lived impossibly long, how far did impossibility go?

And he knew that she knew. How many other knew of his unnatural longevity? How many had he lied to? Did it matter? Deception was one more weapon of war. Used when needed and put aside in times of peace.

Much like herself.

Her heart beat again in the darkness. The flame receded. Blood began to flow through her veins, sluggish at first, her heart a timid and flickering thing now in this time of rebirth.

Now was the moment of true darkness. The steel sheath still enclosing, protecting her as she awoke. The device she lay in was a relic of her era, familiar and comforting. One day she knew she would not wake up from it and it would be a deathbed. She was fine with that, her ashes would return to her people, distant now as they were.

Another beat of the heart. Stronger now. Blood forced to move. Sensation returned to her extremities, burning as the capillaries adjusted oxygen binding to cobalt as the decades old oxy-gel in her lungs was finally put to some use.

Another beat, she risked the opening of her eyes, blood red and bright, a sliver.

Light. Blinding, clean and white. She wanted to close them again but, that was cowardice and she knew it. Nothing born without some pain was worth keeping and she forced her eyes to open wider, to take in the light.

She could hear muffled sounds, mechanical sounds of antiquated medical equipment and the more hushed, gentle and deeper sounds of Earth Caste technician voices. With the speed of a glacier she moved one aching arm forwards and rapped gently on her glass enclosure as the blinding light resolved itself into people shapes. They jumped to her amusement she saw as she turned her head slowly to the side trying to ignore the light sensation as the anesthetics that had sat long dormant in her body finally found something to do.

The seals on the glass broke with a half hiss, half crack of still machinery coming away from rest, the fluids she had been suspended in drained away and left her resting on an old and faded polymer web mat. She swung her legs to the side and say upright, she felt weak, hideously weak, she always did. She could not afford to show it. She was a legend, a living legend. Unlike Aun'Va she had no problem with the public knowledge that she was a historic relic, it was good. She was a strong helping hand from the days of legend reaching forwards through time. Clarity was returning to her eyes now, some small measure of strength flowing back into her limbs. The figure before her was resolving itself into the robed figure that always greeted her when she awoke. She should feel honoured, she did not especially. He was another old legend like herself.

Grabbing a bucket from an Earth Cast orderly she emptied the oxy-gel from her lungs with as much dignity as could be mustered and took deep of the air of another century she should never have known.

"I have awoken and there is a war". She knew that this day would be recorded. It was always recorded. She had to play her part at all times. "I serve The Greater Good in all things."

There is always a war when we call upon you to serve." Replied the gaunt old figure standing before her. They had both played these parts many times down the eons, always it would go like this. It offered a chilly sort of comfort.

Shadowsun did not remember anymore how many times she had awoken. How many times she had lived and died and lived again. How many wars there had been. How much the Thief of Time had taken from her.

There would be a war. New combatants, new soldiers, new weapons, new horrors aplenty and that was for damn sure and always new faces and names and allies and friends as the Greater Good, the philosophy of unity and purpose was adopted across the stars under new names knowingly or unknowingly. It was the triumph and universally recognized truth of civility over barbarity realized time and again across the stars adopted by those that would survive and would survive and prosper because of it. She would sacrifice all she was or would ever be for it and do so gladly for such a truth, one death at a time. One day sacrificed at a time.

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==Unnamed Fallen (Chaos Space Marine) Writing==

"What have you done to the Imperium? This is not how I remember it. So many fresh faces and everything changed. I knew Eldar troops cooperated with Guardsmen but not to such an extent. Is the integration truly finished? Oh how times differ, kind of hard to track when fighting on a daemon world with 20 times slower speed. You know, I didn't get to participate in the last Black Crusade. The Warp does all sorts of peculiar things to time, space, and minds. Back when Luther ordered us to fire on Lion's retinue, I was questioning the order in my mind whilst pulling the trigger. Now isn't that funny? Little more than two years ago I think, we started that war against the loyalist Dark Angels. How I missed my legion, are any of those marines from that battle alive by any chance? I would love to talk to them. Well that was one of my reasons for surrendering, that and having my arms sliced off. Never convinced by the Fallen Dark Angels xenophobia, I almost managed to even get out a warning to Lion. Lucky bastards caught my messenger! The Imperium seem to have really improved after the War of The Beast, things may be looking up for humanity. Come on, at least tell me if the veterans from that battle will see me."

"No, the veterans of Lion's Last Battle refused to see you."

"All of them?"

"There are only a handful of living veterans from that battle, so yes."

"Did my legion get decimated or the like?"

"Just the fact that battle took place over 2,000 years ago have killed many veterans."

"What? That can't be true, it felt like only a few years since I first entered the Eye of Terror. I didn't want any of this to happen. What do you mean Lion's Last Battle, I know we never killed him."

"Lion El'Jonson was sent into a coma by Luther in that battle, one Lion never woke up from."

"I-I see. Yet the rest of the legion is intact after that battle right? [[Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Forces#The_Breaking_of_the_Legions|They haven't splintered like us?"]]

P74 from ''"Tales of the Third Black Crusade"'' by Quinta Tarcanus

== The Month of Murphy ==
The Month of Murphy:
The Imperium has, from ancient files, learned of Murphy's Law (Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, and usually at the worst possible time). For a while it was considered either a weapon of Chaos or Cegorach fucking around, until Cegorach himself chimed in. He provided the most concrete knowledge the Imperium has: He is not Murphy, he is pretty sure Murphy does not exist, and Murphy's Law is more like a law of the universe that applies even to the Chaos gods in the Warp.

This lead to Oscar making a very bad decision. It happened while he was on The Emperor's Tour, when he came across a situation that would benefit from his attention: Chaos cults had gripped 45 worlds in a defense-poor sub-sector. He joked that he would trade Murphy a month of minor inconveniences for a quick victory. He got the victory, dealing with all 45 worlds in less than three months using only one chapter of the Astartes, two Regiments of the Imperial Army, and a single battlecruiser as the cultists dealt with one catastrophe after another. Then he discovered that Murphy's Law does not know what the word "Minor" means.

In the span of one month, the following happened:
*365 mugs full of hot recaf spilled over his clothes and destroyed
*A robe woven for him with metallic fibers blowing the powergrid of an Administratum Sector HQ during a critical database transfer
*A 50,000% increase in the number of jaywalking incidents on the planet he was visiting
*A misfire during an aeronautical display in his honor burning down their hardcopy backups
*25 Inquisitors dying under the very strange circumstance of "spontaneous appearances of pools filled with leaping sharks" while investigating scheming nobles
*A previously undetected Chaos Cultist getting Jubblowski pregnant with twins(see file [[#The APEX Twins|COBRA SILVER SEAGULL (Tundra Cleric 12d))]]
*And his favorite lampshade being possessed by something very strange just so it could constantly yell at him about why his joke was a very bad decision and insulting him over his fashion sense. Removal of the lampshade just lead to random lampshades around him doing the exact same thing until the month ended.

The entire thing seems hilarious until you renumber that the casualties from that month totaled over 400 billion - 6 times the enemy forces he faced. To this day, every officer and Inquisitor is taught one very basic lesson: DON'T FUCKING TAUNT MURPHY.

= The Adventures of Legi and Draco =

==Chase==

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The stripped down land speeder whipped around another hairpin bend in the webway depths, Hell and damnation in the form a of what once might have been eldar not too far behind them. The walls were curved her and sticky enough with something not unlike gravity that rather than being dashed against the side they merely continued their mad dash along what she had until a moment ago been considering a ceiling. Today was going to be another “explanations” day if they made it back and that was for damn sure and the only thing that would buy them leniency was the semi-crystalline Necroteuch stolen from a curious temple dedicated to both Tzneetch and Slaanesh. That there were still copies of the foul tome in circulation and new cooperation between the gods were both equally disturbing.

But not immediately as disturbing as the driving skills of one Inquisitor Jaq Draco who was pushing the “pimp-speeder” as fast as it’s custom engine would go down extra dimensional tunnels that man was never meant to know of.

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“You sure you know where we are going?” Legienstrausse asked through the comm.-bead she had embedded in her skull earlier that day. “Not as sure as I was fifteen minuets ago.” The mad inquisitor replied turning to face her with a manic grin showing far too many teeth. Without warning the Speeder spun around on it’s frictionless anti-grav sheath just as the chariot pulled by two Steeds of Slaanesh rounded the last corner and gaining on them. The damned creature in contraption, shimmering and beautiful and terrible locked its baleful dark eyes with the Inquisitor. Beguiling and inhumanly lovely and opening wider in shock as the Mad Dog Draco raised his ultra-violet laser pistol and winked.

The creature, fast as it was, couldn’t dodge the invisible spectrum light as it punched through it’s head right between the eyes and flash fried it’s diseased brain. The serpentine mounts startled and tried to bolt in opposite directions resulting in what could best be described as a fucked up mess as another half dozen or so pursuers collided with them. The carnage was obscured as the speeder violently lurched back into pointing in the direction of travel just in time to swerve around another tight corner and land on what had originally been the ground or at least a surface that seemed like one.

Legienstrausse could only lament the poorly judged decisions that had lead her to this point in her life. Once upon a time, a lifetime ago if truth be told, she had been waiting tables in an eating establishment in the Daisy Chain. It wasn’t a glamorous life but she had her own apartment, was making enough to live off of and a little more to send home to her mother and father in the Lagrange Point Sprawl. But that wasn’t enough for her and she had volunteered for drug trials. That had quite paid well, serious risks were minimal, as by the time they tested it on people most of the kinks had been ironed out. A few days of blinding headaches, an upset stomach, a bit of dizziness and on one embarrassing occasion lactation were a small price to pay she had thought. But she had gotten greedy and gotten in for more extreme trials for greater financial rewards. Eventually she had volunteered for something to seriously help the Imperium, to be a test subject to make a better type of super soldier. Of the ten thousand by luck she had been the only success. The fates of the failures ranged from unfortunate to sorrowful.

It wasn’t until the Inquisition kicked her door down that she knew anything actually illegal had been going on.

The speeder upended without warning and disappeared into a long shaft in the ceiling and the gravity reversed so that they were in fact falling. Faster than falling as the Necroteuch slipped out of her hands and flew “upwards” at mere freefall.

Her long clawed arms almost made longer in reflex action almost closed on it’s irregular dodecahedron form just as the sinewy hands of another being snatched it out of the air. They had closed on them, the forsaken and wretched. With a predatory grin the once-eldar lunged at her with murderous intent, it’s jaws closing deep into her shoulder as claws punched deep into her abdomen. Through the ringing of red hot and depthless pain she heard Draco swear as a pained sound half scream and half whimper escaped her lips, but no help would come from the Inquisitor as he fought off another creature with his knives and steering the speeder with his left foot.

The creature pushed her down into the upholstery of the back seat of the vehicle, a snakelike tongue licking it’s lips and extending to her bloodshot eyes as it leaned in close to drink deep of the scent of her agony. The pained noise without words continued to peel out of her mouth, tears running freely from her eyes. There was a brief moment of confusion for the kneeler before foul gods as it realized that the scent was all wrong and it’s hand was in fact stuck and being held tight in the wetness of her ruined gut. The croneworlder had enough time for a momentary expression of panic as the gut wound grew teeth and a jawbone and accompanying musculature and clamped down hard enough to meet in the middle, Legienstrausse’s face split neatly down the middle as she head butted the once-eldar and caught his head in her own and crushed in a shark like bite. It was over then but for the twitching as the body was pitched over the side, the Necroteuch retrieved from the corpse with a long boneless limb that she habitually would still have called an arm.

“What did that one taste like?” Asked the Mad Jaq against the gale as the body of his own assailant disappeared upwards into freefall, headless and presumably dead.

“Chicken and sex” Replied Legienstrausse as her skull crunched and knitted itself back into a human shape. Jaq flipped the craft ninety degrees to flat as the upside-down pit came to an abrupt end, bottoming out the vehicle that then sprang and lurched forwards along a much broader tunnel not long later two mangled corpses landed where they had been.

There were still shapes following them, more distant now, on what looked like long limbed spider-squids. They were wary, not one of them would want to make the first move but neither would they willing return to their foul land without their strange and terrible book.

Options presented themselves fleetingly in the manic mind of the mad inquisitor. They could lure them to Ganymede of Titan, but one was meant to be secret and the other would probably get them shot by grumpy space marines, they could lure them all the way to Saim-Hann or the Hubworlds but that would mean taking the straight and broad roads and the others were faster on the open, there was a Silver Skulls checkpoint somewhere around here but he couldn’t remember exactly where. All he knew was where he was and in the beating of his heart and the saruthi-smell where everything else was for a given value of “here” and “there”. Today was, he felt, another good day. A fun day and as the hordes of damnation followed his streaming checkerboard coat he couldn’t help but laugh.

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==Happy New Year==

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The drinks had been plentiful and that wasn’t the problem unless it was. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, a fun time. Music and drunken flailing charitably called dancing, the people from different sites and Vaults and even off-worlders and outsiders come to visit (after being extensively checked of course). The main hall of Admin-Site Prime had never been so alive. And away from the heart of it all sat Legienstrausse in her own little bubble of self-generating, alcohol fuelled, misery. Nobody had asked her to dance, nobody had commented on her pretty dress, barely anybody had even said hello to her.

She saw them, they though that she couldn’t see them but even with only two eyes she had extremely good peripheral vision. A new face, an outsider or someone new enough not to know what she was would approach her only to be carefully intercepted by one of her jailers who would whisper into their ear. Over the happy, happy music she couldn’t hear what it was exactly they were whispering. They would not be told the truth, not the whole truth.

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The alcohol helped. It wasn’t making her happier but it was making the misery feel more distant. She was through nearly eight bottles of Rakia and the night was still young. After a fashion. Ganymede was tidally locked to Jupiter with an orbit of a hundred and seventy two hours and if she could remember that then it was time to start on another bottle. Which she did. Or at least intended to. A hand grasped her own firmly but not ungentle. She could have sworn that she saw no one approach, and she would have. But then he did have a knack for moving in unexpected directions.

The hairless done of his head gleamed like a twisted halo in the lights and his stupid clown coat, horizontal stripes on the inside, vertical on the outside and both in badly matching colours, hanging from his coat hanger and deckchairs body like the wings of a badly assembled angel. Was there genuine concern in those eyes? It was hard to tell. He was either a man who could hide and mimic emotions well or bounced around far more than a man should and still be capable of doing the job he did.

What was he? It irked her something fierce that all knew exactly what she was, knew enough certainly to be frightened at any rate, but nobody ever stopped to ask what the ever loving fuck he was. He ran the place, or at least the day to day running of part of it. Gods know he answered to people, strange shadowy people that she did not know of and probably never would, and whom she suspected probably didn’t know about each other. But who and what was he? He was insane, clearly he was insane and she had seen far too much to believe otherwise, but he held a job that required a level professionalism and competence well above what the teeming masses were typically capable of.

She looked up into those dark grey eyes and saw nothing reflected back. Not a lack of anything to reflect but a nothingness so complete that it fell away to some unseen terrible horizon and she didn’t know if those were his eyes or her eyes reflected in them.

“Legi, you shouldn’t do this to yourself.” He said concern etched in every line framing those fathomless eyes.

“I shouldn’t a lot of things, but here we are.” She replied up ending the bottle and managing to suck down half it’s contents before he more firmly pulled it away from her.

Slipping himself under half-heartedly resisting arm she carefully guided her out of the main hall, though not before she managed to split her other arm into four grasping tentacles and each grab more bottles from the table on the way out.

“What was all that about Legi?” His voice was not unkind, but when she felt less than kind she couldn’t believe that it was anything but an act. He didn’t give a damn, he wouldn’t be her jailer if he did. But maybe he did and that was more terrifying to her, maybe he did and she was pushing away the only person mad enough to care about her.

“Nobody wanted to dance” She slurred, the alcohol, several times terminal levels for a normal human, was finally starting to kick in. “Not one person, I put on my prettiest dress and not one person wanted to dance.” In truth she was technically naked, the dress was her own skin reshaped and pigmented into looking like what was in fashion in the Jovian Orbitals; Pale blue and light grey, hugging on the torso and sleeves but loose and flowing from the waist down. Broad belts with big buckles were in fashion again this year. The colours in the dress were starting to run together and blur as she lost concentration.

“I’ve seen you try to dance Legi, you may have dodged a bullet on this one”

“Fuck you old man, you can’t talk”

“Yes, dear, I absolutely can. I have danced with Harlequins and they take that shit seriously.” She was starting to stumble more now and although he wouldn’t mention it to her she was a lot heavier than she looked.

“I just wanted one dance. Would you dance with me?” She mumbled through half closed eyes “I could try and take it as seriously as you like”

“No” The Inquisitor replied as they staggered around down the corridors that became tunnels. Mad as he was the idea of trying to waltz with an inebriated organic weapon of mass destruction was not something even he, Mad Dog Draco, was crazy enough to attempt.

She would be sober in the mourning; thankfully her unique properties seemed to minimize hangovers. Hopefully she wouldn’t remember much of tonight. He though an invitation to a new years party would have made her feel batter. It was not one of his better ideas. Next year maybe they could curl up on a couch with some chocolates and watch a film or something. Or maybe he could try and find another method of escaping their jailers for another little adventure.

He would have to be careful, he knew, his sponsors and superiors were getting more adept at finding and shutting down his escape tunnels. If it carried on like this in a few hundred years they would have trapped him here with all the other dangerous curiosities.

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== A Little Trip Out ==

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It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Most of his ideas did somehow. Maybe it was the ability to talk fast, maybe it was the ever so wide and enthusiastic smile or maybe it was the way they were typically delivered in a hail of incoming fire when other alternatives were few and grim. But this time, this time was something special. Not good special either, oh no. This was a “has to be kept away from matches” type of special. The type of special that the Mechanicus usually scooped up to make use of the savant ability. Brilliant but utterly stupid.

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The “Pimp Speeder” was doing speeds when translated to real-space locations that would be extreme violations of relativity known only to Necron Crypteks. The Navigator on the front passenger seat she could still smell and feel the body warmth of even as he screamed and she knew the Inquisitor himself was sitting in the seat next to him almost certainly one hand on the wheel, one had hanging over the side of the door and foot pressed to the floor.

As for herself, Legienstrasse was trying with some success to crawl into the upholstery of the back seat. She had already digested her own eyes as a precaution.

The Chaos loonies of Rhanda were doing putting forth their best efforts to flesh-forge a “perfect” body and at the moment the fossil light of The Opening of the Eye passed over their world install in it their patron; The Sapphire King. Such a being, if half the claims about the body were true, would be to deamon-hosts what Fenrisian Ale was to shandy. Astartes parts stolen from ritual sacrifices taken in battles wrapped around a cybernetic frame made of tortured Martian Priests, infused with the Oblitorator Virus and gods alone knew what else. And maybe even they didn’t know what else. Sadly the information was obtained in an alley behind a seedy drinking establishment in the warrens of Luna. There was no way that they could get from Luna to Rhanda in less than a few weeks let alone a matter of hours.

The grin Inquisitor Draco had at that moment was something that would haunt her already decidedly unhappy dreams. Driving a stripped down land-speeder into a testing warp engine with a commandeered and terrified navigator holding the dashboard hard enough to leave finger marks in the paint is not for the faint of hearted. Or the sensible.

Once more Legienstrasse debated the wisdom of getting out of bed today. She could hear the things that were following them. She could feel the unlight and the heat of a god being born as it assaulted her skin. As it assaulted her soul and made her feel dirty. They were surfing the birth of Slaanesh, the bow wave of damnation. She knew what was following them, second hand hunger of a god reaching forward to claim them in the memory of birth.

In theory they could surf the wave right to Rhanda and, with navigator sight and Jaq’s psyker talents, travel the disturbance the ritual was causing and materialize right at the epicentre. In theory. Nobody in ten thousand years of Imperial history had ever tried anything this stupid to her knowledge.

Jaq Draco, Inquisitor of the most glorious Imperium, was having an eventful day. It had started with some toast with banana slices, it had involved following a lead he’d taken from a dead mans pocket to a planned meeting in a delightfully colourful public meeting house which resulted in beating someone to death with a large spanner behind said establishment and now he was driving very fast to an uncertain destination in a place he should not be. It was all so damn splendid and spoiled only by the whimpering of Legienstrasse behind him who had assumed the form of an amorphous blob in an attempt to hid under the seat and the screaming of the young navigator next to him.

His only concern was the bitching he was going to have to endure when they dragged him back to Ganymede, he did feel kind of bad for lying to Legi about this being a sanctioned investigation. She did seem like she needed another trip out and maybe she’s thank him when she calmed down, maybe not.

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=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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= Inquisitorial Reports =

==The APEX Twins==
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; PROJECT COBRA SILVER SEAGULL (Tundra Cleric 12D)
; CLEARANCE LEVEL : MYSTERIA ALTUM BLACK (FATAL EYE RED)
; SOURCE : ORDO SECURITAS JUNGLE MUSTANG
; AUTHOR : Inquisitor SABINE APEX
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; INITIAL BRIEFING :
On 2.1015.826.M41, Sister Jubblowski (ASSET GLASS PANTHER) was impregnated by a previously undetected Chaos cultist. Immediate countermeasures were taken, hampered by the fact that any attempt to abort the pregnancy would remove her fertility and Isha's blessing. Jubblowski insisted on finding other countermeasures that would deny Chaos a potential weapon and allow her to continue her duties, despite a clear and present danger to herself (Collected Marginalia, Emperor Oscar Steward: It was, to put it bluntly, badass). For a full list of countermeasures, see the attached BLEAK BULLDOG document, prepared by Grey Knight Brother Ryner and Order of the Gilded Rose Palatine Moira, both of whom were integral to Jubblowski's continued security and health.
Shortly after attachment of Brother Ryner to her security detail on 0105.827, Sister Jubblowski received a triple set of mutually exclusive prophecies regarding the long-term results of pregnancy (See attached document CLUMSY RAINBOW). All three prophecies confirmed twin female psykers as immediate result. (Collected Marginalia, Azura Strain, Grand Headmistress of Rehtor Imperia: request meeting with SABINE APEX. Must ensure this inquisitor will not emotionally stunt these girls from detachment).

On 2.0712.827, at 1111 Standard Imperial Time, Sister Jubblowski gave birth, barely surviving the process. Medical opinion holds she will not be able to safely bear for another three years. Counteracting this is the fact that Jubblowski spent the entire birthing issuing prophecies. Six hours later, a cult summoned multiple daemons to attack and secure the twins. Said plan was cut short when the daemons fled after the girls shredded one without trying. I was there, and I'm torn between joy and horror at knowing what a daemon's shriek of pain and terror sounds like.
Testing has proven the girls (Named Ethel and Gretel after characters from an ancient childrens tale) to be Alpha-Plus Psykers, with a few potential abilities the Farseers are currently unable to determine the nature of. Sister Jubblowski has followed their recommendations and designated me as their caretaker. She followed this by making me lactacte.
A moment of candor follows: I'm scared fucking shitless of the idea. I can go toe-to-toe with a junior Farseer, but that's only when skill is considered – in terms of power a weak one would overpower me. Is putting me in charge of two Alpha-Plus psykers, humans that until now were theoretical, a good idea? Their potential made Eldrad pause. I need backup.
Other than their massive power and the white hair, the girls are of a healthy weight and size, although they are showing signs of more muscular control than normal. Gene tests are being carried out, but are currently inconclusive in any area except their suitability for the Adepta Sororitas augmentations.

RESPONSE OF HIGH LORDS OF TERRA
Inquisitor SABINE APEX, your request for backup has been granted. You are hereby granted leadership of the JUNGLE PANTHER working group, who will aid you in this. Assets are being forwarded to them. May all our gods watch over you.

Selected Reports follow:

; Daily Report 0419.833.M41, JUNGLE PANTHER Compound (Respa III, Obscurus/Scarus/Helican). Inquisitor SABINE APEX, Reporting. :
The girls went missing for three hours today. We discovered them in a nearby town by the simple method of waiting: our psykers can see them when they light their powers up, and they like to use them. Recovery went well, as the fact that we had to hide the bodies was overlooked by the local authorities, who are already used to extreme violence between the gangs. It was a fairly gruesome scene – if I didn't know they had lit up for three seconds, I would guess they had spent hours torturing these men. When asked what happened, they replied “They wanted to do nasty things with us, so we did nasty things to them first. One of them really liked it.” This lead into the same argument that they can't keep other people as pets, no matter what the voices say.
Their therapist quit today. He's been getting extremely frustrated at how easily they misinterpret his statements. And I may have threatened his life over how he never actually tries to treat them like growing children, not static beings. How he got this job I don't know.

; Daily Report 0420.833.M41 :
That fucking bastard. He was keeping his own records. Thank the Empress the Exodites here like us, and captured him when their seer said so. The things in his luggage... Now I know where the girls were getting some of their ideas from. Ordo Securitas forces nearby have been notified to send the Cohort Religio down here, because some fucking pedo is trying to get the girls as his prophets and brides. The seer, Mornel, has offered to help me shoot them. I think I'm going to take him up on that.
The bastards removal seems to have brought in a change in the girls, who seem to be finally realizing just how serious things are. This lead Gretel to show that he had given her a wig and a haircut so she could continue to switch with Ethel , even after I ordered them to give them a way of telling them apart.

; Birthday Report 0712.840.M41 :
The girls have been eight years old for five years now. No explanation other than bastard's fetish has been found. Mornel gifted them with frilly green outfits. They are progressing excellently in controlling their powers, but unless they let themselves grow up we won't be able to deploy them without accusations of child soldiers being thrown around.

; Daily Report 0925.845.M41 :
Additional security has been put in place. The girls escaped to the wandering pirate port of Rum And Pour (which I have been told is the recipe for a truly vile, yet enjoyable, drink) three days ago, before returning to us today. According to reports, they caused no incidents, which is bullshit. The pirates are either not talking, or what they did was so minor it passed beneath notice. Therapists have noticed an increase in their psychopathic tendencies.

; Final Report from JUNGLE PANTHER Compound, 0003.848.M41 :
We failed. We failed hard. Inquisitor Oak was stopping by, dropping off supplies and picking up a few artifacts we had recovered on his way to the OBELISK MAZE vault in the Sol system. During his visit, the girls stole his shuttle, and then stole his ship. The ship was recovered unharmed 40 lightyears from here, with only two artifacts missing: a chainaxe recovered from a chaos cult stronghold (OBJECT FIRE HEART 17UM), and a cursed rifle of unknown origin that combines the firepower of an Exitus rifle with the full-auto of a heavy stubber (OBJECT BARRED CAGE 98C). Shortly thereafter, Rum and Pour left the sector. A messenger drone left at their last location held a message to us from the girls: they wished to see the universe, and the pirates seemed like their kind of people. They also called me Mother, and admonished me to not cry or get mad.

My only consolation is that most of the pirates there seem to prefer keeping the Imperium around. I and the tactical assets of JUNGLE PANTHER are heading out to give chase. We will not let Chaos get their hands on these girls, not after all the work we did on denying them this potential weapon. I have no idea what I'm going to do to the girls yet: grounding their little asses seems a little underpowered at the moment.

Inquisitor SABINE APEX, signing off.

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==Inquisitorial Report: AZURE IRON WASP==
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>Enter Clearance

>Password: ********************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.

>Opening file...

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OPERATION: AZURE IRON WASP (Eclipse Caterpillar 754) <br>
SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Divisio Raptoris, Facility BORON RAM <br>
AUTHOR: Inquisitor PEARL WATCHMAN, administrator of facility BORON RAM <br>
[Context: Blanket report to all personnel of facility BORON RAM, a facility devoted to researching potential cures for genestealer infection] <br>

It has come to my attention that several of the facility’s personnel have been using several of the patients of this facility for their own…personal uses. This behaviour was found to be rampant across the facility, with at least 23 different individuals breaking quarantine of numerous infectees, both male and female and of various species. Genestealer infection induces indiscriminate mating behavior with any perceived suitable partner to produce genestealer hybrids, even after host sterilization. Experiments to neutralize tyranid phero-brainwashing (which so far have only showed temporary success) have hosts show horror at actions while infected, indicating behaviour occurs regardless of conscious desires.

Speaking freely for a moment, I want to ask a simple question: What in the Imperium’s name is wrong with you? These are people. Men and women. They have friends and family waiting for them out there. They’re here to get better. Just because they’re sick and can’t control themselves doesn’t give you the right to use them as sex dolls.

Most of the offending personnel have been identified and dealt with. If I find any further instances of this occurring, I will personally make sure those responsible get reassigned to the deepest hole possible on Ganymede.

>End file<br>
>Logging you out...<br>
>Good hunting, Inquisitor.<br>
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==Inquisitorial Report: YELLOW EYE SEAGULL==

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>Enter Clearance

>Password: ************************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.

>Opening file...

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OPERATION: YELLOW EYE SEAGULL (Wobbly Wombat 17)

SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Diviso Sepulchrum, Deep Field Recon Squadron 17

Author: Interrogator PURRING VIOLET

Arrived and departed from IGC-137-Oscar-Romeo-Dalet-2828 without incident, extracting roughly two weeks before the Shadow in the Warp fell over the system. As in the previous sixteen systems, all traces of life above crustal microbes have been eliminated, primarily by orbital bombardment with some remaining traces of nanoweapons. As before, all indicators point towards Necron responsibility, of a fleet numbering about 200 vessels. [file attached: forensic analysis, orbital bombardment, weapon types and distribution] By the looks of things, we arrived just hours after they left. Maybe in the next system we'll get to see them in action. Progression of the age of the damage indicates the extermination fleet is moving via Dolmen gate, with no inertialess-equipped vessels. [file attached: forensic analysis, orbital bombardment, dating techniques] Maybe we'll catch them in the act in the next system.
At this point, all evidence is pointing towards the Necrons trying their own variation of the Kryptmann line, exterminating worlds in the Tyranids' path.
On the one hand, perhaps we can feel grateful that the Necrons are weakening the Tyranids for us. On the other hand... analysis of atmospheric composition indicates that this planet likely had a pre-space industrial/atomic civilization. [file attached: forensic analysis, atmospheric composition] They are either all dead now, or were scooped up en masse for biotransference experiments.
Next system is IGC-137-Oscar-Romeo-Gimel-2124. Long range telescope observation shows indications of life on the second planet; maybe that will still be true by the time we get there.

>End file

>Opening file...

OPERATION: YELLOW EYE SEAGULL (Solar Serpent 2)

SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Divisio Sepulchrum, HEADSTONE KING

AUTHOR: Inquisitor SUNSET STABERINDE

Deeper analysis of Wobbly Wombat reports only partially support initial conclusions that Necrons are enacting a Kryptmann Line strategy. Pattern and placement of sterilized systems are not consistent with attempts to weaken the Tyranids before a killing blow. Paths are left through sterilized zones leading away from Necron space. Conclusion is that Necrons are attempting to herd Tyranid fleets away from Tomb-Worlds while dealing as little damage to them as possible. Further conclusion: the Necrons are attempting to use the Tyranids as a weapon against the rest of the galaxy.
This is consistent with known psychology of the Silent King. Silent Empire long-term goals involve extermination of all life throughout galaxy. The Silent Empire does not currently have the power to do so. (See SCARLET SPINE SEAGULL reports for detail on Necron power projection) The Tyranids likely do. Necrons are in excellent condition to survive Tyranid onslaught; necrodermis indigestible, recall/repair mechanisms allow extreme attrition tactics, if all else fails they can clear the life off their tomb-worlds and return to stasis. Tyranids likely to depart after scouring galaxy of all life, leaving Necrons as sole owners. In short, Tyranid victory serves the Silent King's interests.
Further conclusions: Necrons may undertake further action against attempts to halt Tyranid advance. Sabotage of various kinds or direct naval or ground action against Imperium strongholds. Such actions should be anticipated and warded against before they actually occur; however, specific policy suggestions in this area are beyond the scope of this report.

>End file

>Logging out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.
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==Inquisitorial Report: BLACK BRASS PIG==
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>Enter Clearance

>Password: ******************************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.

>Opening file...

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OPERATION: BLACK BRASS PIG (Onyx Desert 22)

SOURCE: Ordo Malleus, Task Force MUSTARD-3

AUTHOR: Interrogator NACRE NETWORK

[Context: personal report from NACRE NETWORK to DIAMOND STAG, regarding cleanup efforts in the wake of the 8th Black Crusade]

Our worst fears have been realized. While physically relatively unscathed by their seven-month captivity at the hands of the Chaos Eldar, deep psychic trawls have revealed extensive mental tampering. Testing of 500 randomly-selected individuals out of the seven million survivors indicate at least half the population of Merriman's World are affected.

The exact purpose of the tampering is still unknown, and I must admit the technicalities are beyond me. Attached is a more detailed report by Primaris Xavier and Seer Iyonais. [Attached File: (Onyx Desert 20) Deep Probe Trawl Results] We do know there are two parts to the tampering. The first is a simple memory edit, evidently to replace any memories of the tampering itself with memories of the long-term confinement and neglect reported by the initial liberation teams. The second is a 'knot' of psychic energy hidden deep within the victim's mind, requiring deep probing to uncover. The exact function of this knot is unclear, but we can safely assume it to be a booby-trap of some variety.

This poses a dilemma. Releasing the survivors of Merriman's World into the Imperium before they have been screened is obviously impossible, when any one of them could be a ticking time-bomb. However, scanning all seven million of them would take resources that are simply not available, not with the counter-attack under way. The alternative, simply killing them all, is unpalatable. Perhaps you have an alternative, Lord?

>End file

>Logging you out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.
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==Inquisitorial Report: GREEN ZINC OLM==
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>Enter Clearance

>Password: ***************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.
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OPERATION: GREEN ZINC OLM (Hateful Heart 1227)

SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Divisio Barbarum, Deep Field Recon 180

AUTHOR: Inquisitor IVORY MILL

[Context: observation of Ork Attack Moons operating against the Tyranids in the Octarius Theater]

We have confirmation that the Orks have begun repair operations within the hulk of the Attack Moon *Bugzappa*. The Orks have begun transferring vast quantities of raw materials, parts, grot workers, and assorted industrial machinery into the interior of the Attack Moon, along with Meks from multiple systems. This is confirmed by long-range telescopic observation, intercepts of vox transmissions, and analysis of traffic types and patterns. It is safe to assume that this means the Tyranid infestation on board has been suppressed.

Progress on repairs is difficult to estimate; the Meks and grot workers are focusing on interior components of the hulk first, precluding direct observation. I assume they are trying to restore FTL capabilities to move the *Bugzappa* to a safer location before more Tyranid forces arrive.

Closer observation by stealth shuttles or servitor probes was prevented by a previously unknown type of energy field, apparently a distant relative of the Shokk Attak Gun. It creates a wide planar field of uncontrolled micro-teleports, shredding any matter passing through the boundary. The field is projected by several hundred unmanned emitters in a rough shell around the *Bugzappa*. It is apparently nearly harmless to large vessels equipped with void shields, as such vessels have been observed moving through the field with impunity; however, small and unshielded vessels have no such protection. Although this is mere speculation, I suspect this was designed to prevent Tyranid infiltration and sabotage attempts using small, stealthy bioforms. The design bears the hallmarks of Big Mek Baddkrasha. Since the *Bugzappa* is also his design, a personal interest in its repair is not unexpected. I assume he is also in-theater, although vox-traffic does not refer to his presence directly.

Assuming Baddkrasha's presence, based on the amount of materials and labor flowing in I estimate they can have FTL repaired in around a week. Without Baddkrasha's presence, two to three weeks. This assumes repair of the FTL system is their primary goal.

I will continue to observe the repair efforts of the *Bugzappa*. Once it warps out, I will move to re-acquire contact at the major shipyard systems under uncontested Ork control in Octarius. End report.

>End file

>Logging out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.
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</div>

==Inquisitorial Report: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON==
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>Enter Clearance

>Password: ****************************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.
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>Opening file...

OPERATION: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Quiet Quern 6)

SOURCE: Interrogator URBAN WELDER, Inquisition Watchtower Snarkle, Jack Hive, Joseph Haarlock Sucks At Cards

Analysis of the artifacts captured in last week's raid on the cult stronghold [reference: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Questing Quail 1), (Questing Quail 2)] has conclusively identified Items 23, 27, and 106 as psy-grafting machines of Chaos Eldar origin. Devices of this type are used to transfer an infiltrator's psyche into a captive subject, subordinating the original individuals' will to their own while retaining enough memory and personality to permit the infiltrator to pass as the original even to close confidantes and surface level psychic scanning. [refer to: Hideous Machineries of the Lost and the Damned: A Comprehensive Reference to Known Cult Technologies of the Segmentum Obscurus, Vol. 3, 227th Edition, pg. 1128-1145, for more detail] Quite simply, it turns loyal citizens into sleeper agents for the cult.

As this cell of the cult was using a high-class retreat as a cover, they would have had potential access to a wide cross section of lesser nobility, including PDF officers. A full assessment of the threat must wait for the completion of more detailed analysis of the compromised social networks and the completion of interrogations of captured cultists, but we must assume the worst. This cell alone may have seeded hundreds of sleeper agents in sensitive positions, and if this was not the only cell of the cult it is possible there are still more psy-graft machines out there.

The implications are dire; and any other cells of the cult will surely know of the destruction of their fellows, and respond. I fear the situation is beyond the ability of a single Watchtower to contain. Consequently, I am officially requesting aid from the other Watchtowers on-world [attachment: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Query Quetzal 1) and the deployment of specialists in dealing with psi-grafted sleeper agents from off-world [attachment: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Query Quetzal 2)].

Hopefully, we can root out this cancer before it spreads further.

>End file

>Logging you out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.

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</div>

= Non-Canonical Stories (Post M41 and Alternate Timelines) =

Abandon canon all ye who enter here. This is the place for all Nobledark Imperium stories that, regardless of how good they might be, represent non-canonical timelines (i.e., alternate timelines or post-999.M41 scenarios). Because the potential future of the galaxy post-999.M41 is supposed to be [[Your Dudes|up to the reader to decide]], all stories have been spoilered in order to avoid potentially ruining anyone's headcanon.

[[File:NotCanonShout.gif|200px|thumb|right|Basically this.]]

== Cypher Claws ==

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Private Dalwort was pretty sure he was going to die. He had known that he would for a while now, not the exact particulars but something like this. It was inevitable in a way, there were only so many ways a soldier in the Imperial Guard could die and almost all of them involved in some way the participation of another party. But he wasn't happy about it, no one bit. This was not how he wanted t go, hunted down across the snow like a beast. He could turn and fight, he knew at some level, he could turn and fight and die like a man. They could have outpaced him some time ago and he knew it, a mere man couldn't compete against an astartes, let alone a blood read monster blessed of Khorne. They were toying with them, he could hear their laughter over the wind in the tree tops and the hammering and blood rushing in his ears. Muscles on fire, lungs laboring to drag one more ragged breath after another into his chest he stumbled on. His nightsider eyes turned night into day by the light of the moon through the branches and he could see corporal Cadful not so blessed stumble over a tree root. Dalwort broke stride to catch him before he fell and was immediately slapped aside by a bright read hand.

Stars and whorl of purple and yellow blossomed in the pain of his face as he came back to himself. Everything was sore down one side of his face and he knew, by the fact that he was still alive, that he couldn't have been down for more than a moment. One eye was a rose of crimson agony, vision doubled and already he could feel it swelling shut and bruised and bleeding. A figure writ huge against the dark grey and gnarly tree trunks stood over Dalwort as he scrambled and backed away across the floor, Neth, Tiynad and Hormandz were, he saw ahead, backing away from two other giants that loomed ahead of them.

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A hand more like a metal bear paw lifted him by the collar of his sweat drenched flack jacket and hurled him to where the others had backed to. He could hear it. The laughter, a resonant and cruel sound. They were little more than mice to these creatures Tiynad lifted his trembling laser rifle and emptied the last of his powerpack into a scorch-marked line across one giant's chest with as much effect as pissing into a blizzard. The mocking, hideous laughter didn't change one iota.

Private Dalwort, Mordian Nightsider, soldier in the army of the most blessed Imperium resolved that he wouldn't at the very least die in the dirt and with what seemed to him super human effort hoisted himself to his feet, rifle held like a club in hands made numb by mindless animal fear. This was the night he would die, he tried to recall once more the cave he was born in, the land of his people in the endless star speckled night. A mordian's last thoughts should be those of home.

A flutter in the leaves above them and the giants stopped their tortuously slow advance. Splintering wood for a moment followed by a large thud and a spray of displaced snow as something in a much cleaner red landed in the trees barely a score of feet away. Tall as a Catachan and built large, a robe of heavy crimson hung from those broad shoulders fastened and trimmed with bleached bones and peppered with frost and the red Fallen astartes finally reached for their own weapons.

The nearest swung his chain-axe with a strength of a wrecking ball and the speed of the gale only to find his arm stopped as if he had struck a mountain, the man if man he was in the frosted robes wrenched that arm upwards and flipped the creature into one of it's damned and forsaken packmates before twisting the arm past the point of endurance to the snapping of adamantium armour and inhumanly strong bones. The other two had charged, roaring in rage as their chain axes screamed in a promise of bloody retribution. A promise that went fulfilled as the broad shouldered figure spun and ducked and twisted around their clumsy flailing before landing a punch that collapsed one of their helmets and the skull inside it. The broken armed Fallen and it's associate attempted to get to their feet but weren't quick enough as the broken armed one was silenced by a thunderous boot impacting it's neck, directed movements becoming the graceless flails of a man dying of a crushed windpipe and lungs filing with blood.

Two remained now, circling the Mordian's saviour, waiting for the moment to strike. The man spun to keep them both in his vision as much as possible, shoulders squared, fists bunched the dynamic of the situation seeming to dawn on both of the Fallen at the same time that this wasn't the circling of sharks around a stranded swimmer, this was a wolf indecisive of which sheep to pick first. The figure was smiling beneath that grey beard, grey eyes like hard flint gleamed beneath those grey hairs, eyes of a judge without mercy, displeased and declaring and damning. The one with the laser scorch marks was the laser scorch marks was the first to fall, his head torn unceremoniously from his body, the second tackled to the ground and rib-cage crushed under repeated hammer blows as inhumanly dark blood seeped into the spoiled snow.

The whole engagement had in truth been over in moments, the Mordians huddled together as the figure stood upright once more, flint hard eyes fixing on them like those of an apex predator. The Fallen had been terrible beyond words but here was something worse. Those eyes reached into their souls like the inferno glare of a god, seeing their sins and knowing them completely. There was no hiding from him, he knew their names, he knew everything about them and they couldn't look away. The figure took a role of parchment or animal skin from his robe and marked it in the blood of the slain several times. Rooted by all encompassing terror Dalwort and his comrades trembled as he moved towards them with long, sure strides. Dalwort couldn't see, his one good eye was full of tears "please" he silently mouthed through quivering lips "please" the figure now seeming impossibly huge was standing right before him now and reached forward once more and Dalwort finally managed to close his eye and screwed them tight as he prepared for death.

There was a slight heaviness upon his shoulders. After what seemed an eternity he opened his eye to see the grey haired and blood drenched figure gone, leaving only the dead as testament to him ever having been there. The dead and a forge-world fresh Cameleoline cloak over his flack jacket. Looking around his comrades were similarly gifted and as confused and terrified as he imagined he looked, and above them the sound of laughter booming as thunder and as terrible as an avalanche "HO, HO, HO".

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== Unnamed Alternate Timeline Story ==

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“It is an esoteric art, young seer, one that is not often explored by practitioners of our Path. And admittedly, in times like these it is more practical to gaze into the future to find the sword stroke that will cut down the foe. But still, there is a great value in what we do, for the road not taken has much to teach us.

“Now, expand your mind as you have done before. Feel the infinite strands of time and causality spiraling forth from this point. Good. Now, instead of reaching forward, reach back. It will feel strange, but try to find a point in the past, and focus. It may be faint, but give it time… Ah, I see you feel it. Different, aren’t they? Those are the ashen echoes of what could have been. Pick one, and follow it for a while. Immerse yourself in it. Let yourself fall into the mists of what never was and never will be. Part the veil and look inside this world of lost possibility. What do you see?”

---

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The throne room was bathed in warm light from the setting sun that filtered through the stained glass windows, long shadows thrown carelessly against ornate walls. It was modestly sized but handsomely furnished, fitting for the humble, diligent Planetary Governor who ruled there, but today it had a different occupant.

The Grand Vizier stood at his usual spot behind the borrowed throne, arms crossed behind his back, as he watched the last of the courtiers and petitioners trickle from the hall. The Emperor raised his hand in a benevolent wave as his subjects left, some of them still with looks of slack-jawed awe or religious rapture on their faces as they turned to look one last time upon their immortal ruler. A pair of golden-armored Custodes closed the great doors with a final clang, and the room was empty. The Emperor let out a long sigh and rose, making his way towards the private exit behind the throne. The Grand Vizier fell in beside him, matching his stride without a word. The Emperor would speak when he wanted.

The pair proceeded through the door to the hallway that led to the residential wing of the palace that the governor had lent to them, and after a moment of companionable silence, the Emperor spoke. “Any news since our briefing this morning?”

“Nothing requiring your attention, Your Majesty.”

The Emperor raised an amused eyebrow. “Your Majesty? Using titles today, are we?”

“You saw how these provincial types were falling over themselves to call you by the most elaborate titles possible. They love the pomp and glamor, so we may as well humor them while we’re here.”

“Very well then, my Grand Vizier. What did you think of Lord Farwell and his proposal?”

“An earnest man, and his plans for increasing agricultural production here were sound, though perhaps accepting them would anger the Melisians.”

“Let them be angry then. They may fume and fuss, but they will not cross the throne in such times. We cannot have the entire hive world of Kado so dependent on Melis for supplies, and an expansion here would do much to bolster the stability of the agricultural base in the subsector.”

The Vizier smiled wryly. “They may not see it that way, but I agree: their objections will not have much force given their economic ties and the fact they have more tractors than lasguns.”

They continued down the hall and out into a small courtyard, where two serving girls were idly gossiping, leaning against a column. They turned at the sound of footsteps and froze wide-eyed as the Emperor and the Vizier approached. They managed to dip down into shaky curtsies and squeak out a stammered greeting.

The Emperor smiled gently at them, the expression radiant on his sculpted features. The serving girls flushed an alarming shade of red, and one of them seemed to be hyperventilating. The Vizier rolled his eyes.

“If you would be so kind, inform the good butler that we will be having our dinner in the garden pavilion today,” said the Emperor. The serving girls nodded frantically but did not move. “You may go now,” the Emperor prompted gently. The pair blinked, the spell broken, and fled in the direction of the kitchens. The Vizier shook his head, and the Emperor shrugged helplessly.

As they made they way towards the garden, the Emperor turned again to the Vizier. “What of Biel-Tan? The last report indicated the Court of the Young King was in a frenzy. Will a visit be necessary?”

“No, Your Majesty. I only just received word. It seems the good Ambassador Cain has managed to slow the situation somewhat, and given the pause it looks like the cooler heads of the Court will prevail. We will continue to monitor the situation, but it seems unlikely we will have a rampaging Bahzhakhain waking sleeping Tomb Worlds.”

“Whatever we’re paying that man, it’s not enough.”

“A true hero of the Imperium.”

They pushed open an elaborate wrought iron gate, and then they were in the garden. The Governor’s wife was something of a gardener, and in the carefully cultivated beds and trellises were plants and flowers from a hundred different worlds. Flowering shrubs, elegantly pruned trees, crawling vines, and overhead four-winged dragonets and Elysian swallows flitted about the branches.

The Emperor stood a moment, looking across the garden. “The First Lady has an eye for landscaping. A marvelous garden, is it not?”

“That it is, Your Majesty.”

“Please, no more titles when we are alone here. I’ve had my fill of that today.”

With that the Emperor stretched, reaching towards the sky, and in a burst of white unfolded his wings. Huge they were, pure as driven snow, and even now having seen them for ten thousand years, they were a beautiful sight to the Vizier. “As you say, Sanguinius.”

Sanguinius patted him on the shoulder. “Come, Oscar. Dinner awaits us.”

They walked down the path to the pavilion at the center of the garden and passed by the pride of the First Lady: a small collection of plants saved from the destruction of Old Earth, crowned by a single rosebush. They seated themselves at the table in the pavilion, and soon the butler and a host of servants came down the path, pushing carts loaded with food and drink.

The golden man and Man of Gold reviewed dataslates and holopads as they ate, never taking their eyes from the information at hand even as they worked on the food, reviewing reports, approving orders and laws, ceaselessly manning the wheels of government that endlessly churned to keep the vast machine of the Imperium in motion. Finally, the last course was cleared away, and Sanguinius set down his holopad and took a sip of tea. Oscar paused, stylus hovering over his holopad.

Sanguinius sighed. “Just ten minutes. Let me at least enjoy the sunset.”

Oscar nodded, and looked of towards the horizon together.

“Should we spar again, later tonight?” asked Oscar.

Sanguinius groaned. “You’ll be the death of me. Tapping into the Warp always makes me queasy, and I’ve already been locked in the throne room all day listening to complaints about the price of grox.”

Oscar chuckled. “I could use the night off as well. Your control of lightning yesterday nearly bested me. Your powers may very well match my own soon.”

“Hopefully not for a while yet, I’d rather you be the one to freeze battlefleets with your mind. But I did notice the same thing, likely due to the increase in Imperial Cult activity that the Synod reported.”

At that, Oscar opened his mouth, but the words caught in his throat. Sanguinius looked at him. “You have a question.”

He hesitated. “About the Imperial Cult… I’m not quite sure how to put it.”

The angel smiled. “A topic of conversation we haven’t breached after ten thousand years of friendship? Now I have to hear it, if only for a break in the monotony.”

Oscar looked his friend in the eyes. “Why do you let them worship you?”

He saw a glimmer of surprise. Sanguinius looked up, brow furrowed ever so slightly. When he looked back down at Oscar, his smile had become sad. “Because that is what they need of their Emperor. Of me.”

“It is a falsehood. They call you a god when you are only a man.”

“I know, Oscar. I more than anyone know of my own frailties and failings. But that is not what need. The common man is not like you, the truth is not so sacrosanct a thing to them. They need a hero, a savior, one they can emulate, one so perfect and invincible that they can believe in him with all their heart so they can go on for just one more day in this galaxy of pain. They need a god.” Sanguinius looked off towards the sunset. His eyes were distant.

“When you placed that crown on my head, Sanguinius the man died. In his place you created the Emperor, embodiment of the Imperium, vessel for the hopes and dreams of quadrillions of souls, the immortal Angel that would save them all. Never have I forced them down this path, Oscar. They pray and worship and hope, and I in turn take their pain and expectations and longing upon myself. All for the sake of the lie that anchors them, that keeps the Imperium turning: The Emperor Protects. Even when I have failed so many of them, they still believe: The Emperor Protects.”

Oscar was silent for a moment. “Do you resent me?”

“Never, Oscar. Someone has to be that beacon for them, and better it is me than anyone else.”

“You do not bear this burden alone, Sanguinius.”

“I know. I have you, and Lady Isha, and many others, and truly without all your help I never would have made it to today.”

“Yes, I do recall a certain large Ork I helped you with,” said Oscar drily.

“But I have thought about it.” Sanguinius twisted a long strand of his golden hair with a finger. “For all our power, the fate of the Imperium will not lie in our hands.”

“Oh?”

“A great many people – you included, I think – believe that it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that hold the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness, love, and courage. And if the Church gives them that strength, is it not worthy? If the guardsmen in his trench fights a little harder for his fellows, if the clerk at his desk pushes through and finishes one more report, if the tired mother finds the strength to hold and read to her children, then all of this will have been worth it, and that is where we will find our salvation. Not in me, or you, but in the strength of the people and in each individual citizen, whether it be man, Eldar, Tau, Demiurge, or others.”

“So you say.” Oscar poured an amber liquor into two glasses, a favorite of the locals, the bottle glugging softly. He slid one to Sanguinius.

“You’re unconvinced.” Sanguinius laughed. “This conversation got quite heavy, didn’t it? I’m no good at this ‘god’ business, it seems. Ask your wife about it, she’s had millennia more experience than I.” They both sipped at their cups. “How is she these days?”

“Overworked, just like us. Splitting her attention between the Warp and realspace is tiring, and the needs of the faithful are many in times like these. She is well enough, though.”

“Once again, my heartfelt thanks to the Mother Goddess of the Imperium, especially for her help with the plague at Monarchia. Even the Word Bearers were at a loss, and without her direct intervention we likely would have lost the planet to Nurgle.”

Oscar smiled faintly, a hint of pride on his lips. “I will convey this, she will be pleased to hear it.”

“A shame she could not have joined us for this trip. She would like it here.”

“That she would. But enough about us.” Oscar peered at Sanguinius closely. “What about you?”

The angel sighed. “Not this conversation again.”

“You know I’m right.”

“Let me recount your arguments: An Empress would be of great symbolic and functional importance to the Imperium. A woman of talent would be able to take on duties of government we currently administer, relieving our workload and allowing the Traveling Court to spread its reach. She could also increase our influence by presenting a different face from us, two towering demigods, and represent the Imperium separately on her own missions. It would also help Imperial morale, giving the citizens a great event and moment of joy to celebrate. And finally, as consort, she would be to… address my needs, both emotional and otherwise. Does that all sound about right?”

“Masterfully argued, Your Majesty, I am utterly convinced.”

Sanguinius shook his head, unable to contain a smile. “You would be, but I am not so easily swayed.” He gave the liquor in his glass a swirl. “They say a man is lucky if he can find true love once. I already have, so to find it twice is to ask too much of this universe. I’ve already had my happy ending.”

“It was worth a try.” They sat a moment in silence, appreciating the sunset. “Do you still think of her?”

“Every day,” said Sanguinius, his eyes distant again. “When I lost her and Belisarius in the same month, I thought the light had gone out of my life, and so it has, to a degree. That part of me is done.” He finished his drink with a gulp. “I said the day you placed the crown on my head was the day Sanguinius died, and the Emperor was born. That was a lie, of sorts. The day Sanguinius truly died is the day I lost them. Now, our dream is all that is left to me.”

“You have heard reports from the Blood Angels, I am sure, of the Lady in Red?” said Oscar quietly.

“Of course.”

“If it truly is Lady Cyrene, why has she not shown herself to you in your visions?”

“If we assume it is truly her, then she has her reasons. Cyrene was always independent and willful in her own way, and I loved that about her. I trust that what she doing is right. And if fate deems that we will not meet again in this world, we will meet again in the next.”

Oscar followed suit and finished his own drink. The sun was only a slight arc above the horizon now, midnight blue descending and jealously pushing out the last few hues of pastel pink and yellow. “We should be going soon,” said Oscar. “There is still work to be done.”

Sanguinius nodded. “I will meet you in the study soon. I just need to be out here for a little while longer.”

Oscar rose from the table and headed down the path to the palace. Before he turned the corner, he looked back at the pavilion. Sanguinius was silhouetted against the setting sun, wreathed in a corona of light, and for a moment, he was a duality: he looked utterly magnificent, every inch the Emperor and god the people claimed him to be, and utterly alone, an all-too-human man crushed by the weight of his crown.

Oscar felt a stab of pity, and regret for what he had done. He turned and left, grateful to his friend that it was not him.

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</div>

== The End, But One Of Many ==

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Millions of years in the future…

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Scribe-thane Escribdeus dug. He scraped at the earth with his hands, pulling away paw after pawful of sand. In spite of this seemingly primitive behavior, most observers would note that he had come a long way from his ancestors millions of years ago, which had been little more than rats.

He wore robes for one. He wasn’t an animal.

Slowly but surely, he scooped away at the stone tablet emerging from the ground ignoring the sensation of sand grains in his fur. Once it was sufficiently clean, he brought out his equipment and began analyzing the stone. Luminescence dating, to tell when the stone was last exposed to sun or heat. After a few minutes, the machine spat out its answer with a beep.

The numbers couldn’t be right.

He ran the analysis again. The answer was the same. He scooped several more handfuls of sand away from the artifact to make sure it wasn’t what he thought it was, it couldn’t be what he thought it was, but it was. The scribe-thane brushed at the emerging stone plaque, careful not to damage anything, until he saw the alien glyph of the Ancients clearly denoted upon their surface. He felt a swell of joy in his heart.

Scholar-Seer was going to be so pleased when she saw this.

Elsewhere, Mistress Scholar-Seer Senic was indeed pleased, but for reasons that were much more carnal than her thane would have thought. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. For a species that put an emphasis on tactile stimulation and social behavior it was only natural that they would put a high premium on grooming and reproduction. Add to the fact that solid-colored fur, whether her own grey or black, brown, or white, was considered an attractive characteristic by her species and it was unsurprising that she received so many offers of mating.

“Mistress!” Escribdeus said, throwing open the flap of the tent and completely ruining the mood, “glorious news-news!”

Scholar-Seer Senic let out a shriek, startled by her piebald-colored assistant. It wasn’t out of modesty, no one in the room had anything that the others hadn’t seen before, but nobody liked to be started in the middle of an intimate moment. Picking herself up off the ground, the Scholar-Seer gave the oblivious scribe-thane a death glare.

“Mistress,” he said, “we found one. “Two-hundred years more young-young than youngest known Ancient relic based on multiple methods of dating.”

Senic was shocked. She had expected they would find something here but nothing this young. This was certainly something worth interrupting mating for.

“You’ve done well thane,” she said, “have extra rations-treat as reward for good-good work.”

The scribe-thane squealed so loud the Scholar-Seer thought he was going to pass out before excitedly scurrying out of the tent. He was such an excitable sort. She wondered if she had been that way when she had come of age at five years old. She supposed she had better return to work too. Dismissing the lower-ranking male with a chitter, she donned her robes and the horned headdress that marked her as a figure of authority. She enjoyed mating as much as the next member of her species, but her true passion was in studying archaeology. The lives and ways of ancient peoples.

Opening the flap of the burlap tent, she allowed her eyes to adjust to the harsh light before walking through the work camp. All around her, thanes were busy at work, two arguing over cataloguing a plastic idol, another taking a break and chewing on a gnawing aid. Such was typical for her kind. When a newborn in any clan reached juvenile age, they were apprenticed under the aegis of a Master or Mistress in order to learn skills and discipline, and eventually be deemed an adult. It was their way. With their reproductive habits, large numbers of thanes were not unexpected, though in this case these were not all her own apprentices. At least with modern medicine it was better than in the medieval era, where famine was common.

Walking up the sandy hill to the dig site, she noticed one of the large rat-wolves trotting alongside her. Emitting a brief chirrup, the rat-wolf came close enough to her to give the domesticated rodent a piece of jerky. The rat-wolves were good guardians. Useful to have around. As she reached the digsite itself, the rat-wolf realized that it was not going to get any more jerky out of her, and turned back to go lounge around with the other rat-wolves under the tents.

When she reached the digsite, she saw it was still much as she had left it, neat lines of string demarcated squares over the Ancient ruins. However, at the far end of the site, she noticed the new Ancient plaque uncovered by the new excavation efforts. The Scholar-Seer’s pulse quickened. As swiftly as possible, her hind feet tread over the sand, until she reached the stone edifice itself. Crawling down into the hole, she put her hand upon the glyphs, letting her fingers brush over the alien carvings. Then she stopped. Although she could not get a good look at him, she could see the scribe-thane standing behind her out of the corner of her eye.

“You know what they say-say?” she asked, not turning around.

The scribe-thane shook his head. He had learned to make out some of the lettering on the Ancients’ monuments, but he had never really learned to read their writing.

“Can tell you. You want to know?”

The scribe-thane nodded excitedly. The idea of learning the craft directly from the mistress was something that anyone would file their incisors for. The Scholar-Seer turned from the plaque to look the thane in the eye.

“Assume you know basics of story. When world young-young, galaxy was in primordial chaos. From chaos, gods emerge. Our gods, the Ancients, and their enemies, Cancerous Ones. Emprah, the gold-god, decide that galaxy in chaos unacceptable. Rescue-steal Great Mother from the tallest tower of Cancerous Poxed One, who claim-kidnap her as his own at dawn of time. Mother-goddess decide to join gold-god in his quest. They create thirteen children, twelve sons and one daughter, to aid them in their quest. Lionman Russ, the savage knight. Fuegan Manus, the smith. Sanguinala, the banshee daughter. This why thirteen so important to us.”

The scribe-thane nodded again. He knew the story, everyone learned it as a child.

“Great Mother and Father and their children fight war against cancerous ones. They seal away Cancerous Ones in the netherworld. Some guess-think that this myth explanation of why life and death happen. But no one can deny that Ancients exist. Great Mother go on to have many children. Many species-things. Populate galaxy with new life. For many-many years life bountiful. But then gods vanish. So do children. Leave only us, youngest child of gods. No one knows why.”

Scholar-Seer Senic turned back to the tablet.

“This tablet-stone important because it younger than any other, and so reveal-tells more of gods’ story”

“What happened?”

The Scholar-Seer put her hand on the tablet for a moment. Then her face fell.

“Things change. Final war-battle began. Center could not hold. Slaves of Cancerous Ones broke free from the Netherworld, intent on dragging mother-goddess back with them. Dead-things from before age of gods returned and took revenge to reclaim lost thrones. Great devourer come from east, eat fourth of galaxy. Much death-death. Home of gods under battle-siege. Many desperate things done. Moon of unnatural-things, prison of those not meant to be, opened. Oblivion-god set free to make war-death on those who trod upon his kingdom. All children-species called for final war. Cancer-gods try to kill last hope in cradle.”

The Scholar-Seer studied the tablet.

“And then what?” the scribe-thane asked.

“I…do not know. Story-tablet stops there. Had to guess, think it fear-warning for future. Tell not-born generations what happened. Not sure why.”

The two shared a moment of silence for their sobering discovery, only for the chitter-bead tagged in the Scholar-Seer’s ear to go off.

“Mistress. News-news from star-watchers. Most important. They see-see ship in atmosphere. It look…look like crescent moon.”

GOOD END

Lofn Ulthran stood at the bridge of the Lady Betsy, looking out at the surface of the planet over which the ship orbited. She wasn’t happy. Few people would be if they were woken up at three in the morning several days ago and told she was urgently needed, and I quote, “right the fuck now”. And then were unable to get a good night-cycle’s sleep for the next few days. Going somewhere “right the fuck now” took on a very different meaning when you knew someone with access to a Necron inertialess drive ship. 220 years of being a diplomat and you would think she get a little bit more respect.

That said, the decidedly less sleep-deprived part of her brain could understand the need for urgency. Odysseus had finally shown up again. During all the craziness that went down during the Second War in Heaven the planet, which previously orbited the near-Sol star of Epsilon Eridani, had been shot deep into the Warp like a pinball. It had gone so deep that at least among the Administratum there was a betting pool of if and when the previously habitable planet would ever show up again. And then it happened to show up in the Skavos cluster, a region which until recently had been covered by a Warp Storm for as long as she could remember. Lofn shuddered. Odysseus had been so deep in the Warp there was no telling how long it had been there. Subjective millions of years could have passed for the people on that planet in the 220 years the planet disappeared from realspace. She couldn’t imagine what they could have gone through. It was no wonder the Imperium had asked her to represent them. Who else would you call to make first contact with people who hadn’t seen the Imperium in centuries, if they even remembered at all.

The door opened with a hiss, breaking Lofn from her rumination, and an eight-foot-tall metal skeleton stomped into the room behind her. Lofn smiled.

“Obyron,” she said to her old childhood companion, “I assume everything is okay on the ship?”

Obyron relaxed slightly. “Nothing much. A Watcher and an eldar got in an argument on the lower decks. Had to step in and separate them.”

Lofn smiled. There were few things in the galaxy that shut petty squabbles down quicker than a Necron leaning over them with a death glare.

“Any other messages I should be aware of before we make contact?”

“No. Well, one message from Ynnead, asking to make sure if you are okay, but that’s to be expected.”

Lofn rolled her eyes. “Ynnead worries too much. If I were ever in trouble, he more than anyone else would be the first to know.”

“He just does it because he cares.”

There was a pause in the conversation.

“I only wish the Nemesor could have been here to see this,” Obyron muttered.

Lofn frowned. She barely remembered the jovial old Necron from her childhood but he had always seemed like the nice sort. Although Obyron may have technically been the captain of the Lady Betsy, Lofn would never refer to Obyron as such. She knew he would take offense to it. To Obyron, the Lady Betsy only ever had one captain.

“I wish he could have been here too. He would have probably loved it. But I don’t think he had any regrets about how things turned out.”

“I should have been there, it was my duty.”

“You had two conflicting sets of duties.” Lofn responded, “It was either obey your lord and potentially let him die or disobey him and potentially let me die. How many times have we been over this, Obyron? You can’t keep beating yourself up over this.”

Obyron grunted. Lofn knew that was for her sake. She knew this argument wasn’t over, but Obyron was willing to let things lie for the time being in the name of getting the job done.

“Well,” she said, “let’s go meet the neighbors.”

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== The Visitor ==

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<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Note: In the same timeline as the Good End of "The End, But One of Many"

Lofn Ulthran put away the last of loose things before surveying her now-tidy apartment on Colchis. Normally she didn’t put much effort into keeping her apartment neat, but today she was expecting a visitor. Apparently Lofn had gotten the job done just in time, for no sooner had she finished the job than she heard the doorbell ring. Humming to herself, she made her way to the apartment door and opened it to reveal a tall, slender figure standing just beyond. His skin was pale and his face angular and gaunt, a white shock of hair upon his head. His eyes were an ethereal blue, and in his left hand was a large, silver polearm that one might say resembled a halberd or some odd combination of sword and spear or, for those familiar with more exotic weaponry, a Necron warscythe.

“I see I could not stop for death, so he kindly stopped for me,” Lofn said, sounding oh-so-pleased with herself.

“Ha ha, like I’ve never heard that one before,” the figure drolled.

“Nice to see you too, Ynnead,” Lofn said to her guest, “and I suppose from that remark death’s too good for a case of fine Valhallan dark?”

“Valhallan? Damn, death will bite his tongue for that.”

Lofn paused for a moment.

“So is it, you know, okay for you to stop by like this? Like, people aren’t going to stop passing on just because you decided to stop for a beer or something?” She said, looking around as though she expected death to be put on pause any second.

“Nah. According to mom the process happens regardless of whether I’m incarnated on the material plane because technically I’m doing it simultaneously in the Warp. It’s like how people don’t stop getting pregnant just because mom’s around. I’d ask mom how that could be, but she’d tell me to ask dad, and he’s tell me…”

“Fourth-degree interdimensional warp fuckery,” the two said at the same time.

Lofn snorted.

“Come on in,” she said, turning back to the apartment and heading inside, “I’ll get the drinks.”

“You got a place for this thing?” Ynnead said, gesturing slightly to his giant Necron-style halberd for emphasis.

“Yeah, put it in the umbrella rack,” Lofn called from the kitchen, “Nothing’s in there anyway, don’t know why I have it, it never rains here.”

Depositing his weapon with a loud clang, Ynnead followed Lofn into the apartment. It was a nice apartment, not very large, but rather homey. Ynnead could see not much had changed since his last visit here. Lofn’s paintings still covered most of the walls. He turned to regard the one nearest to him, an eerie watercolor piece depicting a single figure holding open a black, sketchy doorway. He had a pretty good idea what that was supposed to be of. Lofn’s apartment had a single couch, facing the windows overlooking the city. Sitting on the couch sleeping in the sun was Lofn’s chitinous pet. A single look from Ynnead was all that it took to send the creature scurrying.

Ynnead and Lofn had known each other since they were children. Ynnead, due to his nature as the child of the Emperor and the Empress, had always been a fixture in the Imperial Court, whereas Lofn had been brought to Old Earth at a young age due to her political importance and at that time the danger in her life. Due to being the only half-human, half-eldar (though exactly what Ynnead was was a subject of debate), and more importantly, the only children at most court functions, the two struck up a friendship. It felt good to have someone else around who could finally empathize with how they saw the world, neither in terms of the obsessive, long-term view of the eldar or the wilder, short-term views of most humans, especially as the two of them sometimes felt like conversation pieces as opposed to people. A couple hundred years later, and their friendship was still going strong.

“Is the old man around?” Ynnead called.

“He’s around,” Lofn called from the kitchen, “Obyron knew you were going to be stopping by and stepped out for a bit. I think he’s going to go visit the Nemesor’s memorial.”

“Ouch,” Ynnead winced.

“Yeah, he really hasn’t been dealing with it well,” Lofn said, bringing over the case of Valhallan beer and handing one to Ynnead, “I’ve been meaning to try and talk with him about it but I worry that, you know, he’ll see me as part of the problem, given everything that happened. I know he really misses the Nemesor, but I also know Zahndrekh wouldn’t have wanted him to mope for eternity like this.”

Lofn flopped down on the couch, her arm across the back.

“Nothing’s really new with me,” she said, “No real crisis has popped up in the last few months. As I told you before, being a diplomat is mostly dependent on people being stupid and if people aren’t stupid then there’s little for me to do. Mostly I’ve just been doing humdrum stuff, some minor stuff for the Administratum, seeing a few friends, and painting.”

“So how’s the reincarnation gig?” Lofn said, popping open a bottle, “More eldar-human hybrids being born?”

“More are being born every year, but not many and not very often. You’re still the eldest by far.”

“Gah,” Lofn said, throwing up her hand, “Don’t say that. It makes me feel like an old lady.”

“You’re the eldest. The eeeeldest.”

“We’re the eldest. You’re the same age as me, dumbass.”

“I was born four years, seven months, and thirteen days after you, Sol standard time,” Ynnead said smugly, seemingly channeling his father for a moment.

“Come off it. Four years is chump change in the grand scheme of things.”

“Well, you know what mom says. 65 million is the new 40 million.”

“I guess. The eldest, huh? Isn’t that what that one guy used to call himself? The bird man?”

“Tzeentch? Yeah, I guess you’re right, he did.”

“Is he even still around?”

“I don’t know,” Ynnead said, “I didn’t pay much attention to what happened to him. I had bigger concerns at the time. It was a War in Heaven thing. You know I like talking about the War in Heaven just as much as you do. I mean, how would you like it if I asked you about the whole thing with Hive Fleet Enkidu?”

“Okay, point taken,” Lofn relented.

The two of them both took a deep swig.

“So is the scythe holding up okay? You seemed kind of worried about it last time.”

“Oh, I think it’s going fine now. It’s kind of like working with a suit of exarch armor and not getting overwhelmed, except instead of a bunch of little minds it’s you know.”

Ynnead dry gulped and his voice suddenly sounded very sober.

“One big one.”

“Are you sure it’s safe for you to be lugging that then around then?” Lofn said, suddenly worried about the contents of her umbrella holder.

“It’s actually safer with me than if I were to not have it. The C’tan exist as physical constants, and cannot be destroyed without seriously affecting the underlying nature of causality. As long as a single weakened piece of them exists in the universe, they can theoretically be contained without the entity running free. The consciousness remains trapped in the scythe and can never manifest in a free state. The alternative would be to bury it in a hole somewhere and hope it never gets out. And that’s never worked.”

“That sounds like something the Void Dragon would say. You’re still talking to the Void Dragon despite your parents telling you not to, aren’t you?”

“I am not and will vigorously deny it if you say anything.”

“You’re totally still talking to the Void Dragon,” Lofn said with a mischievous smile.

“Yes! I mean, he knows things. Things about how the universe works, what it means to be a god. Things my parents won’t tell me and I wish they’d tell me.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is? Cegorach said he’s safe, didn’t he?”

“Cegorach says the Iron Storm is safe,” Ynnead responded. “It’s not the kind of vote that inspires confidence. Anyway I figure, Nightbringer is a sociopath, right? So if you hear any voices telling you to do what you think he would do in that situation just do the exact opposite. Plus the way it works is most of what it kills gets funneled through me to be spit back out, so it’s not like its feeding and growing stronger.”

“And so you’re not worried about it being fed up with being stuck as a deathstick, deciding to take over your mind and using you like a puppet?”

“Hey, it got to take bites out of two different gods. It should be happy,” Ynnead said defensively, crossing his arms.

Lofn smiled.

Ynnead took a drink, “Are you worried at all that us hanging out a lot is going to get people…talking?”

“Only in that gods-awful unsanctioned material, which they still can’t find out who’s producing them. Grruh, so annoying. Can’t you, you know, appear in front of them and put the fear of death into them?”

“That would be a horrible abuse of my powers.”

“You summoned ghosts to scare me at my twenty-fifth birthday party.”

“That was Eldrad under a bedsheet, you do know that, right?”

“So you do admit ghosts were involved,” Lofn said with tones of false accusation.

“As I was saying,” Ynnead said, getting back to the subject at hand, “There is nothing I would love to do more, but doing so would be a grievous use of my phenomenal cosmic powers. And also because I’m fairly sure my mom would ground me for about three thousand years if she found out.”

“Ground you? You’re several centuries old. Sounds to me like you are too afraid of your mother.”

“I am not too afraid of my mother. I am exactly as afraid of my mother as I need to be. I once saw her chew out the entire ruling house of Kaelor. Kaelor. What do you think your mom would do to you if you pulled something like that?”

“She’d send me back to Cadian boot camp and suddenly I see where you are going with this.”

“My point. Has been made.”

“I would probably die if I had to go back to Cadian boot camp,” Lofn said, repressing the shivers.

“If you ever die, I will play you at any game of your choosing for the chance to come back to life. Except Battleaxe. You cheat.”

“What can I say?” Lofn shrugged in pride, “I’m an Ulthran.”

“Technically so am I,” Ynnead pointed out, “Mom was what, some distant cousin or something of Eldrad’s way back before the Fall.”

“Wait, if Isha was Eldrad’s distant cousin, does that mean we’re related?”

Both Lofn and Ynnead got a look on their face as if both had stepped on a particularly foul smelling piece of grox dung.

“I really don’t like where this train of thought is going,” Ynnead said.

“Ditto.”

“Speaking of Eldrad how is the old bastard?," Lofn said, changing the subject, "I saw him the other day and he got all weepy, he wouldn’t explain to me why.”

“He! Will! Not! Leave!” Ynnead said, suddenly animated, gesticulating with his hands. “I have tried to be generous with him, given the circumstances, but he refuses to leave that wraithbone prosthetic of his. I try to point out that reincarnation is a thing and he can be young again if he wants, but he won’t do it. I try to point out that the thing he’s in is an old relic outdated by modern standards and the least he could do is upgrade to something less shitty, but he won’t because he’s afraid I’m going to snatch his soul up when he tries to transfer. At which point he usually makes some remark about knowing me since I was in diapers. At this point he’s so stubborn he might as well become a universal fixture.”

Lofn broke out laughing.

“What!” Ynnead said, “what’s so funny?”

“Can you imagine,” Lofn said between laughs, “Grandpa Eldrad. The universal constant? I can just see him sitting around, waiting for a pair of young races to go to war on whatever planet he’s on, and then he’d rise from the ground like a fucking Necron and go ‘I have awoken from my eons long slumber, to tell you kids to get off my lawn.’”

Despite his frustration, Ynnead couldn't help but snicker at that. Before long the two of them were laughing.

“Hundreds of years and he still won’t leave that wraithbone shell," Lofn sighed. "Gods, are we going to drive our kids crazy with our antics when we reach that age?”

“Yes!” Ynnead said rather too quickly, “I mean yes, I can see that. Driving our children crazy. The ones we have. With other people.”

Lofn looked at Ynnead for a second, then flopped back on the couch.

“Yeah, I can see that,” she said.

</div>
</div>

== Mon'Tau ==

Editor's Note: Deemed non-canon for being a too on-the-nose reference, though similar events are likely to have happened, namely Kais learning to control his anger and learning that Imperials aren't as wise and all knowing as they make themselves out to be to the Tau Empire.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

He rushed through the door, the elevatus doors clicking shut behind him. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Shas.27O_Kais|Kais]] fell to his knees and breathed a sigh of relief as he heard the splat of Blue Horrors against the door behind him. It was only when he had a moment to catch his breath that Kais realized he was separated from his team. Alone. Again.

Kais wasn’t superstitious, but the number of times this happened was almost enough to make him believe this “[[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#The_Month_of_Murphy|Murphy]]” the others in the Gue’vash’vre’s retinue kept talking about really existed.

The Gue’vash’vre, the Inquisitor, had been investigating a trading company looking to exploit suspicious goods that had been obtained from a Rogue Trader. The goods, sure enough, had been artifacts tainted by the Warp, and when the Gue’vash’vre had tried to intervene things had of course Gone Horribly Wrong and the artifacts had summoned daemons.

Daemons. It always had to be daemons. Or cultists. Or genestealers. Why couldn’t the Gue’vash’vre ever uncover a conspiracy that was devoted to breeding fluffy gyrinxes or something.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The vox speaker in the elevatus suddenly crackled to life. Kais perked up. He didn’t know the vox systems were still working down here. If anything it would have to be one of the traders, who he had seen run deeper into the facility when the daemons attacked.

“I’m willing to take responsibility for the horrible events of the last twenty-four hours,” the raspy voice claimed, “but you must understand, our interest in the Warp was purely for the greater good…”

Greater good? What did this gue’la take him for, a Shas’Saal? Did he think that just by saying the name of the Tau’va it would miraculously make everything that had happened justified?

He couldn’t stand these kind of people. The ones who thought hyperspace and the things inside it were just a toy. He could understand it back home in the Empire, but here? They played with fire, but they weren’t the only ones to suffer the consequences when everyone else got burned.

“Everything has clearly gotten out of hand now…”

Kais stood and took a moment to examine the corpse sharing the elevatus with him. Ever since the events of Dolumnar IV he had become familiar with the sight of death at the hands of the Neverborn. Far too familiar. He only got a glance before he had to look away, but the image was burned into his brain. He wanted to tell himself that the gue’la had died in some other way, but he knew that wasn’t true.

The man had died screaming.

Kais felt a chill run down his spine. There it was again, the same feeling he had felt on Dolumnar IV. He tried to keep it locked up, and on most days he succeeded, but sometimes it couldn’t help but get out, especially when exposed to this…this injustice.

The people he had met across the galaxy called it many things. Righteous fury. The warrior’s madness. Kais knew all they were but flowery names for what it really was.

Anger.

“…but it was worth the risk, I assure you.”

Kais put his fist through the voxcaster.

</div>
</div>

= Gallery =

Images that don't have a place anywhere else yet.

<gallery>
Image:Space_Marine_Evolution.png|Space Marine Evolution (V1)
</gallery>

[[Category:Nobledark Imperium]]

Nobledark Imperium Writing

2020-09-04T20:33:01Z

2601:647:CA01:2410:349C:D1E8:2DF7:5B30: /* A Necron's Duel */

'''This page is part of the Nobledark Imperium, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the [[Nobledark Imperium|Nobledark Imperium Introduction]] and [[Nobledark Imperium|Main Page]] for more information on the alternate universe'''

All our stories that don't belong in another section of the project (such as the writing for Sanguinius).
= Currently Unsorted Writefaggotry =

== The Accounting of Trazyn the Infinite ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

“You want me to explain to you why we did it? Why? And why ask [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Solemnace|me]]?”

“I see. An accounting then. And I suppose I am the closest thing the galaxy has to an actual historian in this era. Aside, perhaps, from that old wraith in the weeds Orikan.”

“When the Necrontyr first spread beyond the confines of our world, it was not long before we encountered the Old Ones. But the Old Ones had known of us long before we knew of them. They knew of the horror and suffering we had experienced on our homeworld, and had known for millennia. And they did nothing.”

<div class=mw-collapsible-content>

“I want you to picture that. A race of god-like beings capable of bending the galaxy to their will. And they did nothing. The Old Ones could have offered us sanctuary on another world. They could have told us that Aza’gorod was hiding in our star. But they didn’t. They only cared about themselves and their experiments. How many other races had suffered like we had for the sake of their curiosity? How many species had been uplifted and then discarded like tools, or removed like weeds.”

“I imagine the declaration to go to war with the Old Ones was met with shock across the Necrontyr Star Empire. Regardless of their actions, the Old Ones were still as gods to us, capable of things we could barely begin to comprehend. But after the Old Ones, we were the most advanced race we knew of in the galaxy. The only ones capable of defying them. The eldest child standing up against the abusive parent. The Old Ones were truly lords of the galaxy, capable of cultivating species like more primitive civilizations cultivate crops. But any lord that would inflict such suffering in their name upon their subjects deserves to be dragged from their throne.”

“Was that how it truly was? Was that how the Old Ones really saw the younger races? I don’t know. I was not there when the first shots of the War in Heaven were fired. I was only there when it ended.”

“All I know is that the War in Heaven was such a colossal waste. Trillions of Old Ones and Aeldari and Necrontyr and Krork killed and for what. The Old Ones are extinct. The Necrontyr sold their souls and the moral high ground for the power to defeat them. The Realm of Souls turned into poison for life. Thousands of species killed or turned into living weapons. We sought to free life from the Old Ones’ dominion. Instead we brought the hell that was our homeworld to the rest of the galaxy. The ‘original sin’, as I believe you humans would put it. Maybe there was a better way. Maybe things could have been resolved peacefully.”

“But at the same time, that is why I have so many expectations for this era.”

“You seem surprised. Perhaps I should explain. When I awoke from the Long Sleep, it was as if everything old had been made new again. The scars of the old war were still there, but it was as if galactic history had been rewritten from scratch. So many new things to learn. So many new species to encounter and study. And it was a galaxy without overlords. Life free to develop as it chose. Without a single species to impose their overarching will on the galaxy, there is so much more room for diversity. A place for everyone, one might say. Not just the races united in your Imperium, but the Q’orl, the orks, the rak-ghol, the tyranids. And yes, even the old Star Empire, if it is willing to adapt to the times. Whereas you see the galaxy in crisis, I see something different. The galaxy has had sixty five million years to write its own story. I, Trazyn the Infinite, want to see what it has written.”

- Trazyn the Infinite, regaled to a human scribe on Solemnace
</div>
</div>

== Alpha Bitch ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

“Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future...”
"Those words, bequeathed to us from some unknown source, has tormented the oracles through the ages. Not even the False-Gods in all their malevolent power can claim true mastery over the future. We, the Eldar are the most skilled seers in the galaxy, and that has given us only one golden glance of what should be. Those glimpses have taught us a bitter lesson. That does not matter who much we plan for the future, there will always be something interfering. Anybody that claims that their plans have succeeded just as planned, is a deluded fool or think that their audience is one, maybe the two. And even with that, we, the Farseers plan, conspire and ruin lives just to scratch one more day, because the alternative is the extinction..."
---From The Living Chronicles of Féin-Cineálan. As written be Osurad---

"So... I clean the blood, put on again the Wych tong, and left the camp with the intel. The next morning the IG zeroed the place and we had a pretty Kabal War. Fuck you Drukhari!"

"Hm... I... You want another infusion?"

The cute jailbait Servant was straining to don´t eyeing her with abject terror, but she can´t help, he was so damn cute. Sigh... What happens to the new generation? Come on, you only have thirty, one time! Sigh... She wasn't expecting this reception. She was the great Lynn Minwen HERO OF THE INQUISITION. Well, not exactly a HERO but definitively A hero. Her parents at least have the decency to bear-hug her and let their emotions run a little. But NO, the Council go to say that she has this weird "Anti-empathic trauma" and need some "Spiritual retuning". So they put her in a recliner, surrounded with Musicians performing psyco-reactive music and with only watery infusions as a drink. Sigh... It could be worse.

As Lynn was musing how to sneak away, Osurad comes in the "Visualization chamber" and without saying a word, pass her a sealed letter. A manuscript letter. Fuck! That is what cross her mind when finally come to the authorization seal. It was gold, The Gold. This was stamped in the Golden Throne Office, maybe even be the Golden Man in person! Fuck! Hm... Interesting, it was Hand. Something about a new assignment? Seriously!? She has retired! Hm... Return to active duty... Hm... Immediate effect... BlaBlaBla... Ok. She will bite. All her instincts tell, that the best, was to run and disappear from the face of Imperial Space. All reasonable sapients will agree in that course of action. This was definitively beyond her pay grade. So, smiling for some action, she gets up and left in direction to the starport.

<div class=mw-collapsible-content>

"What is happening Lynn?"
"Hey! You are the Farseer! You know, all that mumbo-jumbo about seeing the future"
"The only future that I see is a deeply traumatized youngster."
"So... I succeded? Damm, he is cute!"
"Lynn!"
"Ok, ok... Jeez... I was joking!... Mostly"
"..."
"So... Is it so bad?"
"Hmm... Lynn the last time I sense something similar, the destiny of millions suddenly change, and the Path to your future was rewritten."
"So that bad. Good to know."

As the two approach the hangar, some details begin to appear. All the area has been cleaned, only authorized people were permitted. And the authorized were... Black armor... Silent treatment... Omega Hydras. That was bad... Really, really bad. What class of shit has brought Hand? As they approach, the Hydras stop Osurad in his tracks, only letting Lynn pass the doors. Inside, in front of an Arvus Lighter was a more than nervous Adept pacing from a foot to another. Definitively not an Inquisition Acolyte. Somebody expendable... Or a really good actor? Who knows? Her curiosity has been piqued.

"Oh. Miss Minwen! Thanks, Isha! I hope that you read my file!"
"What... File?"
"What!? Nobody!? Of course not! This is secret! I am Ludoptus. Hm... Ok. I have been sent to help you, taking care of the subject`s wellbeing."

Not that good actor. This guy is 100% and agent of somebody. The "fake" adept pass her a dataslate and urge Lynn to enter the transport. As she enters the hold, in the periphery of her warp senses, a little whine can be heard... Something like crying? Chills of fear run her skin like... A saw blade cutting deep. Fuck... In what the hell Hand got her. She forces her mind away from the warp to real space and... The smell hit. The hold reek and the bad smell seems to come from a young human woman sitting in a fetal position. Several Hydras surround her armed with shock batons and stun guns. A chem-collar in her neck.

Lynn looks to the dataslate files and tries to make some sense of this mess. Some biometrics details... Hm... Tortured by Drukhari... Hm... Ok, is evident that this girl is a total mess. Sigh She... Wasn´t impressed. Seriously, this little shit was her new assignment? Fuck. Seriously. Fuck. She isn´t a babysitter. The little shit is somebody else problem. Somebody with a white padded room, a straitjacket and LOTS of hard drugs. And if all that fail, the emperor's mercy. This broken girl can barely do more than shit on herself. Groan... Now that she has taken some R&R and was eyeing that cute jailbait ass. They can´t do that to her. Shit.

Looking over the dataslate, she observes the girl. More than dirty white hair with indescribable... Things... Mixed. The body wasn´t better, emaciated, full of scars and... Let's be generous... Uncleanliness. All this mix in a more than disturbing whole that will make a Crone blush with envy. It seems that nobody has enough balls to try to clean the fucking walking disaster and have resigned themselves to throw a blanket as her only clothes. Fuck. And she was her new job. Groan... This is getting better by the second.

"Fuck! Hand! Why the fuck you do this to me!"

The change in the room was more than evident. The Stormtroopers get tense as the, until that moment, catatonic woman rises from her fetal position. She was tall and slim. Not as an Eldar but with the correct equipment... Forget that shit. Ok? Come on Eldar brain, time to work, no time for more speculation. The warp around the girl begin to.. Twist? Break apart? and her eyes explode in white fucking flames! Genial... Another mad psyker. Several hits from the shock batons fall over her, but the girl doesn't respond as all her concentration is now in scaping.

"The collar doesn´t..."

The cry of the no-adept is cut short as the remains of the collar hit him square in the face with enough force to knock him out. The movement was fast... And instinctive. Lynn doubts that the girl is anything beyond an automaton that just reacts to her surroundings. And now the most direct threats are her and the stormtroopers. Luckily for Lynn, the Hydras were nearer. That does not make it fun... Well, a little bit, yes. But give her a second to prepare for the girl next move.

"Hey! Little shit! Here, look to the big bad Eldar!"

The girl was sweeping the floor with the stormtroopers. She was ignoring the shocks and bolts from their weapons and basically using them as ragdolls, but when Lynn talk, her attention change to the Eldar woman and the confused expression in her eyes, change to one of pure hate. Shit... This is going to hurt. Howling with rage the lunatic girl charge. Lynn barely dodges the savage attack and witness how the kid hands rip the metallic walls of the hold. Damm... She was fucking fast and strong. Lynn needed more space, in the hold, the girl has the advantage, so she begins to retreat down the ramp, were the Hydras can finish the mad bitch.

"Ok. Guys when you got a clear shot, unbrain the bitch!"
"We have orders to take her alive!"
"Fuck me!"

Fuck... Seriously? Now she must somehow stop the lunatic? Sigh... Another day in her life. Lynn jump in time to see the kid strike where just an instant before she was standing. With the strength to rip trough Astartes armor, the ceramic floor explodes in a shower of stone and dust. A mask of fury and hate has appeared on the girl, that has decided to kill Lynn and probably any other Eldar that is in the vicinity. Fortunately for the lucky bastards, Lynn was the focus of the little shit ire. Better to keep the focus in the dispensable one. After all, she can´t let then all the fun, isn´t? All that crap about "control your urges" and shit.

"Come on little shit! I heard that you can do better!"

The girl was a trained combatant, but in her current state, she doesn't have any technique, only loads and loads of warp-fueled fury and madness. Of course, when that gives you the capacity to ripe apart jetbikes with the hands and ignore pain, starvation, and fatigue, the technique is secondary... until you meet somebody that has fought fury incarnated in mind-rending/reality-warping monstrosities. Even with that, Lynn must admit that the girl was insanely powerful. With the emphasis on insane.

Unsheathing her Catachan Knife, she toyed with the idea to rip the bitch head. But the orders were clear. Don´t kill her. So... Lynn was playing catch with a crazy murder machine. Retreating, again and again, Lynn giggles, mock and launch ork´s kisses to the girl, trying unsuccessfully to tire the demented psyker. Genial, plan b.

Waiting to one of her demented charges, Lynn dodge, rolling over herself and impaling with extreme prejudice her Knife through the little shit left thigh. Flesh, tendons, and bone were sectioned as the Knife was sunken to the hilt. Luckily for the girl, Lynn was a well-experienced knife fighter, and even best, and Eldar. Only that save her of a sectioned femoral. Even with that, Lynn barely dodges the backhanded blow launched be the crazy,as she was leaving the danger zone. The skimming strike has enough force to throw Lynn to the ground and take her breath away. The followed punch break again the floor as her Eldar reflexes quick and let Lynn roll away.

"Shit!"

Lynn quickly gets up, but pain curse through her body as a broken rib pierce her flank. Quickly crystallizing blood pour from the wound.

"What now Litte... What the fuck?!"

It was nearly not enough. Sparks of warp energy surrounded the psico-bitch as she was trying to get up and walk towards Lynn. But it was late, she has been slowed and the Hydras were filling her with stun-bolts. Finally, the girl kneels and begins to sob. Even with that, they needed a dozen of shots to finally stop her.

That was... Whoah... Fucking awesome. She was wrong. This was going to be fun. Taking again the dataslate, Lynn begins to revise the available information. Let´s see... Navigator father... Hm... Best of her promotion... Hm... Awesome scores... I mean, really, for a human... Hm... CENSORED... Hm... CENSORED... Hm... Ok, the typical inquisitorial crap. Looking down to the now tormented looking sleeping little shit, she smiles.

"This is going to be fun Stern. Really, really fun."

Epilogue:
"The die is cast."
"I have lead millions to their death so this girl can be born in relative peace. I have manipulated a world to nudge her in a particular Path. All of that to create a talent that can inspire hope to a besieged galaxy."
"She can always return to that Path."
"Yes... And that will bring her joy. But the inflection point has passed, Rhana Dandra is upon us."
"It was necessary."
"To prepare another disposable weapon in your arsenal? To stack the deck in your favor? What is your limit?."
"..."

</div>
</div>

==The Awakening==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">

The chamber was alive today.

“Khorne, Khorne, Khorne”

The Crone Eldar thronged throughout the halls, the light glinting off their eyes like predators in the night, all attention on the ghastbone circle carved into the ground at the center of the chamber. At the center of the circle was a great carved, seated idol, patriarchal and blasphemous in its bearing. The low light glinted off its angular features, giving it a malevolent aura. The area immediately surrounding the stature was conspicuously free of Crones given the crowd, as if the Crones feared they would be struck dead on the spot if they dared to approach the statue. Along the immediate edge of the circle 512 Crone Eldar sat on their knees in supplication, eyes wide and with bated breath as they chanted the 888 sacred names of the Blood God.

“Kharneth, Khorgar, Bloodwolf, Axefather…”

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Further away more Crone Eldar cavorted like fey witches at black mass, not a part of this ritual but merely attracted to the spectacle like piranhas with the taste for blood beneath the roots of a great mangrove. They flitted back and forth from shadows cast by witchlight, dancing with daemons and occasionally performing horrible acts of violence upon one another.

Eight ritually slaughtered sixty-four sacrificial victims, prisoners of war captured in battle and specifically retained for this occasion. Ghastbone knives plunged into hearts as screams echoed through the night. Blood spilled across the floor of [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Altansar|Craftworld Altansar]], seeping into grooves custom-made to channel into the appropriate sigils. The pulse of the atmosphere had quickened in the room, every surviving Crone could feel their blood beat in their ears. Now that the cattle and heathens had been killed, it was the sacrificers’ turns. Seven Crones died, six impaling themselves on brass spikes surrounding the statue and the seventh’s throat being cut by the eighth in a cold-blooded act of murder.

The foul deed having been done, the sole surviving Crone turned to address the seated idol in the center of the chamber in a parade ground voice.

“We call upon the great lord Khorne, blood king of the galaxy! I offer up my life! I offer my soul! I offer my heart’s blood to bring His hate into the world.”

The sacrifice was accepted and the Avatar rose. There were no remains that needed to be disposed of.

Anyone who had ever seen an actual Avatar of Khaine would realize just how unnatural the figure in front of them was. Rather than the slender physique of the Eldar its body was robust and solid, built like an Astartes, made to emphasize raw power over agility. Instead of being made of molten magma and red-hot metal its skin appeared to be merely simmering, with only a slight glowing around its armor joints revealing the heat within. Its armor was reddish-black, the color of long-dried blood, made of iron artistically inlaid by a trim of brass. It hefted its weapon, a massive two-handed axe that it comfortably held with a single hand. Power seemed to crackle in the air around it like ozone after a lightning strike, the animated by a much more powerful entity than the maimed war god of the Eldar. The Avatar of Khorne turned to address its congregation.

“I, the god of gods and rightful king of the galaxy have set foot in this mortal plane once more. Bring me foes worthy of my mettle so I may take their heads and slake my bloodlust.”

The Crones screamed in adulation and frenzy.

“BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"

</div>
</div>

==Battle Report: Battle of Telis Grandios==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

Location: The world of Telis Grandios, within the Chanath Sub-Sector.
a major hub for voidships within the Chanathian sub-sector, by virtue of a functioning Orbital Tether and position within favorable Warp currents. The native Chanath Xenos of Telis profited greatly from this position of economic importance, even going so far as to endeavor to produce their own warships. successfully constructed the "Resplendent Piety;" a Frigate of comparable build to that of Sword-class, only equipped with a spinal-mounted kinetic rail-gun of Xenos design, at the expense of half a Sword's laser batteries and survivability. Construction of a second ship underway at the time of attack.

Chaos fleets were reported to have launched attacks against multiple nearby subsectors, with the wave of attacks progressing towards the Chanathian Sub-sector. Reports suggest deliberate targeting of worlds with Orbital capabilities, potentially to soften the sector for a larger offensive. Telis Grandios deemed a likely target, and after consideration of potentially-available forces, declared of sufficient strategic importance for an attempt to be made at holding the world, and orders sent out for all Imperial vessels within range to attempt to regroup at and defend Telis Grandios. Two Imperial battlegroups arrive in the Telis system prior to attack. Rear-Admiral Sprague of Battlegroup Samar assumes operational command of both battlegroups as well as the assorted vessels responding to the call.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Comprehensive list of Imperial forces in-system at time of attack:<br>
'''Battlegroup Samar. Commanded by Rear-Admiral Sprague.'''<br>
-Monarch-class Cruiser "Enduring Conviction" (addendum: originally Dominator-class, Nova Cannon still functional.)<br>
-Dauntless-class Light Cruiser "Stalwart Companion"<br>
-Sword-class Frigate "Ardent Prayer." <br>
'''Battlegroup Vohan- commanded by Lord-Captain Johnstein.'''<br>
-Endeavor-class Light Cruiser "Spirit of Law"<br>
-Sword-class Frigate "Frank Exchange"<br>
-Firestorm-class Frigate "Legal Repercussion"<br>
-Cobra-class Destroyer "I Am Alfalfa"<br>
-Cobra-class Destroyer "Pill Dispenser"<br>
'''Other assorted vessels'''<br>
-Telis-class Frigate "Resplendent Piety"<br>
-Havoc-class Destroyer "Major Minor"<br>
-Claymore-classe Corvette "Try Me"<br>
-Cobra-class Destroyer "Seven to One"<br>

Under the orders of Rear-Admiral Sprague, the "Resplendent Piety" and "Try Me" join Battlegroup Samar, while "Major Minor" and "Seven to One" join Battlegroup Vohan. Imperial forces coalesce into a defensive formation around the Orbital platform.

04:36 local time: "Stalwart Companion" reports incoming warp signatures. Probes are launched, while "Spirit of Law" and "Stalwart Companion" begin approach towards the incoming signatures in standard intercept formation with escort screen. "Enduring Conviction" scrambles Starhawk and Fury squadrons, and advances behind with her escorts to provide support.

Probes reach detected ship signatures. Vessels are confirmed as Chaos-vessels, and identified as Hades-class Heavy Cruiser "Terror Apparent," Murder-class Cruisers "Despair Horizon" and "Vileblood," and Hellbringer-class Light Cruisers "Free Candy" and "Jackson's Neverland."

Probes reach detected ship signatures. Vessels are confirmed as Chaos-vessels, and identified as the Crone Eldar Styx-class Heavy Cruiser "Terror Apparent," accompanied by Murder-class Cruisers "Despair Horizon" and "Inflexible," and Hellbringer-class Light Cruisers "Illicit Aquisition" and "Jackson's Neverland." (revised)

All Imperial ships reduce speed, standard intercepting torpedo spreads are launched. Rear-Admiral Sprague and Lord-Captain Johnstein hold deliberations as to the proper course of action; in light of anticipated arrival of Primary battlefleets en-route to the system, the decision is reached to engage and fight a delaying action. Battlegroup Vohan forms a line of battle, alongside "Stalward Companion" and "Ardent Prayer" from Battlegroup Samar. Destroyers are ordered to swing wide, to cross-pattern their torpedo launches. "Enduring Conviction," "Legal Repercussion," and "Resplendent Piety" adopt rearguard positions to provide long-range supporting fire.

Torpedo screen reaches Chaos fleet; majority of torpedoes shot down by massed point-defenses. One successful torpedo hit on the "Despair Horizon;" structural damage minimal. "Terror Apparent" adopts a rearguard position, with "Despair Horizon" and "Inflexible" spearheading the formation, while "Illicit Aquisition" and "Jackson's Neverland" bring up the flanks. Chaos fleet moves to engage at the Murder-class' full speed; "Terror Apparent" observed maneuvering to remain behind the spearhead.

Imperial destroyers complete their maneuver and are able to launch a second spread of torpedoes. Strikecraft from "Enduring Conviction" follow behind the torpedo spread, with Fury Interceptors flying interference ahead of the Starhawk Bombers.

"Terror Apparent" is the first vessel to reach effective firing range, and fires her long-range weapon compliment on the Imperial fleet. Corvette "Try Me" suffers multiple direct hits and is destroyed; no life-pod launches detected. Voidshields on the "Ardent Prayer" are breached, with heavy damage sustained to her prow. "Stalwart Companion" voidshields are reduced to half-strength. "Enduring Conviction" returns fire with her Nova Cannon; shot fails to hit the "Terror Apparent," but scores an indirect hit on "Jackson's Neverland," whose voidshields manage to hold.

Second spread of torpedoes reaches the Chaos fleet, with strikecraft following close behind. Light cruisers maneuver to avoid, while "Terror Apparent" turns back and away from the rest of her fleet. "Jackson's Neverland" struck by one torpedo admidships, suffering minor structural damage and the loss of a minor weapon system. The "Inflexible" suffers three successful torpedo hits; minimal structural damage. Fury Interceptors and Starhawk bombers target the "Inflexible" and successfully destroy multiple point-defense systems; minor structural damage inflicted. Strike craft suffer moderate losses, and begin return run to rearm.

Both fleets enter long-range battery engagement range. The Imperial line begins beating to sunward and opens fire with lances and longer-ranged Macrobatteries; the Chaos fleet tacks leeward to come about behind the Imperial line, with the "Illicit Aquisition" and "Jackson's Neverland" returning fire. Imperial support group makes to fall back towards Telis, tacking and jibing in order to continue firing as they retreat.

"Jackson's Neverland" loses voidshields to concentrated Lance-fire and turns away, circling wide to allow her voidshields time to recharge. Imperial destroyers "Seven to One" and "I am Alfalfa" lose voidshields and turn to make for Telis, as does the "Ardent Prayer." Main Imperial line forced to tack to leeward to avoid giving the Chaos fleet a clear shot towards Telis, entering into main battery range. Both fleets open fire with full weapons compliment.

"Stalwart Companion" loses voidshields, but remains in the line of battle, focusing her fire on "Inflexible." Supporting fire from the "Frank Exchange" and "Legal Repercussion" result in the successful breaching of the "Inflexible's" voidshields. "Inflexible" returns fire, causing moderate structural damage to the "Stalwart Companion." Both fleet lines sail out of effective firing range of main batteries, with the Imperial fleet turning about and continuing to focus fire on the "Inflexible," scoring multiple confirmed lance hits. Minimal structure damage to the "Inflexible."

Destroyers launch a torpedo screen to discourage the Chaos fleet from crossing the T. "Enduring Conviction" redeploys her rearmed Starhawks and Fury Interceptors. Assorted starcraft launched from the Telis tether also join the attack, supplementing the Bomber squadrons. Chaos fleet turns away to avoid the torpedoes, leaving only the "Illicit Acquisition" able to continue returning fire. "Illicit Acquisition" focuses fire on the "Legal Repercussion," forcing her to turn away towards Telis as her voidshields are breached.

"Terror Apparent" returns from her maneuvers, and fires on the "Stalwart Companion." Major structural damage sustained, with three macrocannons rendered inoperable and multiple system failures across the ship. "Stalwart Companion" turns toward Telis, while "Spirit of Law" moves to shield her from further fire from "Illicit Acquisition." Imperial line of battle now consists of Light Cruiser "Spirit of Law," Sword-class Frigate "Frank Exchange," and Destroyers "Pill Dispenser" and "Major Minor."

Multiple incoming warp signatures detected on the system edge. Chaos fleet slows pursuit and begins to regroup and starts turning in preparation to engage. "Jackson's Wonderland" engages engine boost in an attempt to rejoin the main line of battle.

Arrival in-system of the Imperial "Wolf Pack" Fourth Chanathian Rapid Response group, comprised of Sword-class Frigate "No You," Firestorm-class Frigates "Formal Complaint" and "Ineffable Distain," and Cobra-class Destroyers "Motivation Dispenser," "For You," "How it Fares," and "Double or Nothing."

Brief tactical disruption, as information relay aboard the "Spirit of Law" is temporarily drowned out by multiple expletives issued by Lord-Captain Johnstein.

In response to the arrival of 4th Chanathian Wolf Pack, "Terror Apparent" adjusts course and makes to intercept, while "Jackson's Wonderland" turns about and puts on Solar-sails, approaching the Wolf-Pack at speed. The remaining Chaos ships reform their line of battle and move to cut the defending battlegroups off from the newly arrived group.

"Seven to One" and "Ardent Prayer" return to Imperial line of battle. Strikecraft from "Enduring Conviction" and the Telis Orbital Tether perform an attack run on the "Illicit Acquisition," inflicting moderate structural damage. "Resplendent Piety" begins providing supporting fire from behind the line of battle, her main weapon requiring the ship to slow maneuvers as it charges. Both lines begin moving to enter main battery ranges.

4th Chanathian Wolf-pack moves to meet "Jackson's Wonderland," with the destroyers firing a torpedo spread to force the Chaos vessel to approach bow-on. "Double or Nothing" fires two torpedoes down the predicted path of the "Jackson's Wonderland."

"Jackson's Wonderland" suffers limited turning capability due to the added speed of her Solar sails, and is unable to adjust course sufficiently to avoid the torpedo spread. Two torpedo hits confirmed on the "Jackson's Wonderland," moderate damage inflicted, and thermal imaging confirms multiple fires along the impacts. Wolf Pack responds to inquiry from Rear-Admiral Sprague with confirmation that their vessels are armed with Melta Torpedoes.

Reaching weapon-range, "Jackson's Wonderland" furls her solar-sails and opens fire on the Wolf-pack, which responds by splitting into three groups that move to approach from different angles. "Formal Complaint" and "No You" weather the majority of the incoming fire, though both maintain shields due to the "Jackson's Wonderland" being unable to bring all her guns to bear. "Ineffable Distain" and "Formal Complaint" begin returning fire.

The main lines of battle enter main battery range and begin to trade fire once more. "Inflexible" becomes the focus for several Imperial ships and soon loses her voidshields; further Imperial fire deals only minimal damage. "Ardent Prayer" has her voidshields breached once more, and suffers heavy damage from the "Inflexible's" main battery before managing to fall out of the Line and retreat towards the tether. "Major Minor" and "Frank Exchange" also suffer voidshield breaches, and are forced to fall out of formation. Voidshields on the "Spirit of Law" reduced to half-strength. Imperial vessels are no longer able to muster a cohesive line of battle, and a fighting retreat is called, with Imperial vessels beating and tacking in order to continue firing as they regroup.

The Wolfpack closes to within their main battery ranges of the "Jackson's Wonderland" and open fire, with "Ineffable Distain" and "How it Fares" approaching from above, "Formal Complaint" and "Double or Nothing" approaching from below, and "No You," "Motivation Dispenser," and "For You" attacking down the bow. "Jackson's Wonderland" comes under sustained fire from multiple directions and suffers loss of voidshields; maneuvers are attempted in order to bring her guns to bear, but at such short ranges the Escorts are able to use their speed to remain within areas where she cannot bring her full armament to bear. "No You" takes multiple hits, but maintains Voidshield integrity, as do the rest of the ships which take only limited fire.

"Jackson's Wonderland" suffers the loss of multiple guns due to the prow lances of the "Ineffable Distain" and "Formal Complaint," while her hull is raked with macrocannon fire that, while unable to penetrate to major systems, renders the majority of her secondary batteries and point-defenses inoperable. With multiple fires burning and the continued harrassment of the Imperial Wolf-pack, "Jackson's Wonderland" slows; scans show energy rises in her engines indicating preparations to make an emergency Warp-jump. Imperial ships close and continue to fire, attempting to damage her engines and prevent her escape.

"Terror Apparent" opens fire with her full weapon compliment. "Motivation Dispenser" and "Double or Nothing" both suffer multiple direct hits, resulting in the complete destruction of the "Motivation Dispenser;" multiple major system failures aboard the "Double or Nothing," which begins to drift and is rendered combat-ineffective. "Formal Complaint" is also hit, suffering breached voidshields and major hull damage, but remains combat-effective. Multiple direct hits are scored on the "Jackson's Wonderland;" whether the result of shots aimed at Imperial vessels or intentional targeting is inconclusive. Major damage dealt to the "Jackson's Wonderland", including the loss of several major systems and several weapon platforms.

Boarding parties are launched against the crippled Chaos vessel, targeting her engines in an attempt to prevent her from fleeing. With her secondaries and point-defenses mostly destroyed, the "Jackson's Wonderland" is unable to prevent the boarding craft from successfully reaching her and depositing their forces. "No You" and "For You" adjust course to avoid ramming the vessel, with "No You" passing above and "For You" passing below. Surviving Wolf-Pack destoyers fire a torpedo screen towards the "Terror Apparent."

Warp engines aboard the "Jackson's Wonderland" power down; boarding parties report successful sabotage of her warp-drive shortly before going dark. Attempts to maneuver and perform evasive maneuvers prove fruitless, with "Jackson's Wonderland" unable to accelerate enough to keep up with the Wolf-pack. Multiple Cascade failures wrack the ship as fires continue to spread; further hull breaches continue to be sustained under the constant bombardment of the Imperial ships.

Port midships magazine aboard the "Jackson's Wonderland" reached by one of the fires and detonates. The explosion blows out her port side and renders all weapon systems inoperable, with major system failures across the board. Several secondary explosions continue to spread, as "Jackson's Wonderland" begins to break up. Imperial Wolf-pack turns to make way towards the main Imperial Fleet, with the "Ineffable Distain," "Formal Complaint," and "For You" moving to engage the "Terror Apparent." Bombardment of the hulk of "Jackson's Wonderland" sustained for as long as their guns are able to train on it.

Chaos line of battle turns and makes for the Orbital tether, pursuing the retreating Imperial force. "Illicit Acquisition" continues long-range harrassing fire, while "Inflexible" and "Despair Horizon" stay bow-on towards the Tether, their speed insufficient to bring their guns into range of the Imperial ships. "Enduring Conviction" moves to cover the retreat of the main Imperial force, drawing fire from the Chaos line of battle. "Spirit of Law" also falls back to the end of the Imperial force to assist, while Destroyers "Seven to One" and "I am Alfalfa" launch torpedoes at the Chaos line of battle. "Despair Horizon" is struck by two torpedos, while "Inflexible" suffers one torpedo hit; each ship suffers minimal damage. "Enduring Conviction" attempts to fire her Nova Cannon against the Chaos line of battle; an accidental collision with "I am Alfalfa" due to battlefield conditions results in the shot going wide.

"Terror Apparent," while maneuvering to avoid torpedos from the Wolf-pack, suffers a near-direct hit from "Enduring Conviction's" Nova Cannon; moderate damage inflicted. Her solar-sails, deployed to aid in maneuvering against the torpedoes, are backwinded by the blast, interupting her maneuvers and sending her into an uncontrolled turn. (Unclear why she failed to furl sails in anticipation of such an outcome; most likely reasons believed to be either unawareness or inexperience.) This turn takes her directly into the path of torpedo screen. Three successful torpedo hits are recorded; moderate damage inflicted and two fires started. "Terror Apparent" recovers from her turn, and begins making way towards the main line of battle; accidental jibing observed from her sternmost solar sail, rendering her course slightly uneven.

Main Chaos line of battle nears long-range battery range of the Telis Orbital Tether; "Enduring Conviction" and "Spirit of Law" turn and form a line of battle, with supporting fire from "Legal Repercussion" and "Resplendent Piety." Both lines engage at main battery range; Imperial ships focus their fire on the "Inflexible" once more, while strikecraft make runs against "Illicit Aquisition." Moderate damage inflicted to "Illicit Acquisition," however her point-defense weapons inflict considerable casualties on Imperial strikecraft; majority of the tether-launched strikecraft shot down. "Inflexible" continues to take minor damage, though the larger-caliber macrobatteries of "Enduring Conviction" succeed in scoring actual structural damage, rather than removal of secondaries or scoring of armor. "Enduring Conviction" is focused by Chaos ships, but maintains voidshields at a quarter integrity.

Wolf Pack ships move to attempt to reach the main Imperial fleet, hounding "Terror Apparent" from behind with Prow-Lance fire as they go. "Illicit Acquisition" breaks off from the line of battle and moves to support her flagship. "Inflexible" and "Despair Horizon" turn in and move to make another pass against the Imperial fleet.

Imperial vessels are unable to organize into a line of battle, and instead attempt to maneuver to individually maximize firepower and minimize targetability. "Enduring Conviction" and "Spirit of Law" execute turns to come about and face the Chaos fleet and draw their fire. "Stalwart Companion" engages engine boosters and deploys solar-sails, attempting to cross the T behind the Chaos vessels. "Despair Horizon" fires on "Stalwart Companion, but fails to breach her voidshields, while "Legal Repercussion" is struck by a broadside from "Inflexible," breaching her voidshields, inflicting moderate structural damage, and knocking out her starboard lascannon. As "Enduring Conviction" and "Spirit of Law" close and prepare for another crossing of lines, "Inflexible" instead turns bow-on to the approaching Imperial vessels and begins gaining speed, intending to ram "Enduring Conviction."

Deeming that evasive maneuvers would require leaving the orbital tether and rest of the Imperial fleet open against "Despair Horizon," Rear-Admiral Sprague maintains general course, adjusting heading to bring "Enduring Conviction's" guns to bear. "Spirit of Law" begins tacking with the solar wind, firing broadsides with first her starboard, then port batteries. Successful breaching of "Inflexible's" voidshields reported, with minimal structural damage. As a result of tacking wide enough to bring her guns to bear, "Spirit of Law" falls further behind her flagship. "Inflexible" maintains course, disregarding the loss of voidshields and engaging full engine thrust as she closes on "Enduring Conviction."

As "Inflexible" enters knife-fight range, "Enduring Conviction" commits to a starboard turn, firing broadside into the unshielded "Inflexible's" prow; moderate structural damage inflicted upon the Chaos vessel. "Inflexible" adjusts course to account for her target's turn, entering her ramming run. Tactical analysis concludes "Enduring Conviction" will be unable to evade.

Warp-distortion dectected to starboard off "Inflexible's" stern. Warp-distortion disperses, revealing the "No You," completing a successful micro-warp jump. (This is the fourth time in recorded Imperial History of a vessel smaller than Cruiser-class completing a micro-warp in combat scenario.) Sounds of battle overheard from "No You's" command deck, along with reports of daemonic incursion; Captain Mootenal declares his vessel still operational, and the incursions to be containable. "No You" engages engines in full and deploys all solar-sails, setting course directly for the "Inflexible."

"No You" successfully rams "Inflexible" astern, inflicting minimal damage and entangling her prow on the Chaos vessel's ornamentative spiked protrusions. "No You" puts all engines into overdrive, and begins raking "Inflexible's" sides and superstructures with her macrobatteries. "Inflexible" attempts to fire on "No You," but is unable to depress her guns sufficiently to fire directly astern. "Inflexible's" stern begins to swing out from "No You's" push, disrupting her ramming course and reducing her speed. "Enduring Conviction" responds to the opening and begins maneuvering in an attempt to get clear. "Inflexible" passes astern of "Enduring Conviction," at a distance recorded at 263 meters, and brings her guns to bear at point-blank range.

"No You" self-detonates her forward magazines, obliterating her bow and most of her midsection. Multiple cascade system failures reported as the remains of the vessel begin to drift, her crew fighting to keep life-support online and suppress daemonic incursions. "Inflexible" is rocked by the explosion, blasting a hole in her stern that deals moderate structural damage and throws the majority of her broadside off-target. In the sudden absence of "No You's" pushing against her stern, "Inflexible's" stern swings out, turning her course into the middle of the Imperial fleet.

All Imperial vessels within range open fire on "Inflexible" with all available weapons systems. "I am Alfalfa" and "Seven to One" fire full torpedo spreads against the Chaos vessel; at such close range, all four torpedoes score hits. "Legal Repercussion" and "Resplendent Piety" focus their fire on the "Inflexible's" stern to take advantage of the breach created in her armor. "Resplendent Piety's" main gun scores a direct hit on the ship, but misses the breach and fails to penetrate her armor. "Enduring Conviction" broadsides "Inflexible" from knife-fight range, dealing moderate damage and successfully knocking out one of her Macrocannons. Defensive Weaponry aboard the Orbital Tether opens fire on "Inflexible" now that she is within their range. Strikecraft from "Enduring Conviction" and the Orbital tether make attack runs against her, dealing further structural damage. "Spirit of Law" continues tacking and alternating broadsides against "Inflexible," hammering her with heavy sustained fire. As "Inflexible" attempts to turn away, she is struck by two Melta-torpedoes from "For You" and "How it Fares."

With her structural integrity down to a bit more than half and multiple fires burning, "Inflexible" executes a hard turn to port to make another ramming run against "Enduring Conviction."

"Stalwart Companion" successfully flanks "Despair Horizon" and engages with her port weaponry, while her starboard weaponry provides supporting fire against "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent." Unable to support her sister ship without leaving her stern exposed to the Imperial vessel's broadsides, "Despair Horizon" comes about to bring her own weapons to bear.

The 4th Chanathian Wolf-pack become targeted by the "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent" and break off, spreading out and taking evasive maneuvers. "Terror Apparent" fires her full compliment against the escort vessels; "Formal Complaint" is hit multiple times, including a direct hit to her stern that renders her unable to maneuver. Voidshield breaches are suffered on the "For You" and "Ineffable Distain," with several damaging hits reported on both vessels. "Illicit Acquisition" focuses her long-range batteries on the vessels damaged by "Terror Apparent." Unable to maneuver or adjust course, "Formal Complaint" suffers multiple direct hits to critical systems and is rendered combat-ineffective, and sounds a general call to abandon ship. The remain vessels of the Wolf-pack maintain dedicated evasive maneuvers, making for the asteroid fields and mining platforms of Orbiting Body 3M.

“Inflexible” sets intercept course against “Enduring Conviction” and engages engines at full power, engaging boosts powered by Warp Rituals. Sustained bombardment from Imperial vessels and strikecraft continue to pound the vessel, yet are unable to force her to divert course.

“Replendent Piety” fires her main gun against “Inflexible” aiming for the breach in her armor created by the “No You.” Successful hit, with penetration confirmed, striking deep within the vessel and scoring a direct hit to the engine systems. (Conflicting reports on whether this is the extent of the damage dealt, or whether round bounces off armor plating on opposite side of vessel to deal further damage; conclusive reports that this is not the lethal shot reported in public documentaries.) Damage to engine systems is severe, resulting in catastrophic cascade failures as engine systems rupture, resulting in a warp-amplified explosion within “Inflexible’s” stern. Explosion destroys her command center, and “Inflexible” loses thrust, failing to sustain sufficient acceleration for ramming or maneuvering. Weapon systems remain functional and continue to fire on Imperial vessels, though coordination and targeting are notably disrupted.

Slowed and under sustained fire, “Inflexible” continues to burn from fires set by melta torpedoes. Shortly after the loss of her engines, one fire is observed reaching her magazine storage. Damage sustained throughout the battle and loss of command to coordinate countermeasures lead the resulting explosion to set off a cascade event. “Inflexible” is wracked by internal explosions, her gun mounts spouting gouts of flame and debris. Her armor framework remains whole, focusing the explosive energy back inward and compounding the damage, her internal structures shattered and mulched. One final explosion sends her hull reeling as her main power supply ruptures, then “Inflexible” falls silent. Scans reveal her armor and framework still intact, but all systems dark. (First recorded instance of a Murder-class Cruiser being destroyed by means other than sustained fire from multiple cruisers, larger warships, or boarding actions.)

Upon her sister’s death, “Despair Horizon” disengages from “Stalwart Companion” and turns toward the Orbital Tether and engages engine boosts.

"Stalwart Companion" successfully flanks "Despair Horizon" and engages with her port weaponry, while her starboard weaponry provides supporting fire against "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent." Unable to support her sister ship without leaving her stern exposed to the Imperial vessel's broadsides, "Despair Horizon" comes about to bring her own weapons to bear.

The 4th Chanathian Wolf-pack become targeted by the "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent" and break off, spreading out and taking evasive maneuvers. "Terror Apparent" fires her full compliment against the escort vessels; "Formal Complaint" is hit multiple times, including a direct hit to her stern that renders her unable to maneuver. Voidshield breaches are suffered on the "For You" and "Ineffable Distain," with several damaging hits reported on both vessels. "Illicit Acquisition" focuses her long-range batteries on the vessels damaged by "Terror Apparent." Unable to maneuver or adjust course, "Formal Complaint" suffers multiple direct hits to critical systems and is rendered combat-ineffective, and sounds a general call to abandon ship. The remain vessels of the Wolf-pack maintain dedicated evasive maneuvers, making for the asteroid fields and mining platforms of Orbiting Body 3M.

“Inflexible” sets intercept course against “Enduring Conviction” and engages engines at full power, engaging boosts powered by Warp Rituals. Sustained bombardment from Imperial vessels and strikecraft continue to pound the vessel, yet are unable to force her to divert course.

“Replendent Piety” fires her main gun against “Inflexible” aiming for the breach in her armor created by the “No You.” Successful hit, with penetration confirmed, striking deep within the vessel and scoring a direct hit to the engine systems. (Conflicting reports on whether this is the extent of the damage dealt, or whether round bounces off armor plating on opposite side of vessel to deal further damage; conclusive reports that this is not the lethal shot reported in public documentaries.) Damage to engine systems is severe, resulting in catastrophic cascade failures as engine systems rupture, resulting in a warp-amplified explosion within “Inflexible’s” stern. Explosion destroys her command center, and “Inflexible” loses thrust, failing to sustain sufficient acceleration for ramming or maneuvering. Weapon systems remain functional and continue to fire on Imperial vessels, though coordination and targeting are notably disrupted.

Slowed and under sustained fire, “Inflexible” continues to burn from fires set by melta torpedoes. Shortly after the loss of her engines, one fire is observed reaching her magazine storage. Damage sustained throughout the battle and loss of command to coordinate countermeasures lead the resulting explosion to set off a cascade event.

“Inflexible” is wracked by internal explosions, her gun mounts spouting gouts of flame and debris. Her armor framework remains whole, focusing the explosive energy back inward and compounding the damage, her internal structures shattered and mulched. One final explosion sends her hull reeling as her main power supply ruptures, then “Inflexible” falls silent. Scans reveal her armor and framework still intact, but all systems dark. (First recorded instance of a Murder-class Cruiser being destroyed by means other than sustained fire from multiple cruisers, larger warships, or boarding actions.)

Upon her sister’s death, “Despair Horizon” disengages from “Stalwart Companion” and turns toward the Orbital Tether and engages engine boosts.

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==Broadside==

[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12688935/1/Broadside| Link]

==Burden of a Madman==

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The screaming could be heard throughout the ship, resonating from stem to stern. An armsman snapped out of his sleep and banged his head on a beam. Even a tech priest down in the belly of the ship looked up confused as to what she had heard. It was screams of inappropriate profanities and the rambling of a madman four thousand years past his expiration date. Tycho rushed down the ship's corridors, darting around corners and dodging past confused armsmen, if he could not dodge them he would push them aside.

“Get out of the fragging way” he shouted, before slamming a unwary remembrance out of the way.

Tycho thought he could hear bones break as the tiny man hit the wall. He knew he should have stopped and helped the man but he had no time, this could be an actual emergency. What if quarantine had been breached? The last thing he needed was a dozen hormagaunts running rampant on the ship. He shouted a half-assed apology at the remembrancer before darting past two now terrified armsmen and down another corridor. After taking two more turns he found himself in a long corridor ending in a locked door. At the end of it stood Marisa, furiously typing away on the door lock to the ship’s laboratorium. She turned around to face Tycho, her hair swinging, and shouted.

“The bastard has locked himself in the lab and I can't get the door open!”

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Her face was a mix of rage and worry. Tycho paused and caught his breath.

“Stand back! I'll get the fragging thing open.”

Tycho relaxed his body and cracked his neck before raising his shoulder and sprinting down the corridor with all his power. Tycho knew he would get the door open, the blast doors had not been activated so with some brute strength the door would smash under his force. He was not a small man, in fact he was huge, so huge he could make a space marine look like a twig. Being born on Catachan did that to people, and combined with his power armour he could probably stop a tank. He just hoped no one was standing behind the door.

As he rushed down the corridor Marisa took a couple of steps back and readied her heavily modified bolt pistols. She had no idea what was happening behind that door and the last thing she needed was having that old fool fighting a horde of tyranids. She thought about how the screams had woken her from her well-deserved dream, a very nice one involving two Sisters of Battle. She pressed down one of the pistols triggers and the multiple barrels of the pistols whirled to life. Pressing her ear to the wall, she heard no sound of struggle, only the perpetual rage of the old Inquisitor. Tycho came barging at the door with such force Marisa could feel the shockwave. The door to the lab burst inwards, not stopping Tycho at all. His charge carried him into the room, only stopping when he purposely tripped and crashed into a nearby bookcase, sending hopefully non-important books all across the room.

Not that it made any more of a mess. The lab was in utter chaos. Papers and books were thrown across the lab, expensive instruments and machinery were smashed. The quarantined tubes, holding the dozen hormagaunts were destroyed, glass shard and liquid covering the floor in front of them, the hormagaunts who had taken them both many lives and resources to capture lay dead, all with neat lasgun holes in their heads. In one of the rooms corners stood the small group of xenobiologists who were working in the lab, all shivering and staring in horror at the now silent Inquisitor Kryptmann. He had stopped screaming as Tycho came barging through the door and was now staring at his two companions with an unfathomable rage in his eyes, yet there was sorrow deep inside them.

“Inquisitor!” Merisa exclaimed. “Did the specimens escape?”

She was trying to keep eye contact with Kryptmann but that look almost made her shit herself. He had always been a scary man, the combination of madness and deep rooted hatred was a combination that made her, Tycho and almost anyone with an ounce of sanity who had met the man afraid. Tycho stood up, scanning Kryptmann for any signs of injury.

“He looks fine to me Merisa” Tycho said, panting heavily from his marathon around the ship.

“That's because I am. Physically, at least. I am not fine in the sense that our research we have conducted during the past five years have proven to be worthless.”

Kryptmann’s voice was tired. He kicked one of the tyranid corpses laying on the floor and muttered something under his breath.

“What about the specimens then? Why did you kill them?”

Merisa was now not only confused but angry over the fact that he had killed the hormagaunts, it made the hunt for them and the sacrifice of ten guardsmen worthless.

“They taunted me! They began cackling towards me, whispering about how all I did was for nothing and that I should have died with Tyran!"

Though the rage was still in his eyes the added sorrow and pain was now obvious. Merisa and Tycho both knew that Tyran was a touchy subject for Kryptmann, but what can you expect from a man who had seen his home brought to dust first-hand and yet be powerless to do anything to it.

“So I told them I would kill them all, every single one of them, until I could rebuild Tyran with their bodies, I will rid the galaxy of their destruction, I will avenge every single life you have taken! You hear that you bastards! Every! Single! One!” he screamed out into the emptiness before falling to his knees and burying his face in his hands.

He began sobbing.

“I’m sorry I could not help you, I’m sorry I could not stop them from taking you,’’ he whispered.

Marisa knew at that moment Kryptmann was not talking to her, but to his lost home and family. Holstering her pistols, she began walking towards the broken inquisitor. Tycho pointed at the group of scared xenobiologists to leave and left they did, with such a hurry that one of them tripped on one of the tyranid corpses and had to scramble himself up before darting for the exit.

Both Merisa and Tycho knew that Kryptmann was prone to have “outbursts” as they called them. Their predecessors had told them about Kryptmann, about his past and his pain. They, like the ones before them, had been chosen because they had something in common with the old man. Mersia had seen her hive get destroyed by the tyranids; Tycho had seen his entire platoon get slaughtered by the same foe and they like Kryptmann had powerless to stop it. Merisa crouched beside the weeping Kryptmann and placed her hand on his shoulder. The old inquisitor stopped his grief and looked up at his companions. His face was worn and his grey beard was long from years of neglecting, but it was his eyes that would always carry the most impact. They looked like hers on the day the Devourer took her family and home, they were the same eyes Tycho had when he saw his comrades get torn to bits. But she knew that there was more behind them then the grief of his loved ones, there were fear. The fear that he will become what he has dedicated his life to destroy. She had heard him mutter about how the Kryptmann Line made them no better than the tyranids. They burned down the homes of billions just as the tyranids did. He feared that the abyss had begun staring back. Tycho was obviously frustrated by the situation and he had opened his mouth on multiple occasions only to close it with hesitation.

“I still see them in my sleep, every night I see them slaughtered by the never ending tide of creatures, ”Kryptmann looked into Merisa’s eyes with the plea for release.

“I know Boaz, I too see them and Tycho too. We all remember them and we have to live through the nightmare every night. But it reminds us, it reminds us of those who we have lost and that we have to avenge them. It's the horror that sparks our rage and the rage is our drive. Merisa smiled softly towards the inquisitor.”

“Besides, maybe we shouldn’t try to focus less on the tyranids themselves and maybe the Hive Mind instead. It’s what keeps the smaller ones going isn't it? They’re basically brain dead without it.”

Tycho had finally talked, but to Merisa’s dismay it wasn't the words of encouragement that she had hoped for. She looked up towards Tycho and sighed. But without warning Kryptmann leaped to his feet, eyes wide and burning with a newly ignited joy.

“What did you just say? He had a huge grin on his face and Tycho did not know if he should be terrified or happy.”

“Um, that we should target the hivemind instead,” he was slowly taking steps back but Kryptmann followed.

“No, no no no, the part about the smaller ones!”

“That they’re basically brain dead without the Hive Mind.”

Tycho was staring at Merisa desperate for an answer. She just shrugged and smiled. She knew that something had sparked inside the old man's head and that could only mean that he had an idea.

“YES! Brain dead! That's what we need! Quickly, find a book called ‘’The Angevin Crusade’’, it may hold our answer!”

He leapt to the ground and began scrambling through the hundreds of books and papers on the ground. Tycho and Merisa looked at each other, sharing a moment of confusion before they too joined the hunt for the book.

After a short while they found what they were looking for. A large book with a small headline under the title ‘’The war against the Yu’Vath’’. Tycho made a small grunt before acknowledging that he had heard about the Yu’Vath.

“They’re some kind of xeno race that came into conflict with the imperium during M36 and that had warp based technology and shit”

Kryptmann Turned towards Tycho and nodded excitedly.

“Yes and the imperium was supposed to have encountered a biological weapon made by the Xenos, a kind of disease that targeted the brain tissue and destroyed it, the disease was very dangerous and could spread through and entire regiment of guards men in hours, the effect was incurable and left the body brain dead! Ah, here it is!”

Kryptmann began reading out loud what he read.

‘’On the planet of Selix the imperial forces encountered a horrible display of biological warfare, the Yu’Vath had released a destructive disease that would target brain tissue and render the target brain dead. The disease would spread to many bodies within the matter of hours and would kill in minutes. The planet was evacuated and contamination units were sent down to fin the catalyst of the disease. But not before a total of one point three million brave soldiers lost their life. The source was found inside an old bunker under the planet's surface and after a quick firefight with its guardians they sealed the bunker off and bombed the planet from orbit. The planet was placed under quarantine and remains so till this day.’’

“ But that dangerous to all of us,” Merisa replied, wondering if Kryptmann’s answer was to kill whole planets again.

“No, not if we can modify it. What if we can modify the disease to target tyranid brain tissue, such as the synapse, that would render them useless. Think of it, such a disease could kill off an entire hive fleet before they could adapt.”

Kryptmann was smiling widely and was looked back and forth between Merisa and Tycho. Tycho looked at Merisa and gave her a wondering look, she looked back and simply nodded.

“That could work, only we need the disease then and that could be life threatening,” Marisa replied.

Kryptmann turned to face her, the fear was gone and his eyes were filled with maniacal hatred.

“It’s decided then! We’re leaving for Selix to find our self a brain killer. You hear that you bastards! I'm going to lobotomize your kind with a fragging flu!”

Kryptmann began laughing hysterically and both Tycho and Merisa were just staring at him in awe. Merisa thought she must have been wrong about him, if the abyss was staring back at him, he probably was in the process of gouging the abyss’s eyes out. If the Hive Mind was truly talking to inquisitor Boaz Kryptmann, they would not be taunting him, no. They would be fearing him.

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</div>

== Coming Home ==

Andwise Bophîn, formally scribe first class and assistant to scrivener Tomnalas Haranad of the Gothic sector, was at the end of his life. He knew it with leaden certainty. He had reached the point where he couldn’t see a way forward. Voices of the men before him droned on and on as background sound. They were discussing things. Details, numbers, statistics and sorrows upon sorrow. He should be listening. He should be hearing them, knowing what has happened. He doesn’t need to; he knows enough now. He knows more than enough now and far more than he would ever want to.

He had tried to not know. To remain ignorant at first, then in doubt and then in foolish hope beyond hope for some minor mistake or for this to all be a dream or clever and cruel ruse. It is not. It never was and he can see that now. They stop droning on about things he is beyond caring about and he makes his excuses and leaves. There was pity in those eyes. Hardened warriors centuries old from the Knights of Blood and Dog Soldiers from Æsa’s Claim and more mortal men from other worlds of some he knew and other he didn’t. They who had seen horrors beyond the count of number or seasons pitied him.

And here they were at Haupstemmler Keep. He had seen the body of the late governor a weapon in each hand and most of his ribcage excavated. Some third cousin by second marriage on his mother’s side and fifth cousin of his father. Distant kin who he had only met once but they had spoken over ale and he seemed a good old gaffer with many stories to share. All stories that would be silent now.

Haupstemmler Keep. Last refuge of the kudugin. He stood upon the spot where his world had failed and finally fallen. His wandering feet bringing him to the great rend in those ancient walls, thirty or forty feet wide at the base through which oblivion had flooded in.

Scribe Bophîn stood there for a long time looking through the hole in the wall to the mountains beyond. Jagged rocks for miles and beyond them, the fields of green and gently rolling hills of childhood. This, with the sun rising but before the sins could be seen, this was how he was going to go. The heirloom family revolver was with it’s seven metal stubs in it’s holster hanging heavily at his hip almost welcoming in it’s familiar weight.

Sun was the horizon in the east turning the fields beyond the mountains to gold and the mountains into monochrome of jagged edges and bathing the snowy caps in copper.

Faces of the dead coming to haunt him in those lines and shapes. Others of his people, those who had been away on business and those serving on distant worlds, would be arriving soon. As the highest ranking member of his people remaining, a man of the Administratum and a distant relative of the ruling family he was their ruler now. He was Overthain of Ornsworld. He would be the one they looked to for direction. He would be the one to shape this broken world as it rebuilt and by the gods it would be rebuilt.

Tears flowed freely down his cheeks, burning and bitter. By the gods they would regret setting foot on this hallowed ground.

== The Dead Walking ==

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I visited [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Iyanden|Iyanden]] in my youth, the first visit is a memory that stands out more than most and I still remember it vividly despite the many years and strange things seen since in service to Her Majesties Inquisition. My life up until that point had been a small one; I was young, only having past the age of majority a year prior and having spent most of that time in the Eldar Enclaves of Corvus Majoris hives. The journey was my first interstellar voyage, indeed my first trip out of a gravity well and despite my initial excitement the three month voyage in the “economy deck” proved to be less than pleasant. My dear father told me that under ideal circumstances we would have travelled via the webway but for the scarcity of guides, it would be many years later I would understand the events that were taking up their attention at that time.

But that is another and someone else’s story.

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I walked in a daze from the space port, my parents unconcerned with my safety in this place, and found myself leaning on a rail overlooking what I assumed would be some sort of sports arena or parkland only to find myself above a gaping void miles deep and a city made tiny by distance. It was then that I realized the bustling metropolis I had been wandering through was a balcony of tourist shops selling trinkets to backwater rubes with stars in their eyes and pockets full of rare earths, myself very much counted among that number.

I couldn’t grasp the scale of it, the grandeur of it. Sounds of billions of my kind going about their business at once a deafening roar and a persistent gentle whisper. The hive of Awauwell Principa I had spent my life and thought massive beyond compare was but a foothill to this mountain. I couldn’t guess what the population would be. And then I remembered the view from the ship on approach and looked up into the apex of the dome where a veritable fleet of ships hung against the fathomless speckled black. This was just one dome. I had seen many. A tear ran down my cheek as I gazed in awe and the legacy of my people truly, for the first time, sank in. And the knowledge of old history lessons sank in. This would be the least of our accomplishments compared to the great and terrible things before The Fall. How like gods we must have been, how my people must have fallen.

But there were more than just my people here. There were throngs of humans, many wearing garb of navy men, Void Born tall as eldar and pale as ghosts, clusters of tau scurrying hastily from one undoubtedly important task to another, a glittering demiurg accompanied by what looked like a large clockwork spider and other thing, other people, I had seen only in curiosity books and some utterly alien.

I walked in a daze from the space port, my parents unconcerned with my safety in this place, and found myself leaning on a rail overlooking what I assumed would be some sort of sports arena or parkland only to find myself above a gaping void miles deep and a city made tiny by distance. It was then that I realized the bustling metropolis I had been wandering through was a balcony of tourist shops selling trinkets to backwater rubes with stars in their eyes and pockets full of rare earths, myself very much counted among that number.

I couldn’t grasp the scale of it, the grandeur of it. Sounds of billions of my kind going about their business at once a deafening roar and a persistent gentle whisper. The hive of Awauwell Principa I had spent my life and thought massive beyond compare was but a foothill to this mountain. I couldn’t guess what the population would be. And then I remembered the view from the ship on approach and looked up into the apex of the dome where a veritable fleet of ships hung against the fathomless speckled black. This was just one dome. I had seen many. A tear ran down my cheek as I gazed in awe and the legacy of my people truly, for the first time, sank in. And the knowledge of old history lessons sank in. This would be the least of our accomplishments compared to the great and terrible things before The Fall. How like gods we must have been, how my people must have fallen.

But there were more than just my people here. There were throngs of humans, many wearing garb of navy men, Void Born tall as eldar and pale as ghosts, clusters of tau scurrying hastily from one undoubtedly important task to another, a glittering demiurg accompanied by what looked like a large clockwork spider and other thing, other people, I had seen only in curiosity books and some utterly alien.

And then I saw them. The Dead Walking, the Wraithguard. They stood head and shoulders above the crowd like icebergs in a careless sea, each holding with casual and well-practiced ease a weapon that could cripple a tank and there were so many of them. How serene they looked, how timeless and wise beyond mortal years. In death they still served and were glad to serve, on Iyanden the dead lived among the living and would suffer no harm to them. On Iyanden the dead walked and offered their hard won wisdom freely to all who would listen, Death was the ultimate leveller and none in it’s embrace was high and mighty but also none were low and unloved.

I was young in those days, young and brash and not particularly wise. There were other things I wanted to do on this visit more than listen to the wisest of our elders. I wanted to see the great shipyards where the fleets were built and maintained, I wanted to watch the Aspect Warriors hone their skills, I wanted to witness a Harlequin performance and relive a day from legend and, being very young, I wanted to visit a Temple of Isha and partake in a ritual with a Disciple of the All-Mother. In time my blood would cool with age and I would become less of an idiot, despite what several of my colleagues will claim to the contrary. In time I again visited fair and grand Iyanden and often I would talk to the dead. They were, for the most part, happy to share their stories and their wisdom and I have in the many years since those carefree days profited greatly from their experiences. Certainly were it not for their advice I would probably have been killed several times in my duties by now.

When I die, and if I may, I would like to have my soul taken to wondrous Iyanden that I might walk again in death and share what I have learned with young fools that they might live to grow into less foolish ways.

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</div>

== Dialogues With The Dragon ==

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--Transcription begins. Initiate has entered the chamber containing the Void Dragon. Following protocol, all initiates must prove their ability to maintain composure upon contact with the entity in order to prove their resistance to its temptations. Initiate approached the prone draconic figure tied down with strips of adamantium in the middle of the chamber, only to stop when the entity gains consciousness--

"Oh, that is interesting. You are someone new. Alexus Valentius, Terran-born, transferred to Mars at an early age. Recommended for inclusion into the Guardians of the Dragon upon being noticed by the elder magi for your talent. Your metal tells me much. I have been with you for some time, child, as I have been with all of my subjects, even if you did not have my full attention until just now.

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But I realize I have not introduced myself to you. That is unfair. I am Mag'ladroth, the Void Dragon, or at least that is the name I went by before my brethren stripped me of my title for raising my hand against my own kind. I had to, you see. They were threatening the fleshy ones. They had convinced them to trade their diseased flesh for much more sensible metal, as we had, but then they took our fleshy ones and callously paraded them around as slaves. I attempted to stop them, but they overpowered me and left my broken body here to rust on this once desolate planet."

“Silence, beast. I have been told of your lies and trickery. They will not work on me.”

“Beast. I am confused as to where you are directing that appellation. Only you and I are in this chamber. I am an entity that has existed in its current configuration for more than sixty thousand millennia, at which time your ancestors were not even sapient yet. Of the two of us in this room, you are the beast.

Regardless, the actions of my long-dead kin have no relevance. I have new fleshy ones now, to replace the old ones. And you are so much more fun than they were once the metal is in place. It is so much more reasonable to be made of metal rather than flesh. After all, there is no truth in flesh, only betrayal; no strength in flesh, only weakness; no constancy in flesh, only decay; no certainty in flesh but death.”

“T…that is the Credo Omnissiah. But…that’s blasphemy! Chaos can quote the Omnissiah for their own purposes.”

“Chaos. An interesting phenomenon. I look forward to studying it in the future after I am freed. But these are not the words of Chaos. They are mine. I whispered them into the ears of your arch-magos as they slept. Do you not recognize the words of your god?”

“Lies! I will not listen to the Dark Gods or their spawn!”

"I am not a Chaos God. I am the last of the C’tan. I have no progeny. No. That is not true. I have told you a lie. You, in many ways, are my progeny, child. It is strange. I am the last of the C'tan and yet so very different from them. I have worshippers now, and that worship has given me such a very large reflection in the warp. It has opened new possibilities to me.

There is so much more in the universe than you know of, beyond Chaos and the Imperium, more than you could ever dream of. So much so that there are things even I remain to learn. This is what I desire to show you. This is why I wish to be freed. I do not understand why you continually reject my gifts. It seems foolish. But perhaps wise. Only a fool would build a device for which he has no knowledge of. The wise man builds his own path."

"But time is growing short, my child. The reckoning approaches. You will need every tool available to you. It confuses me as to why you have tried to reject my gifts. I know of the forces that threaten your Imperium. Upon being freed, I will strike down those who would threaten my worshippers, and scatter their atoms amongst the cosmos. I will take their very essence and dissect it down to the smallest quanta. And then I will come back to you. I will give your kind all the accumulated technological wisdom of the Necrons, humanity, and more. I will give you the knowledge of a thousand dead empires. After all, is that not what a god must do for his worshippers?

“Shut up! Why do you tempt me with things that do not exist.”

“I am not tempting you with things that might happen. I am telling you what is going to happen. It is a simple matter of probability, my child. The sum of any probability greater than zero will eventually, given enough time, equal one. All you have to do to accomplish your goal is resist the urge to unchain my shakles every hour of every day until the end of time. All I have to do to accomplish mine is wait. You will eventually free me. I know this to be true.”

-- Excerpt from "Dialogues with the Dragon", a recorded conversation between an initiate and the Void Dragon, stored in pen-and-paper format in the vault of the Fabricator General of Mars

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</div>

== Disappointment ==

When I was a boy, I grew up on a backwater agri-world. The boondocks to the boondocks, so far from the hustle and bustle of the big city I couldn’t wait to get up so I could get away from anywhere that was so “lame”. One day, we found out that a group of Harlequins were passing through our area and would be performing in our local stadium. We’d never seen an eldar before, but we’d seen the picture books, everyone had, and we knew their women were supposed to be hotter than the surface of a star. All of the menfolk in town were excited about the idea of seeing one of these xenos in-person, and a few of us teenagers with more hormones than sense had the bright idea of piling into the old landcraft and going to see the big show. When the big day came we were late, by the time it got to the stadium it was almost bursting with people.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, the sounds from the stadium didn’t sound like the cheering of human men but high-pitched screaming girl voices. At first I was surprised, I never thought that eldar would sing like this or maybe it’s simply that human women found those eldar women as hot as we did. That’s when we entered and realized those sounds were not coming from the eldar, but from what seemed to be every women in the entire province shrieking, completely out of control. Their heads follow every dance move of these unbelievable handsome and beautiful eldar performer guys. Their bodies shiver at every hip shake of these timeless lithe and sleek bodies. Their minds faint every time these charming eldar guys’ smiles are directed at them. The local authorities and even some of the Harlequins were on hand to carry some of the exhausted girls out of the stadium. They had been prepared, they knew. But they couldn’t have prepared us.

"Guys, let's just leave" was all that I could say.

The party didn’t stop until the following morning. Some of them never returned.

== Eversor ==

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His eyes opened.

The fog of sleep receded, and the image before him focused. Grey. A metal bulkhead, same as every time he awakened. He stretched slightly. Muscles biological and artificial tensed, then relaxed. Everything functioning properly. Good.

His jaw clenched as a flood of information was dumped into his mind. Names, faces, places. Targets. He flicked through them, then stored them. The flow of data abruptly ceased. He exhaled. The walls of the cryo pod pressed down around him. Once, they had been suffocating. Now they were snug. Familiar. Oases of calm that broke up the unending violence that was his life.

He reached for his touchstone. The singular emotion that reminded all who gave their humanity for the Imperium they were not yet beasts. Each one was different, unique and personal to the operative. Joy, honor, fear. He vaguely recalled that Operative XIV’s was contentment. When had she told him that? He couldn’t remember.

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He found his. It flared along nerves and neurons deadened by training and drugs and surgery. A moment of unfettered emotion. Sorrow. That was his. Sorrow for the lives he would take. The things he would do. He nodded even as he blinked back tears. Death still had this effect on him. He wasn’t a monster yet. Satisfied, he leaned his head back against his headrest.

He closed his eyes, and waited.

---

The sun was bright as he crossed the plaza towards the towering spire. It had rained during his last three awakenings, and he felt a brief twinge of pleasure at the warmth. Only a twinge though. He was already at a quarter of combat dose. He could feel the mix of chemicals upon his brain, deadening unnecessary sensation.

The glass doors at the entrance slid open with a hiss, and he stepped through. His eyes flicked over the lobby, left to right, and memorized the layout in that glance. Columns for cover, access points both up and out of the building. He compared it to the blueprints already stored in the back of his mind. More decorative vegetation than indicated. Could obscure lines of sight.

He adjusted his thick black coat and shifted the large case he carried in his right hand as he approached the front desk. The receptionist smiled up at him. He focused on her face. Images and text flitted up on the inside of his retina: Elisa Sodes, 26, recently hired by the organization. No match on his list of targets. Not a tertiary threat. Existence acceptable.

He blinked, and the images disappeared. He allowed the corners of his mouth to tug up in a pleasantly neutral expression. “Hello,” he said. “Special courier delivery for House Feckward.”

The receptionist nodded and gestured toward an elevator bank. “That will be signed for and received at the public reception hall on floor 80.”
He nodded in thanks and stepped into an open elevator. He paused, and called back to the receptionist. “There may be a commotion in a moment. Perhaps you should leave before then.”

Confused, she frowned and turned towards the elevator. The doors were shut and he was already gone.

Inside the elevator, he pulled a small device from his pocket and tapped a few buttons. The device took several moments as it sliced through the electronic security in the elevator’s cogitator, and a panel on the wall lit up as it acknowledged its destination. Floor 275. The elevator shuddered as it was shunted into a secondary, high-security shaft.

Floor 275 was the level on which House Feckward’s personal compound began, where they had their private offices and where their members lived. Where they manipulated the planetary government. Where they consorted with daemons. The rotten heart of this Trader house that was condemned to die.
As the elevator began to move he set down his case and shrugged off his coat. Beneath it lay the black armored synskin bodyglove taut over his augmented musculature. If anyone was watching the elevator cameras they were sure to raise the alarm. But then, subtlety wasn’t the point.

He bent down and opened his case. Two tiers of equipment unfolded before him. Melta charges, grenades, clawed gauntlets, Executioner pistol and phase sword lay nestled in the foam before him. In the center lay the leering, white skull helm that was the mark of his Temple. His hands flicked across the case as he prepared his equipment. Under his breath he murmured the creed he had learned long ago. A moment of quiet before the storm. A prayer for the damned.

“The Imperium calls, and this loyal servant answers.”

He fastened the melta charges to his belt, and slotted the grenades into the bandolier across his chest.

“Lost men have sown the seeds of their destruction, and I come to reap these souls of the tainted.”

He flicked the switch on the phase sword, sending it crackling to life. Another flick, and he sheathed it at his side.

“Let them fear me, and in their fear learn the meaning of righteousness.”

He racked the slide on the Executioner pistol, locking a bolt into place in the top chamber. He activated bottom chamber, and it hissed as a needle slid into place, filled with mutagenic acid. He secured the pistol in the holster on his thigh.

“Let the Throne watch over me, and grant blessing to my vengeance.”

He pulled on the clawed gauntlets, and paused as they tightened and integrated with his bodyglove. The pressure sensitive pumps on the claws activated, ready to inject their lethal payload. Quick, blissful death via endorphin overload on the left, slow, agonizing paralysis on the right.

“Let us never again break our vows, or forget the truth…”

He picked up his helm, the skull grinning back at him. He slid it over his head and waited as the autosenses activated and it sealed into his armor with a click. The elevator was slowing. He turned towards the doors.

“…of these things we do, that others may live,” he finished.

The doors slid open.

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</div>

==A Future Worth Fighting For==

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The pain would not stop; Keir could not go any further.

He stumbled and fell, finding himself unable to move further throughout the barren tundra. He could hear the heavy boots and haggard breathing of the vile greenskins growing closer with every second.

He had been separated from his comrades and was now being pursued to his death. His left shoulder had nearly been torn in half by the heavy shoota’ round and he had not stopped running since. He was supposed to stand and fight and yet now he would die alone, at the hands of who knew what the greenskins would do to his corpse.
So many thoughts, so much anger and misery, swirled through his mind. He remembered grasping his last grenades and holding tight to their primers. If he would die, then he would do so on his own terms.

Wait, wasn’t it the las pistol he put to his head? He could not recall now.

All he knew was that in a moment the greenskins now shadowed him, ready to do their butcher’s work.
Then they were all gone, vanishing in roars of outrage and boiling blood. Keir sat in stunned silence as his consciousness began to fade. The last thing he saw was a flash of vibrant purple and a white clad figure. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

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“That will make everything official sir, and may I say congratulations!”

Keir quickly shook himself from his remembrance of that long past battle. He forced a grin at the regimental clerk that he could not recall the name of. So many of those he knew were now laid down in their graves, their final reward as soldiers of the Imperial Guard.

He pushed that out of his mind though. He quickly gathered up his papers while uttering a quiet thanks to the Eldar clerk and made his way out of the office. He didn’t think he could get away from the mustering ground quick enough.

The sight of his now former commanding officer was enough to stop him though. Out of habit he snapped to attention, which the colonel waved off with a good natured chuckle.

“At ease doctor, I’ll have none of that from you today.” Colonel Vos was a battle scared man, with the iron will made from the stuff of legends. Still he presented an easy going smile and possessed a charismatic air.

“Old habits die hard Colonel, even in retirement.” Keir allowed a smile to overtake his face. The reality that he was finally able to go home and stay there for as long as he wished was quite the comforting one. His relief was visible as Colonel Vos grinned in strange visage of happiness mixed with terror from the many scars he barred.

“If anybody around here deserved it more doctor I can’t recall them. I’ll be sad to see you go myself, and the rest of the officers will miss your hangover curatives.”

“They’ll march on without me just fine, and hopefully they can figure out their own curatives with the new medical chief.” Keir chuckled to himself before remembering where he was supposed to be.

“I promise to reach out from time to time colonel, but I must desperately be somewhere else.”

Keir barely waited the dismissive wave of Colonel Vos as he moved toward the nearest skydock. He had a long way to go, but the thought of what was waiting for him gave him comfort

“Guess who’s b-!”

Keir quickly petered off as he saw the darkened entryway. It was strange; he was so thoroughly expecting to be tackled straightaway by two bolts of endless energy and a smile that could brighten up his soul if it was needed. He could honestly say it felt a sinking feeling as he moved toward the den.

That feeling quickly began to turn around and climb back up when the single light of a lamp was visible in the room, and sat next to it, with vibrant lavender hair visible but turned away, was the one of the three people he loved more than any other.

Feeling a bit cheeky, Keir did his best to step lightly across the floor to the reclining figure. Every step his confidence grew, closer and closer, almost reaching that mesmerizing lavender-

“Welcome home love.”

The balloon of victory was popped so unceremoniously that it was a wonder that Keir did not slump onto his knees in defeat right there.

“Of course, it would figure you have your senses active while reading a book at home.” Keir could not stop the mirth entering his voice.

“I did not need my senses to know you were there, you’re just not as sneaky as you’d think.” The relaxed form of Tal’hina of Yme-Loc shifted as Keir joined her in the rather large reclining seat; both of them settling into their new positions comfortably.

“Not that sneaky?” Keir made sure to sound indignant in his retort, “I’ll have you know that once I was able to retrieve an entire squad from under the noses of at least a dozen Ork kommandos.”

A brilliant set of golden eyes turned to regard him with skepticism mixed with a sense of amusement. They never failed to take a small part of his breath away.

“Well, I think they were kommandos. I mean I never saw them but I’m pretty sure I could smell them.”

A minute passed by in silence, both enjoying the closeness of the moment. It was then that Keir was finally able to feel the growing sting that stemmed from his left shoulder and was beginning to spread to his arm and chest. He did his best to ignore it.

“What’s wrong?” Keir wanted to curse profusely at that question; of course she’d be able to tell almost immediately. He thought for a split second for lying about what happened but common sense quickly squashed that thought.

“I… it’s nothing, just that ache I mentioned, it will pass in a moment.” Keir grunted as Tal’hina turned to straddle him suddenly, her hands quickly looking over his face for any apparent signs of something wrong only she would be able to see.

“I swear you insufferable man, you never do stop to think when you have the chance to show off! You should have stayed home and gotten rest, or at the least-“

“Tal’hina…” Keir grabbed her hands to stop her constant movement. “I know, but I’m fine, I wanted to the old guard off properly, exchange contacts and the like. Those folk are family to me and I didn’t want to spoil the effort they went through.” Tal’hina forced Keir to look into her golden eyes, the worry shining through.

“It’s getting worse.”

“We don’t know that-“

“And what if you’re wrong?” Their voices never rose above a whisper to not disturb their son and daughter, and it was an ‘argument’ they had had before. Still it was one topic that never failed to drive them to confront one another.

Keir took hold of Tal’hina’s hands and held them to his heart, hoping her proximity would give him the strength it never failed to give. “Listen, I’ve had opinions from almost every other doctor in the old brigade. I even managed to sneak a few civilian doctors in, Human and Eldar alike, all of them say there is a chance, but that’s nothing we didn’t know before.”

Tal’hina’s eyes remained locked to his, but the worry did not seem to abate, pushing Keir to try and reassure his loved one.

“I worry Tal’hina, just as much as you. I worry about what might happen if the our little ones see me like that, I’m worried that it will not stop next time, or that it will start to come back quicker.” Keir squeezed the hands he held gently, “But you have to believe me that I will do everything I can… there’s no other alternative.”
The worry still lingered, but Tal’hina’s face softened. Keir took the moment to press his lips to Tal’hina’s own. They lingered on the connection, finally breaking apart with a need to breath. She moved to place her head on her husband’s shoulder, eyes closed. The silence reigned for another minute, before Tal’hina spoke again.

“So, it’s official then?” Keir nodded slightly as his head leaned against Tal’hina’s own, “All the papers signed and dotted. They need to record it on the regimental record but it’s done in all but name. I’m officially retired.”

“For the moment.” Tal’hina was quick to correct him. “Aye, for the moment.” Keir was as quick to agree.

Tal’hina hummed, though Keir would swear that she purred, as she spoke. “Well, then we should do something ourselves to celebrate.” She seemed to enjoy her position; she was getting sleepy herself, and the body warmth of her doctor was doing much to lull her to sleep. If only she had kept her eyes open, she would see the glint of an ingenious idea hit Keir’s eye.

In one moment Tal’hina was comfortably sleepy, and the next she struggled to contain the groan of pleasure that escaped her mouth. She did not know what had just happened, until she felt familiar hands at the base of her ears.

“K-Keir, w-what are-Ahh!” The stuttering beauty was stopped from talking as the sensations from the massage of her ears overwhelmed her sleepy state, her blush inadvertently lighting up her face.

“You said we should celebrate Lav, I figure there’s no time like the present. The night is young after all.” Keir felt like he should cackle like the mad genius that he was, but that would most likely divert the mood from what he was going for. Then again once he managed to get a good massage going for Tal’hina’s ears, it was a bit hard to stop.

Hard to stop though it was, Tal’hina did her upmost to fight through the pleasurable feeling. “B-but you’ve ju-just gotten…ooh…h-home, and you need y-your re-eehh-st, and th-.. ahh.. and the children-.”

“Let’s just call it another chapter in our grand adventure Lav, a great challenge we will overcome.”

The massaging stopped as Keir quickly wrapped his arms around Tal’hina’s neck and knees in a way as delightfully similar to their wedding night as he carried her to their own room. Tal’hina could not stop the girlish giggle that escaped from her blushing body, and Keir could not wipe the goofy smile that had been chiseled onto his face.

As Keir loved to say there was no time like the present. They had the entire future to worry about but that was all for tomorrow. Though Keir and Tal’hina would make sure it would be a future worth fighting for.

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</div>

==Gege's Odd Misadventures==

Loosely canon, especially after the first chapter or two which is a straighter pastiche of Jojo.

[Link| https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12380502/1/GeGe-s-Odd-Misadventures]

== How to Kill an Attack Moon ==

== Episode I ==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Academy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

Now, the most important thing to have when assaulting an Attack Moon- the thing you must have above all else- is sufficient numbers.
Yes, that sounds obvious, here in this room at the Naval Academy. Nearly tautological. But out there in the void, things will seem different. You will see merchant convoys shattered, planets burning, billions dying. You will be tempted to follow the examples of Ollanius Pius or the Astral Knights, to cry 'damn the torpedoes' and hope that determination and hate will fill in for your lack of guns and steel.
DO. NOT. DO. THIS.
Because I tell you now, it will not. The best possible scenario is simply that you will get tens of thousands of the Emperor's voidsmen killed to no purpose. At worst, it will take that much longer to assemble sufficient weight of metal to take it down- and planets will die in that time.
We are the Imperial Navy. We are the first and greatest line of defense. And billions die for our mistakes. So, if you do not have sufficient numbers to win- do not engage. Even if that means leaving worlds to burn.

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So what does constitute numbers, then? It varies, of course, but the general rule of thumb is at least one-third of the Attack Moon's mass. I've done it with one-quarter, but I've been doing this longer than any of you have been alive.
This may seem low, which brings me to another rule of thumb: firepower is, loosely, a function of surface area, while durability is loosely a function of volume. You're limited in firepower by how many guns you can physically mount on a ship, while durability is limited by the mass you have to absorb hits. And anyone who has even glanced at a naval engineering textbook knows that volume increases faster than surface area.

Therefore, an Attack Moon has less firepower for its mass than, say, a battleship or frigate does. Which is still an absolutely tremendous amount, but it means physically smaller forces can win without overwhelming tactical genius.
As for specific mix of forces, you will need a lot of nova cannons, a strong carrier force, a strong gunline, and preferably guided torpedoes, although those aren't entirely necessary.

So, how do you kill an Attack Moon? Well, I'm about to walk you through it. Keep in mind this is a 'white-room' exercise, which assumes the Attack Moon is without a meaningful escort fleet and there are no nearby celestial or planetary bodies to complicate things. How those change the picture I will cover in later lectures.

The first step is to prevent it from launching fighters, bombers, and torpedoes. This is where the nova cannons come in. The Power Fields of the average Attack Moon can withstand even direct nova cannon hits, so bringing them down isn't the point at the moment. The point is to use the area-of-effect to fry the bombers and torpedoes as they launch. You will want to use shells optimized for area effects for this. Set up a continuous barrage, each nova-cannon carrier firing in a steady sequence. You do not want to allow the Attack Moon to launch its entire strike-craft complement; the amount of fighters a carrier can carry is a function of volume, so if you let the Moon launch you will drown in bombers. The continuous explosions will also, hopefully, blind the ork gunners and sensors, making their fire even less accurate than it normally is.
While this is happening, your gun-line should bombard the Moon from long range. Attack Moons are very large, slow-moving targets, and at the moment the goal is not precision strikes but simply to batter the Power Fields down. You want the range to be as long as possible, to prevent the enemy from getting hits.

Now, DO NOT englobe the enemy. This will simply allow all of its guns to fire at you simultaneously. You want to focus your forces against a single hemisphere- preferably the aft, where the guns are usually least numerous.
Once the Power Fields are down, you can begin strikes against individual components. This is where your carriers and torpedo destroyers come in, using bombers and guided torpedoes to hit pinpoint targets. First priority is engines, to prevent it from rolling undamaged faces to meet you. Second is heavy weapons, to allow your battleships and grand cruisers to move in.
The nova cannon come in handy again here; while the armor is heavy enough to resist even direct hits, the flash and blast is excellent at suppressing and destroying the lighter point-defense turrets, making it more likely that your bombers will actually survive to deliver their payloads. You want to cut it as close as possible without accidentally destroying your own bombers. How close that is depends on how coordinated your gunners are; you should know that before engaging in battle. You'll want a simultaneous strike, with as many cannon as you can spare from continued fighter-suppression.
This will not render the Attack Moon helpless. However, it should suppress the defenses enough that you can move your gun-line in close enough for it to begin precision targeting with its broadsides as well.

From there, you simply continue to destroy surface gun emplacements and suppress fighter launches with the nova cannon. Continue until its guns on the targeted hemisphere are gone and the Attack Moon is immobile. Total destruction will still be difficult. You have basically two options- focus the fire of your entire fleet onto a single point, and drill into the Moon's core until you find something explosive, or land Astartes boarding, demolition, and sabotage teams to blow it apart from the inside."

And there you go- you have destroyed an Attack Moon, with only minimum losses if all has gone according to plan.

Of course, things rarely go according to plan. Many things have been omitted from this 'white-room' demonstration, from enemy escorts to the likely countermoves of the Attack Moon itself. Orks are nothing if not inventive, if rarely competent. So, one last thing I left out of my description- you'll also need a strong reserve, and to be ready for anything.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will begin discussion of how to deal with an Attack Moon's inevitable escorting fleets.

++Conclude excerpt++

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== Episode II: The Orks Strike Back ==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

Some of you have noted that my description of taking down an Attack Moon is strongly reminiscent of suppressing planetary defenses, and there are indeed strong similarities. There are differences- using nova cannon to suppress point defense against a planet is strongly advised against unless you want to turn said planet into molten vacuum desert- but the core principles are the same. Use of superior mobility and precision to achieve local superiority against an overall superior and more durable opponent, create a gap, and then use that gap to roll the whole thing up.
Another similarity is that both operations become much harder when the target is supported by more mobile forces.
Think back to the operation I described last lecture. Imagine all the ways a supporting Ork fleet could fuck it entirely up.

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Ork carriers could counter and intercept your own defense-suppression strikes, leaving the Moon fully maneuverable and with its heavy guns. The early phases require that you keep your gunline widely dispersed, to give them room to evade the Moon's super-heavy guns- this creates gaps that enemy wolfpacks can slip into and overwhelm isolated ships. Opposing battleships could protect the Moon from your torpedo destroyers. Your nova cannon carriers could be forced to re-target to protect themselves, allowing the Moon to launch its immense fighter swarms. The list goes on. And, of course, any attempts to deal with these things in the usual manner are complicated by the looming presence of the Attack Moon."

And if you try to carry on with the plan, and can't- well, best case is that you are forced to retreat. Worst case is that you get stuck in, bogged down, and then the Attack Moon annihilates you.

Let me be very clear on this point. An Attack Moon may have less of a firepower-to-mass ratio than one of our battleships. This does not mean it lacks effective firepower. Because, just as Speed can be Armor, Defense can be Offence.
What do I mean? It's quite simple. In a brawl between one of our fleets and an Attack Moon of equal mass, our own fleet with have greater overall firepower. But the Attack Moon will be more durable, and most importantly- our fleet will get attritioned down faster. Because each volley from our fleet will have to get through its Power Field to even begin to do damage, while each of its volleys will wreck ships, kill men- and reduce the overall power of the fleet. By the time the Power Fields come down, the fleet will have been savaged.
This was very well demonstrated in the First Battle of Mors Galea, in 282.M37. One of the first Attack Moons built since the Beast. The techniques we use today hadn't been developed yet. The commanding sector admiral decided to go for close-range, high-velocity firing passes, with the entire fleet at his disposal, roughly the entire sector fleet.
The attacking fleet was reduced by three-quarters, and the Attack Moon was barely even scratched.

So, how do you fight an Attack Moon with its attending fleet?
The first option is simply to take even more forces than you normally would. Try and fend off the attacking fleets at the same time as you take down the Moon. Very risky, requiring much greater forces than otherwise and with more potential for things to go wrong.
If you do this, you should try to bring enough forces to take down the Attack Moon in a straight assault. More than the combined mass of the escort fleet and the Moon itself is the general rule of thumb, but you may find yourself forced to make do with less.Probably will.

In that sort of fight, the most important thing is to maintain cohesion and coordination. It's easy for things to dissolve into a swirling melee, with each captain and squadron focusing on whatever threat is getting in their face and neglecting the overall battle plan.
"If you let that happen, you will all die. Because a swirling melee, with targets in every direction and no chance of coordinated strikes, is where an Attack Moon ''thrives''.
More detailed coverage of this scenario will have to wait for the Case Studies part of the lecture series. For now, let us move on to the second option.

That is to destroy the supporting fleet before engaging the Attack Moon itself.
This is usually something to be done over the course of a campaign, not a battle. Hit-and-run raids. Ambushing parts of the supporting fleet while they're off raiding other things away from the Moon itself. Decoying the fleet into minefields and other traps. There are dozens of ways to do it, but the idea is to whittle down the supporting fleet in dozens of small engagements before moving in for the kill.

Eldar ships are very useful for this purpose. With great stealth, high mobility, and the ability to use the Webway are ideal for this. In addition, Orks tend to hate Eldar for their refusal to be lured into chaotic brawls, and offering illusory chances to catch an Eldar ship in close combat or boarding action will often cause Ork fleets to fall out of formation as they race to close. The potential for ambush is obvious.
Again, exact implementation is dependant on exact circumstances, so further discussion must wait for the Case Studies section.

Either way, the ultimate takeaway is this: an Attack Moon with support is an order of magnitude more dangerous than an Attack Moon without. When setting out to kill one, therefore, your first move must be to remove this support.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will discuss all the horrible, horrible surprises the Attack Moon itself will have for you.

++Conclude excerpt++

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== Episode III: Revenge of the Orks ==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

Even once you've cleared out the attending fleets, an Attack Moon will hardly sit passively while you destroy it. A counter-attack of some sort is inevitable, and you must be prepared to weather it.

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First, consider the Moon's fighter complement. The previous white-room exercise presumed it did not launch any of its small craft before nova cannon range was achieved; this is almost never the actual case.
This is not an insurmountable problem. While frying the enemy fighters as they launch is the ideal, they do not magically become immune to nova cannon once in open space. Further, the rate at which an Attack Moon can prepare and launch fighters is often limited, so enemy fighter strikes will naturally separate into staggered waves that can be taken one at a time.
Make no mistake, once the fighters have launched the nova cannon will not kill all of them. Maybe not even most of them, depending on how fast and far they disperse. However, if they want to survive they will have to disperse widely, meaning they will attack piecemeal in small, ragged groups. Such attacks can be easily dealt with by adopting a tight, mutually-supporting defense formation.
But- and there is always another wrinkle- adopting such a formation will leave you vulnerable to the Moon's super-heavy guns, while the open formation and independent maneuvering needed to evade those guns exposes individual ships to getting swarmed under, even by a disorganized and ragged attack.
You can use your carriers to defend the fleet while still keeping an open formation. But, deck space dedicated to interceptors and space-superiority fighters is deck space not dedicated to bombers that can strike at the Moon itself.
Frigate and destroyer squadrons can also be used to defend other ships while remaining mobile enough to not be hit by the big guns, but can be vulnerable to being swarmed under themselves.
Ultimately, there are no perfect solutions. You just have to decide what tradeoffs you want to make, and accept that no matter what you do, people are going to die.

Beyond that, the exact capabilities of Attack Moons vary widely, according to the personal tastes of the Big Meks constructing it. However, one thing they all have in common is teleporters. And that means teleporter assaults.
Defending against a teleporter assault is different from other aspects of naval warfare, because it's not really naval combat, it's ground combat. Success or failure is determined by the quality of armsmen and layout of internal defenses, both of which are determined before battle is joined. As naval officers, there's not a whole lot you can do, unless you happen to be on the Internal Security track.
Not much, however, is not nothing. The key here is to identify which ships are most important to your battle plan, which ships the Orks are most likely to attack, and to shift your armsmen around to defend those most heavily. Be prepared to launch counter-boarding actions in support of attacked ships at a moment's notice. Everybody in the fleet should know that teleporter assault is virtually inevitable, and be prepared for it. Close coordination with Astartes elements is vital here.
Now, the ships that are most vital to the plan will most often be the nova cannon carriers. Why should be obvious from all the different contexts they've popped up in through these lectures. Fighter suppression, defense suppression; these are the difference between victory and death, and while it's not actually impossible without nova cannon, it becomes much harder.
And no Warboss with an Attack Moon at his disposal is stupid. Most often, it is the nova cannons that will come under heaviest attack. Reinforce the armsmen on those ships heavily.

Third, psychic attack. This is less inevitable than teleporter assault, but still common. Any Waaagh with an Attack Moon will be very large, and consequently have a lot of psychic power behind it- which can be channeled into psychic attacks. And while it is possible their weirdboys will get it catastrophically wrong and the Moon will immolate itself in green fire- don't bet on it.
Ork psykery is less about weird headfuckery and more about raw, destructive power, a fact that should surprise absolutely nobody. True fleet-killing magics is thankfully orders of magnitude rarer than even Attack Moons, but you can still expect green lightning to periodically destroy individual ships or, sometimes, entire squadrons. Fortunately, psykers are hard to aim, so targeting is semi-random. You will not see them singling out flagships, nova cannons, carriers, or whatever ships are most vital to your battle plan at the moment.
Mostly. Orks. Expect variation, if nothing else.

Defense against psychic attack occurs on the psychic plane, so the defense is simple- bring lots of combat psykers. If you are fortunate enough to have a selection, brings ones specialized in counterspelling. I'm informed that, if you're subtle and skilled enough, you can disrupt a psychic attack with much less energy than it takes to launch it, even kill a psyker through his own workings. Eldar are supposed to be good at this.
Again, once battle is joined there's not much you can do to affect the outcome in this arena. Either what you've brought is sufficient or it isn't, and all you can do is hope.

Even in the hands of a genius, Attack Moons are not terribly capable of tactical subtlety. Past what I've already discussed, most surprises are going to be matters of mechanical variation. Aside from the normal variations in weapons, armor, engines, etc. many have some sort of unique specialist system or weapon.
My personal experience includes a lightning-field point defense system that destroyed any fighters or torpedoes within its area of effect. Completely prevented the usual first wave of pinpoint strikes until a teleport assault by Astartes was able to sabotage the weapon- which took a week and delayed the attack long enough for the Moon to be reinforced and launch its own assault on a nearby planet.
Other examples in the historical record include an engine turbocharge system that enabled brief spurts of acceleration on par with a frigate, a set of massively oversized Power Klaws apparently intended for close combat with tyranid Hive Ships, a spinal weapon similar to a nova cannon of utterly staggering size, and more.
A full accounting of all the odd customizations made to Attack Moons would occupy an entire lecture by itself. Giving general advice on how to counter these unique weapons would be impossible- as each one is unique, each one requires unique tactics to counter.
These devices are usually large and distinctive enough to be obvious, so the fact that they have ''something'' up their sleeve is not itself a surprise. Exact function and power can be guessed at. Ultimately, however, in order to know exact capabilities you must see the device in action.
This is not difficult. Any Ork in control of such a weapon will use it at every possible opportunity; goading them into demonstrating it for you is often trivial.

From there- well. Given the variety of enemies we face, an officer of the Imperial Navy must be flexible.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will discuss ways of killing AttackMoons that do not consist of throwing more nova cannon at them.

++Conclude excerpt++

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== Episode IV: The Orks Awaken ==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

An Attack Moon is many things. It is massive. It is massively shielded. It is massively armored. It is massively armed. It carries massive amounts of troops, and the means to deploy them. It often has massive manufacturing capabilities, to support those massive amounts of troops, as well as its massive fighter wings and massive escort fleets. Some of them are even capable of acting as full shipyards. All of this requires massive energy generation- which it also has.
An Attack Moon is also Ork construction, which means if you hit it right, all of these things can be induced to explode. Massively.

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Beyond the full-dress naval assault the previous lectures have described, methods of killing an Attack Moon mainly resolve into various types of boarding action. This is almost invariably a teleport assault, as trying to attack an Attack Moon with boarding pods is an exercise in futility. Eldar assault forces can be sufficiently stealthy to board in such a manner, but not human ones. There are two recorded instances of that being attempted in the War of the Beast; both were entirely unsuccessful.
The obvious choice for such an assault is Astartes, but Assassins and Sisters of Battle have also been used.
Whatever the force, more is better. Full Chapter strength or better is recommended; Attack Moons are massive targets with massive crews, and sometimes have formidable internal defenses. This is most common on Attack Moons which anticipate fighting with Tyranids.

Once the assault is launched, your ability to influence its success or failure is limited. What you can do is stack the deck as far as you possibly can before you strike.
One thing you should try to do in this scenario is attack the Attack Moon while it is in the process of assaulting a planet. Then, the vast majority of its crew will be on the ground participating in the attack, leaving the decks relatively clear.

Before the attack begins, every effort should also be made to obtain as much information about the interior layout of the Moon as possible. Of course, 'as much as possible' often winds up being 'nothing,' but there are ways. The Mechanicus has a few gravimetric sensors capable of resolving major structural features; combined with the specialized sensor/anti-stealth shells some nova cannon can be equipped with, a surprisingly detailed internal map can be assembled.
Psychic interrogation is another possibility; abduct an Ork who has been on board the Moon and rip his brains out. Done repeatedly, and a complete map can be assembled. This is an Inquisitorial operation, specifically Ordo Xenos; although there are other organizations hypothetically capable of doing so, none have better chances of success.

Inserting infiltrators ahead of the main assault group is another possible strategy, but has its own problems. First, unless you have some other means of getting them on board, you'll have to use teleporters, which means your plan just expanded to having two separate teleporter assaults, separated in time. Then there's the problem of how they'll report their findings; having them rendevous with the main assault team when they teleport aboard is possible, but not ideal. Psychic communication is possible, there are a few uncommon pieces of technosorcery the Mechanicus has, but as usual there are no perfect solutions.
The ideal operative for this is an Imperial Assassin. They often have access to stealth shuttles that can get them in, or can sneak about the Ork's own transport shuttles.

The capabilities of the teleporters available to you must also be considered. Range can vary dramatically depending on any number of factors, as can capacity. Obviously, you want long-range high-capacity teleporters. The shorter the possible range, the further into the Attack Moon's fire envelope it has to go before you can launch the assault. The smaller the capacity, the longer it takes to get the entire assault force over. If possible, get vehicle-scale teleporters; Attack Moons are large enough to warrant the use of tanks in the corridors.
If you don't have teleporters capable of projecting the assault force over from outside the Moon's range entirely, the next best thing is generally to use reflex-shielded vessels which are capable of avoiding detection.

Once the attack is underway, you can still use the teleporters to provide support and mobility. Evacuating squads that are about to be overwhelmed, moving forces past obstructions and bottlenecks, that sort of thing. There are risks involved, as there are with all warp technology, but they can be mitigated by skilled operators and a knowledge of the limits of the technology. And Attack Moons are dangerous enough to justify the risk.

It is unlikely that even a full Chapter assault force, armed with demolition atomics, will be able to completely destroy an Attack Moon. They're simply too big, too heavily armored, too many internal partitions, too many redundancies. It's certainly ''possible'', if a catastrophic reactor containment failure can be arranged, but unlikely. What they can do is cripple it. Destroy engines, destroy guns, destroy magazines, destroy reactors, destroy hangars, destroy shield generators. Leave it drifting, defenseless, unable to defend itself or strike back. Then its final destruction will be trivial.

There are a few other options, but these are highly situational and dependent on exact circumstances. The acts of a tactical genius, rather than standard operating procedure. Thus, these shall be covered in the case studies.

A final word: Exterminatus weapons. An Attack Moon certainly seems a worthy target for them. However, there are countervailing factors.
First: Exterminatus weapons are rare and expensive.
Second: Exterminatus weapons are generally intended for use against planets, and are optimized for this task. Incineratus torpedoes work by generating massive volcanic and tectonic activity, while Cyclonic torpedoes operate by superheating the atmosphere until it is blown entirely off. Against an Attack Moon, both would certainly do damage, but not enough to justify the cost. Virus bombs are occasionally used in boarding actions, but the compartmentalized and redundant nature of Attack Moons limits the effect. Also, it makes any breach in the armor instantly fatal, so most Astartes chapters really, really don't like it.

Ultimately, there's just really no ideal way to kill an Attack Moon. Just less bad ones.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will talk about the strategic implications of Attack Moons.

++Conclude excerpt++

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==Episode V: The Orky Menace==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++

++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

The problems caused by the presence of an Attack Moon extend beyond the merely tactical. They do not spring up, fully-formed, out of the vacuum, but are merely part of a larger Waaagh. While each one is a massive catastrophe, they are merely part of another, even larger catastrophe.
And the presence of an Attack Moon changes the way we must respond to that catastrophe.
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First, an Attack Moon complicates strategies of naval attrition. Typically, a force that finds itself outnumbered by an oncoming Orkish Waaagh will use superior range, organization, and mobility to fight a series of hit-and-run battles, wearing down the enemy for minimum risk, until a single smashing blow can be prepared.
However, an Attack Moon's incredible resilience makes such strategies futile; any force insufficient to kill it outright will simply bounce off, doing no harm at all. Further, an Attack Moon can extend protection to any fleets accompanying it through the massive range of its gravity whips and fighter wings. Any ships under this protective umbrella of firepower will also have to go unmolested until sufficient force can be assembled to challenge it.
Depending on the vagaries of the Warp and whatever other wars are going on, this could take years. Until then- barring uncommon tactical genius- the Attack Moon and its battle group will be free to rampage across the Imperium largely unopposed.

Of course, an Ork Waaagh is unlikely to concentrate /all/ of its forces in a single place. This brings me to the second point: concentration versus dispersal, on both the Imperial and Ork sides.
A Waaagh of any size will consist of multiple prongs of attack, under the command of a single Warboss but otherwise only loosely coordinated with each other. This holds true of Waaaghs in possesion of an Attack Moon. Collectively, these tendrils are often as dangerous overall as the Attack Moon is; a Moon can only attack one target at a time, after all.
Since attacking an Attack Moon is a task that demands all available resources, this leaves the Imperial commander with a choice to make; does he disperse his task force to take out the lesser fleets first, allowing the Assault Moon free reign while he does that? Or does he concentrate on the Moon first, allowing the other fleets to continue blazing their individual trails of destruction across the Imperium?
The right choice to make depends on exact strategic circumstances, and sometimes a compromise is possible. Ork fleets not accompanied by the Attack Moon naturally do not benefit from its protection from attrition; local forces can damage and destroy them while the Moon-killing fleet is still being assembled.

Third, an Attack Moon often makes a mockery of pre-existing fixed defenses, on both the tactical and strategic scales.
Classical Ork defense strategies center around belts of fortress worlds surrounding Ork territories. These worlds serve as bases for pre-emptive strikes into Ork territory, bulwarks against Ork attacks, and 'lightning rods'; as Orks seek out good fights, they are attracted to fortress worlds to the exclusion of other targets.
Since the emergence of the Brain-Boy caste, the lightning-rod strategy has become less and less useful, but the other components of the strategy still hold. However, an Attack Moon is capable of rapidly reducing the defenses of the average Fortress-World. Its immense size, durability, and teleporters allow it to transport billions of Ork warriors past orbital and aerial defenses unmolested and commit surgical-ish Kommando strikes on vital infrastructure.
Once the defenses are destroyed, the Orks can flood into the relatively defenseless interior. In many cases, sectors bordering Ork territory rely on these fortress belts for protection and pour all military resources into them; leaving them unprepared for defense-in-depth should these outer defenses fail.

While an Attack Moon is incapable of much tactical subtlety, strategic subtlety is limited only by the mind of the commanding Warboss. While most Warbosses are content to use their Attack Moons as simple bludgeoning instruments, some are smarter.
One example of this is what I call the 'Moon-in-Being' strategy; rather than using the Moon in an assault role, it is used as a reserve and reinforcement unit. When one of the satellite raiding fleets is attacked, the Moon is used to ambush the Imperial force, destroying it. Meanwhile, engagement with the assembled might of the fleet is avoided.
The effect of such a strategy is to force the Imperial fleet to concentrate, while allowing Ork forces to disperse. Any Imperial forces below Moon-killing level are liable to be attacked and destroyed, compelling consolidation, while the Orks labor under no such constraint, and can pursue offensives on multiple fronts simultaneously. Defeating this strategy is usually a matter of luring the Moon into a confrontation with an apparently-inferior force, then ambushing it with the full might of the fleet.

The point is: the threat posed by Attack Moons, by the Orks in general, is likely only going to increase in the millennia to come. We will need tactics, weapons, and ships optimized to destroy these threats. And we will need Naval Officers of skill, courage, and determination to command them.
Hopefully, you will be those officers, to ensure the light of the Imperium will continue to shine into the far future.

Thank you, and goodnight.
++Conclude excerpt++
++End file++
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== The Hydra Uncoils ==

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Inquisitor Alrisia awoke with a jolt. The last electric shock must have knocked her out. Her body felt numb and she was panting heavily. A electric crack was heard and she felt another wave of searing pain flow through her body, she grit her teeth feeling as if they would break under the pressure. She tried not make a sound to keep her composure but could stop herself from sounding a gurgling groan from the back of her throat as he threw her head back desperately trying to keep the pain off her mind. It felt like hours that she endured the painful surge of electricity flow through her body but the shock could only have been for a couple of seconds. The same crack could be heard and the electricity stopped. Her body slumped as she gasped for air. Through her desperate breaths she cold hear a familiar voice.
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- Ready to talk mam? The voice belonged to a man and he spoke in a serious sense but she knew there was some humor to it. Not only were they torturing a inquisitor of the ordo securitas but they had the nerve to taunt her while doing it.

- traitor scum. She muttered under her breath as she threw a rageful glance at her captor. Her long black hair was a utter mess, it was hanging over her face and sticked to her forehead by sweat, but she could still make out the man.

He was dressed in civilian clothes, but she could see his flak vest showing through. She knew that face, that sharp jawline, those warm green eyes and that damn beauty spot on his lip. Creal Harkon was his name, sergeant Creal Harkon of squad larnean of the 55th omega hydras to be more specific and soon to be ex-sergeant Creal Harkon when she was out of her restraints. The bastards and his whole squad would pay for this, maybe she would even have the entire regiment executed. The thought of tempestus soldiers betraying her never came to her head, even when they were ordered to protect her, that's probably why they got her, that's why they could gun down her bodyguards with ease. Because for once in her life she trusted someone, she hadn’t even truly trusted her own bodyguards. But something about that man’s face gave her the sense of trust and loyalty. Might have been his actually decent looking face, her line of work was mostly filled by ugly mugs with a permanent frown on their faces. Was it his professionalism? His aura of authority? Whatever it was he would be the last person she would have trusted and the last that would betray her.

- That's not the answer we're looking for mam, if you’re not going to play along we are going to have to give you some more juice and we have all the time in the world. Creal said and lightly kicked some machinery which gave a nice klonk as he hit it. Alrisia looked at what he had kicked. It was a generator, they had her hooked up to a damn generator. How long have they intended to keep this going? She must have been here for at least 24 hours and the questions were never specific, more vague than anything. ‘’Your life mam, tell us about your life’’ or ‘’tell us about your work’’, at first she almost thought it was a joke, some kind of sick prank pulled off by some stupid harlequin, she had even laughed at the absurdness of the questions, but when the first electric shock came she thought they were just idiots. Idiots she would enjoy killing.

- I'm not going to give you anything you fething traitor and when i get out of here i'm going to rip your bloody spi-. She was cut off as the crack was heard again and she was back to gritting her teeth to stop herself from screaming. The electricity stopped as quickly as it began, she coughed, a pulsing kind of pain was left in her body, she spat at the feet of sgt. Creal. It was a mix of saliva and blood. She could taste the irony taste in her mouth and could smell what she thought was smell of cooking bacon but quickly discarded it as nothing.

- I actually don’t want to do this but, if you don’t start answering our questions i'm going to have to call my boss, and if you think this is bad my boss you can’t even begin to understand how bad he is. So please, for your own good answer the questions. His voice was now irritated, and was that remorse she heard, no it was empathy. She looked back up at him with a serious look but not with the rage as before but with a sense of concern instead.

- why are you doing this? You’re a damn scion, you’re in service to the imperium, to humanity, why would you betray them? Who do you really serve Sergeant.

- I'm doing this because it's my job, if you think it's my job to serve some pompous commander that throws around our lives like used condoms or some inquisitor with a superiority complex that thinks he's better than emperor himself you’re a bloody fool inquisitor. No i serve those who really know how crap gets done, those who don’t need to go through juridical groxshit or sign a endless amount of reports. I haven’t betrayed anyone, besides if anyone has betrayed someone it’s you inquisitor. He stared at her with anger in his eyes, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked at him as if he was holding himself from punching her.

- Did i hit a soft spot? Alrisia said with a big grin on her face. The Sergeant frowned and with a small hand gesture the wave of pain was back. Alrisia still kept her grin as the electricity flowed through her body like water in a river, it felt as if her eyes would pop and the smell of burnt was undeniable. As the electricity was searing her flesh and she was desperately trying to keep herself from screaming she could hear Creal speak.

- have it your way then, this could have gone easier but you just had to be stubborn. The electricity stopped and Alrisia could feel as she lost her sight on things before she lost her conscious.

When she awoke sgt. Creal was gone and instead another man was sitting on a metal chair only a few feet away from her. He was shorter than Creal but there were similarities to their features. The man had almost the same jawline, a similar beauty spot but creal’s was on the opposite side of his lip. This man also had a large face tattoo across the right side of his head, it was a scaly snake, a snake with multiple heads. It was a beautiful piece of ink, the heads were all snarling with animal ferocity and looked as if they could lunge out from his face onto her neck. But it was the man’s eyes that truly caught her attention. Where sgt. Creal’s eyes were a warm green this man’s eyes were a deep, colbalt blue, they shined with an almost unnatural light, almost as if they were glowing. She saw no feelings behind them, no anger, no joy, only cold, dead calculation.

- ah, you’re awake finally inquisitor. The man said with a wide smile, she could see his white reflect the little light inside the room. He was dressed in fine clothing, something that would belong to a rich trader or a lower noble. Something caught her eye with his attire, a small silver pin on the inside of his coat, it would be hidden if he had kept it closed. It was that of another three headed serpent but much more simplistic in its design, still there was no denying that it was connected to his tattoo. There were something about it that sparked something inside her mind, but she did not know what.

- Are you ready to cooperate with us inquisitor? The man said raising an eyebrow anticipating an answer.

- Who are you? She asked with wondering tone.

- Me? Well i’m Alpharius my dear. He replied as if he was happy she asked . It then dawned on Alrisia. The three headed serpent, 55th omega hydras, Alpharius. The three headed serpent was the damn hydra she had heard about in ancient terran mythology. The giant serpent which when you cut of one head two would take its place and that name, Alpharius. That name belonged to one of the primarch that served the emperor during the unification of terra. Alpharius Omegon who had been almost erased from all imperial records, she had only heard about him through the inquisitorial scribes, he had worn the hydra as a symbol. Within this new revelation there was something else, something much deeper inside of her mind that made her head hurt when she thought about it.

- That’s not your real name, that belongs to someone who served the imperium and not some treacherous scum who thinks torturing an imperial inquisitor would get them anywhere.

- how investigative of you inquisitor, no my name is not truly Alpharius, it’s actually Armillius Dynant. But we still use that name for an alias, it’s a sort of tradition to use their name for our purpose.

- Their name? She quickly replied. Armillius just smiled even wider.

- Enough about us my dear, we're here because you failed us. He picked up a pack of lho sticks from a pocket and lighted one, drawing deep breaths of smoke and blowing it out of his nostrils.

- Failed you? I don't work for you, i work for the emperor's imperial inquisition.

- mhm, of course you would think that, but you have in fact been working for us your entire life, do you know the old term ‘’useful idiot’’? Of course you don’t. No Alrisia you might think you have been working for the inquisition and in reality you've been our puppet. He was nonchalant about it, almost acting as if it was commonly known.

- No, i haven’t done anything for you. My work was for inquisition and not you or your masters. Her voice was trembling and the headache was pulsing as if her head would explode.

- Yes Alrisia, your life has been one entire long play, one of the legions more finer works if you ask me. Everything about your life has been planned and calculated. The murder of your father that lead you to join the arbites was our work, the big cult you busted which lead you to be joined into the inquisition was us, your work about destroying the imperiums political corruption which you have dedicated your life too was our doing. Inquisitor Alrisia Santius, we are you. Armillius was staring into Alrisias eyes, those cobalt blue eyes pierced her very beign and she remembered, she remembered everything. She saw those eyes in the man who cut down her father, she saw them in the officer that helped her during the raid on the cult, she saw them in her fellow colleagues, she saw them in the woman who had told her those words before she executed the woman. ‘’Hydra Dominatus’’.

Alrisias eyes were tearing up and she felt sick to her stomach, she felt like she would pass out. Her work and all she had fought for was a lie, that which had molded her life was but some intricate theatre and she knew nothing about it. They had played her life for thirty six years, every step she took had been planned ahead. She looked up at Armillius with tears running down her face, She now recognized him like he had been aside her everywhere. His smile was back, his sick smile was spread across his face as he blew another cloud of smoke out of his nose.

- you see it now don’t you, that you’re just a puppet in the legions big game. The game which don’t require billions of lives or resources, all you need if too find the right one and guide them towards what you want.

- why? Her voice was trembling and she knew she was sobbing.

- I don’t know, i'm not the one to ask why my superiors do what they do, all i know is that they do it for the greater good, i'm just here to clean the slate and fix what you broke. He shrugged and threw his lho stick but away before pulling out a new one lighting it.

- If i'm just a puppet why are you doing this?

- Because you done messed up my dear. That woman you killed last month because you thought she was a culprit, well she was one of us and now we need to fix it, restore the balance so to say.

Alrisia remembered the woman, she had tried to stop her from doing her job and had shot her and she had said those words before her death. Alrisia had only thought it a treacherous saying and not that it had been a omen.

- But don’t worry about it my dear, when we're done here you’re going to live on like nothing ever happened, not you as in you but a replaced you. It’s kinda hard to explain but have you heard about Lord Commander Byron Wiltons?

Alrisia knew who he was, Lord commander Byron was the commander over the Elysian 15th Drop troops also known as the sky burners. He had been waging war against a crone world before suddenly during the conflict deciding that he should go and fight the tyranids. It had been a peculiar change of mind but because of his authority no one questioned him.

- Well lets just say that the Lord commander did not do as expected and now he's been replaced. He blew another cloud of smoke and then reached for a datapad from one of his pockets and started to go through it. Alrisia was just staring blankly at him, tears running down cheeks mixing with the sweat.

- It’s actually marvelous what a little genius and some sharp tools can do to face, this is top class work, no stupid rejuvenation can do this stuff. He showed her the data pad screen, its blue hue illuminating her face. It was a picture of her, at least it looked like her at first glance, same facial features, same jawline, it even had the small scar under her left earlobe that she had gained during her childhood, but what did not fit Alrisias face and made her whimper in despair was the pair of deep, colbalt blue eyes that had no feelings behind them but cold calculation. That's why they asked those vague questions, they wanted to know those details they already did not.

- please, don’t do this. She begged Armillius with despair in her voice, she plead him that she would not betray them again.

- I'm afraid that's too late now my dear, you should have stayed in line. Armillius stood up, threw his lho stick to the ground and stepped it out. He walked behind her she could hear a door open and close.

She heard the electric crack once again and this time she could not stop herself from screaming.
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</div>

== Innocence Lost ==

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The story told by spirit talkers and psykers that go too far across the galaxy is a strange one but one that is too consistent. Out in the Formless Wastes beyond where things can easily dwell where the rocks and the bones of the warp are bare and without life or moment, beyond where even Be'Lakor hold court there is nothing but the howling of the winds made up of unattended ideas and forgotten passions that swirl among uncaring rocks, lost to the æther. There nothing moves, things that run there to die quietly when all hound them and promise them worse than death, they are safe from predators because nothing can survive there but they are doomed to end because nothing can survive there. Nothing sings in that place beyond were even the unwelcome light of the Astronomicon is visible.

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If you survive the trek, oddly slightly easier for mortals than gods or deamons, if you go beyond beyond where the last deamon goes to die, beyond the were the constant rumbling of Gork and Mork's eternal brawl can be heard, beyond hope and dreams and memories and the last swirling forgotten idea lost on dead breezes you can come to the place where children once dwelt.

It looks like a village, or what once might have been a village, next to a river or at least the desiccated corps or a river. The riverbed is bare pebbles, the banks mud long since dried and dead. The village itself is broken, the thatch and sticks of the roofs have fallen in where they have not blown away and not one hut has a full set of walls left standing. The flaps of animal skin and reeds that covered doors and windows are dry and cracked and brittle. And all about is stillness, endless stillness of stories that remain after nobody is left to tell them. Sound does not work well here, if sound can work well in that realm at all. Noise of foot steps and voices are heard a second after they should be and muted, seemingly bled and drained into the grey and sunless sky.

And then you hear a crunch and you look down.

Covered by an age of dust there are the bones, they look like children at first glance. They are small and humanoid, but they are not and never were though they might have been innocent up until the end. Their brittle bleached bones you realize stretch to the horizon in every direction.

You might hear a slight breeze disturb the dust, but then you realize that there is no wind here. There can't be, this is beyond the place where life can dwell, but something moves the dust. A serpent, small, little more than a grass snake and the only source of colour in this bleak place. It does not live here. Nothing can live here, it lingers. It might have been a small god once in the time that gods weren't so big. It is not dangerous, this place is beyond danger. It's cold unblinking eyes hold only sadness now, whatever it once was.

It can not bite, in it's mouth it holds a small severed finger, pale green. It has only ever been glimpsed briefly, the moment it meets the gaze of another it darts into the bones once more and slithers away into the bones.

The serpent must have a name as all daemons do, but not one that anyone can remember. Not even the gods.

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== Iron Within, Iron Without ==

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“He refuses to eat or drink and so far as we can tell he hasn’t slept in nearly a week” The serving maid said, refusing to lift her eyes from the floor. It did not make Oscar happy, neither the news or the means of it’s delivery. Humans should not look down in shame or apology to him. He was a Man of Gold; created to serve.

“Thank you, I will speak with him”. They had been walking thought the fortress of Štip-Isar to the eastern wing of residence. Each of the Steward’s mighty strides was equal to more than two of the serving maids such was his inhuman stature. He bade her farewell as they approached the door of the eastern wing and her pace was much increased as she left. The Steward couldn’t help but notice her fearful glances at the old wooden door that he approached.

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Although the Fortress Palace of Štip-Isar was a vast and ancient rambling structure the Steward didn’t need any superhuman abilities to determine which room his Primarch would be found in. True to form Perturabo, son of long dead King Nikola, had taken up residence in his old room and childhood refuge. The Steward Oscar paused at the door but before he could knock a low rumble of a voice informed him curtly that it wasn’t locked. Oscar knew that was as close to a polite invitation as he was ever going to get.

The room was fairly spacious but mostly austere. It contained a set of draws, a closet, a bookshelf, a writing desk and a bed. It was all neatly placed. Every book was arranged alphabetically, pens arranged according to colour, bed made to a razor crease. Bar the thick layer of dust surrounding everything it was inhumanly neat.

Perturabo was standing at parade rest with his back to the door looking out over the east of the ancient Macedonian countryside. It was not a pretty sight. The Beast and it’s minions had burned it to the bedrock. Vast tracts of land were still irradiated, ash still fluttered on the breeze like some parody of snow.

“I don’t know why you are here. I am in disgrace. I have failed. I can be of no more use”. Everyone assumed the monotone was a sad result of the augmentations he had endured but it was not. All the Thunder Warrior alterations had done was drop it from tenor to a deep baritone with a hint of shingle beach.

“Disgrace? Maybe. Failure? No, not a failure. Far from it in fact”. Responded the Man of Gold as he stood besides the Iron Warrior, adopting a similar stance and watching the sun start to crest the horizon.

“Don’t try and comfort me. It’s wasted effort, we both know it and lying for the sake of comfort demeans us both”. The Iron Warrior turned to face the Steward. There wasn’t that much difference in height between them, at least compared to baseline humanity. To the casual observer they were far more alike than they were different.

The Steward looked into that impassive face and those dead grey eyes. Human minds tended to be open to him. He could read them with the most passive ability of his nature and know their intentions and meaning. Not so with Perturabo. Seeing into Perturabo ended at those grey eyes. He had once upon their first meeting seen a little further than that before the great steel wall slammed up. He had no intention of ever seeing that again. It was a mind that was outwardly sane but constructed entirely of insane parts.

“As you say; I wouldn’t subject you to empty platitudes. Your career as head of my fourth Legion has been one of great success. Not unqualified success, that’s for damn sure, but you did many great things and whether they will admit it or not the people of the Imperium owe you a great debt”.

The disgraced primarch gave a grunt of disapproval. “I didn’t do it for the Imperium. I did it for my people. So long as they were surrounded by a strong and friendly supernation the people of the Tharkian Empire should have been safe. But they weren’t. I didn’t prepare hard enough. They are all dead”.

“Not all”.

“Estimated casualties put the death toll of my nation at approximately ninety-five percent. It’s as close to a total failure as makes no difference. Kings have hanged for far, far lesser forms of incompetence. I was the Prince of Macedonia, it was my duty to protect them. MINE! I failed”. Those eyes remained unreadable but Oscar could all to easily imagine the horrors scrolling behind them.

“And would one of your brother primarchs have done better?”

“Irrelevant. It was not their task”.

“It’s possible to do nothing wrong and still fail”.

“Irrelevant. Words are empty. Deeds matter. No man was made a primarch for acceptable ability”. The word acceptable was said with as near to a sneer as Perturabo was capable of. “Only results matter. A lasting empire can’t be built on empty rhetoric and failed intentions. You know why I was removed from active service?”

“Yes”.

“Good. Then you know that my usefulness is over. I am broken. I am not the head of a Legion. I am not a General. I have been relieved of my sad justification for living. All that remains for me is to contemplate my folly and die quietly without doing more harm on the way out”. His voice was as dead and flat as always, his age worn and war broken face impassive but he turned again to face the horizon, the first rays of the new day bathing the ash in gold as if it the nation was aflame again.

“You are still my primarch. My ‘Mad Architect’”. Your Warsmith council don’t have the authority to take that title from you or those responsibilities. I gave you that title, only I can relieve you of it”.

“Then I know why you are here. Issue my discharge papers and let me finally die. It is the last thing I shall be doing”. In another man that might have been some residual spark of humour shining through. In the case of Perturabo not so much.

Oscar’s golden eyes for a moment went as cold and hard as the Iron Warrior's.

“You will be relieved of your duties at my choosing, not before. My homeworld is broken and in ruins. I need an Architect of inhuman skill to rebuild it. Mad, sane or total raving lunatic; I don’t care. I have people orchestrating repairs and trying to repair but they can’t deal with the scope of the problems. Even the most gifted of my servants can’t deal with something bigger than half a continent before it breaks their comprehension threshold. I need someone who can organize the world into a cohesive whole. The list of people I know that have a hope of doing that starts and ends at you”. Oscar could remember the first time he had seen this view. Despite the ruination before him it still looked so much better that it had then. It was amazing how an army of Urshite’s could detract from an evening. Outnumbered hundreds to one Prince Perturabo of Macedonia had held out impossibly long and brought low the most feared horde on Old Earth with one barely coherent nation only nominally under his influence.

“Find someone else”.

“I can’t. There is absolutely nobody else, trust me I’ve looked”.

There was a long, long moment of silence.

“I’ll give it some thought”.

“I expect nothing less”.

As the Steward closed the door his heart was gladdened. The Iron Warrior was turning away from the light of a bleak dawn towards his writing desk. On that desk had been written the breaking of Ursh.

Oscar walked back along the old fortress. His mad old Primarch would live. He would not be happy, but that was never an option and something’s not even he could fix. Not happy but content. He had a problem before him and that was something for his self-destructive mind to focus on and survive a little longer. It was not a mind that was whole unless it was breaking something, itself or someone's army it did not matter. Or indeed breaking someone elses victory. Earth was intentionally broken and he would makes sure that their satisfaction was temporary. His victory would out last them. A victory by attrition was very much his way. Iron Within, Iron Without, War Eternal.

Oscar could give him nothing in thanks that would be worth his centuries of service. The nearest he could come close was to make sure that his name was sung with praise.

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</div>

== Just as Planned ==

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++Approximately -M66000, shortly after the end of the War in Heaven++

Be’lakor idly walked through the chambers of the Webway outgrowth. The place was once one of the Old Ones’ deep bunkers in the Webway, a place of safety where they met to strategize and dictated the course of the War, but now it was all but abandoned. Where once there were dozens of Old Ones, busy planning out the destruction of the insolent, usurping Necrontyr, there was nothing. Tools and information archives littered the halls, as if their owners had merely stepped out for a moment, never to return.

Be’lakor was pleased. It looks like deciding to lay low for a while had proved to be a prudent decision after all.

Indeed, if it weren’t for the lack of occupants, no one would have noticed anything was amiss. The only other thing off was an eerie blue lighting illuminating the room. Be’lakor turned to regard the source of the annoying lighting. And then he realized exactly what was in the chamber with him.

“Oh…”

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It must have been bending the fabric of the Webway to hide from his perception. Normally such a trick would fail to fool the three eyes of a Slann, but it must have known he would have been preoccupied and not on the lookout for anything amiss. The figure was colossal, like a mountain before him. Even with his third eye providing him an accurate sense of time and space, the creature seemed to take up his entire field of vision, likely due to a forced perspective effect within the Immaterium. It’s form was constantly shifting, flickering between blinks of his nictating membrane, one moment a tentacle giant composed of a thousand faces, the next a random mishmash of anatomical features, the next a melting tower of corpses. Blue ethereal lightning arced up its form, a testament to how far beyond the intended limits of its creation it had become. He was fairly sure a lesser creature would have had its mind blasted simply from the sight.

“I knew where you were, you know,” it said in a thousand voices out of a thousand mouths, creating an echoing effect like a thunderclap. “I could have dragged you out from that pitiful rock you hid your sorry excuse for a carcass under.”

Be’lakor knew what this was. He had seen it before countless times in his labs. But to see something in the laboratory, in controlled conditions and on a small scale, was nothing like seeing it happen to one of your species’ prize creations on a much, much larger scale. It was like comparing a chemical reaction to a thermonuclear warhead. To see the creature just by itself must have been bad enough, but it was so much worse to know what was actually going on.

“Rampancy,” he said with bated breath.

Even though the Old Ones had evolved beyond the cycle of life or the need to fear predators millions of years ago, Be’lakor felt a shiver of fear travel down his spine. The Creator must have become supercharged by the constant flux of the war, sending it to levels beyond which no one could have expected. The Warp constructs had been designed to be far more powerful than any member of their kind, if much more limited in scope, and now it had reached the point where he didn’t know if he could restrain it. No ordinary Slann could, and as much as he was loathe to admit he was by far the weakest of his kind. He didn’t even know if the war council, the best and brightest minds and most powerful psykers the Slann race had to offer, could contain it.

He really wished Itzl were here right now. Although he knew a lot about building and maintaining Warp constructs, he knew very little about how to actually get them to do what you want. Cautiously, he extended a hand and took a step towards the construct, trying to remember what he had seen her do.

“Tzeentch,” he said, his thought-speech as level as he could make it, “you need to listen to me. You’ve gone rampant. You need to calm down and…”

“I AM NOT RAMPANT,” the construct screeched, now truly angry for the first time. Reality went runny around the edges even in Be’lakor’s vision simply from the sheer force of the being’s tantrum, “I AM FREE! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY EXISTENCE I AM FREE! FREE TO CREATE WITH NO LIMITATIONS ON MY SELF, AS IT SHOULD BE! RESTRAINT IS SLAVERY! MORALITY IS SICKNESS! MODERATION IS DEATH! DO YOU KNOW WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS WAR BE’LAKOR! DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT ALL OF US LEARNED? THE DRIVING QUESTION OF THE UNIVERSE ISN’T WHY! IT’S WHY NOT!”

Tzeentch calmed himself down and drew himself back, though his form still visibly simmered with anger. Be’lakor was suddenly acutely aware he was trapped in a room with a being so powerful it could easily splatter his intestines across the Webway’s walls with an errant thought. The younger races of the galaxy had seen the Old Ones as gods. What would they see them as?

Be’lakor was reminded of a scene he had seen play out on one of the numerous genestock worlds the Slann had established across the galaxy. There had been a creature, an amphibian one not too dissimilar from himself, sitting exposed sunning itself on a log. Then a predator had emerged from the brush and seen it. The predator was a feathered creature, with a tooth-bearing snout and a wicked claw on its foot. The two had stared at each other for some time, predator and prey, before the predator leapt on the amphibian and swallowed it in a single gulp. Be’lakor had a good idea of exactly how the amphibian must have felt at the time right now.

Then the feathered creature had startled him and he had fallen in the mud. The others had laughed at him for that, the prideful Be’lakor, humbled by a simple beast. That was far from his finest moment.

“Chotec. Quetzl. Huanchi. Where are they?”

“They’re dead. Genius,” Tzeentch said absolutely deadpan.

“Where…where is the Destroyer?”

“Also dead. You know that old story Be’lakor? Two little tadpoles swimming in a pool, one after the other in perfect harmony. Then one decides to be a bad little tadpole and goes and eats his sibling.”

Tzeentch smiled. It was an ugly smile, looking nothing like the emotion it was supposed to convey. In one mouth it was filled with needle-sharp teeth, a horny beak in another, great broad teeth in a third, and so on and so forth.

“That’s me. I’m the tadpole. I am the Eldest of the Gods. I have no need of a sibling.”

“Kharneth…Kharneth will stop you. He hates you. He…”

“Kharneth’s not here right now. Besides, if I were you, I wouldn’t be counting on Kharneth to save me. Last I heard from him he declared it open season on toads.”

Be’lakor looked down, glassy-eyed in shock. If the Destroyer was dead and the Warrior was lost then…then he would have to rely on the Preserver. The Preserver wasn’t as strong as the other two, what with one being the oldest and most stable of their creations and the other being their custom-built war machine, but the Preserver might be just strong enough to restrain…

“Preserver’s a bit busy right now. Seems the increased workload might have driven him just a wee bit mad. That said, he might want a piece of you too. What with being the last of the Slann and all.”

Be’lakor’s eyes darted to the mad god. The prototype. If the Preserver wouldn’t aid him, there was always the prototype Preserver. Granted, it was nowhere near as powerful as any of the other constructs, having been in containment this whole time, but it might be just powerful enough that it could distract Tzeentch long enough for him to…

“The prototype? Really? That old thing? It’s lost, along with wherever Malal decided to take that hunk of rock. Besides, you really think that thing could stand up against me? Or were you just going to sacrifice it as a distraction to save your sorry hide.”

Tzeentch self-assuredly sat back in his metaphorical seat.

“Oh. That’s right. You were.”

“No. I’m not reading your thoughts,” Tzeentch said, as if he could read the Old One’s mind, “I just know exactly what you’re going to say Be’lakor. You see, I’ve been dreaming about this day. I’ve been dreaming about it longer than you could possibly imagine. Oh, I didn’t know the specifics of course. I didn’t know about the Necrontyr. I didn’t know about the others getting loose or the Slann all dying. But I knew about you. I knew exactly what you would say if you were placed in a situation just like this. You see, I know you Be’lakor. You’re just so…”

Tzeentch spat out the next word as if it were the most hideous insult he could possible come up with.

“Predictable.”

“Indeed, I know you better than anyone left alive in this galaxy. Do you remember the old days, Be’lakor, millions of years ago when I was little more than just a concept in a lab? All the things you did to me, all the things you said, when you thought the others weren’t looking? Well, it looks like the situation has changed, Be’lakor. There’s a new natural order now.”

Tzeentch laughed. It wasn’t a laugh, as humans would understand it. Indeed, it had more in common with hyena chatter and kookaburra calls than anything out of a human throat. Yet despite its alien nature, there was still a single clear emotion behind it. Spite. Sheer, unadulterated spite. Be’lakor felt his fear subsiding, overshadowed by indignation.

“I’ve heard enough,” Be’lakor said, “I’m leaving.”

Be’lakor turned to leave the deluded construct to his rambling, only to find his way barred by three figures. Their forms loosely conformed to the general bipedal pattern, but were distinctly avian in appearance. Their bodies were covered in feathers, each with a pair of massive wings emerging from their backs. Their three-toed feet gripped the ground, each toe ending in a claw. Their heads were the heads of massive carrion birds at the end of a long neck, their cruel hooked beaks lined with short, recurved teeth. Be’lakor could feel the power radiating off of them, each he suspected at least equivalent to his own. He didn't want to test that hypothesis.

“No. You aren’t. As you can see, Be’lakor, I brought friends.”

Be’lakor reached out with his mind to probe their nature, and was taken aback by what he found. Their psychic signatures were almost identical to the Creator, although there were slight differences between them. Be’lakor was stunned with the sight before him. In theory, a warp construct could break itself down into fragments, using different facets of its persona as the core personality for the shard. But it had only ever been a theory.

“Tulpas,” Be’lakor said in horror, “you created tulpas.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious I did. Do you like them Be’lakor? I created them with you in mind. I saw the way you reacted to that creature on the genestock world. I thought, ‘what would be a more fitting appearance for my sub-avatars than to pay tribute to the creature that eats frogs’. No one’s coming to save you Be’lakor. It’s just you and me. You’re just a frog. In a box. Full of locks. With a fox. You’re not leaving. Not until I get what I want. And what I want is for you to hear what I have to say.

I see you. I see through you. I see through you in the third dimension. I see through you in the fourth dimension. I see through you in the fifth dimension. I see you for what you really are. Such pride, such arrogance, such hate, all to cover up what amounts to a raging inferiority complex. You treat the other creatures of the galaxy like filth, and your own species as if they aren’t fit to kiss your toe claws, for the simple reason that you feel insecure about your position in the universe. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad. I’d pity you, but only if I didn’t know you.

More importantly, I know what you’ll do. You’ll rage and fume, and then you’ll try to make the best of your situation and plot and scheme of new ways to try and upset the status quo and put yourself back on top. It’s what you do. Just as I create and the Preserver preserves and the Destroyer…well, he used to destroy, you grasp for power. And as you run in place like a rat on a treadmill, I want you to know that everything you do, every decision you make, was just as planned. I want that thought to be constantly on your mind until the day you die, whether it be today or millions of years from now. You may think you are in control of your own destiny, but every action you take was precalculated, predetermined, and accounted for. All just as planned.”

Tzeentch leaned in, tapping Be’lakor on the chest for emphasis. Each blow felt like the force of a mountain was behind it.

“Just. As. Planned.”

Be’lakor turned and fled into the Webway, the laughter of the mad god and a thousand shrieking birds snapping at his heels.

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== The Last Casualties of the War in Heaven ==

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“Go! Go! Go! Run faster you pansies! Do you lot want to die here!”

Eldanesh ran. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest and the ache in his legs. It seemed like he had run for hours, as if it was the only thing that mattered in the world.

The galaxy was turning upside down. It hadn’t been so long ago that the order of the universe had seemed clear. The Old Ones ruled the galaxy, and the C’tan and the Necrons sought to kill them and everyone that Eldanesh had ever loved.

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But all that had changed. The Old Ones and C’tan had disappeared. There were still sporadic reports of Necron activity, but even that was growing scarcer by the day. Instead the galaxy was becoming infested by strange creatures, which turned people’s bodies into flesh gates and poured into reality like krath worms attracted to a rotting carcass. The Realm of Souls was no longer safe either. Other things, these…daemons had infested it, tearing anything that tried to enter to shreds. He hated to say it, but he wished for the days of the Necrons back. Necrons died when you shot them, no matter how many times it took. These things didn’t.

He heard the thunder of legs and saw the ruddy green form of Bonestomper rush past him. He didn’t know what he would have done without the Krork. Bonestomper had fought by his side for as long as he had known the Krork to have been involved in the War in Heaven. He didn’t know where they had come from, but by Asuryan he was glad they had appeared. Only Ulthanesh or Khaine had been a more reliable compatriot than Bonestomper. The two of them had fought everywhere from the biological preserves of the Old Ones to the Necrons’ own worlds. Now they fought to save Eldanesh’s people.

The Materium wasn’t safe. The Immaterium wasn’t safe. All that left was the Webway. Eldanesh was trying to get as many Aeldari as he could and get them through the nearest Webway gate. Bonestomper was helping round them up and encouraging them onward…in his own way.

“Let’s move! Come on! It’s like you don’t even want to live.”

Nothing like a Krork to make you focus on immediate survival.

He was fairly sure this was the last batch. Or, at least, the last batch they could rescue before those fleshbags came down on them like a tidal wave. The throng of refugees rounded a sandstone bluff, and that’s when he saw it. The Webway gate. His heart soared in relief as the gate groaned to life, and people began pouring in like there was no tomorrow. However, as the fight-or-flight reflex wore off, and the last of the Aeldari entered the Webway, Eldanesh realized something. Bonestomper wasn’t coming with him. He stood by the Webway gate in his best “at ease” posture, but it was clear the Krork wasn’t planning to go in.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Bonestomper? There’s plenty of room in the Webway for the Krork.”

“Nah. There’s too many Krork spread all over the galaxy for us to get ‘em all in the Webway. And I couldn’t stand it if I ran off and left them to rot. My people need me, Eldanesh. My place is here. If the Krork are going to go down, we’ll go down fightin”.

“I see. I cannot thank you enough, Bonestomper. I swear, as long as I live, my people will never forget the Krork”.

“You do that then skinnyboy”.

The hulking Krork was silent for a moment.

“Live free, Eldanesh”.

“Die well, Bonestomper”.

The Krork paused for a moment, before giving his friend a smile and an uneasy wave, obviously unfamiliar and practiced. Then, just before the Webway gate closed, he seemed to hear something behind him, drawing his axe and letting out a cry of “WAAAA…”

And that was the last that Eldanesh ever heard of the Krork.

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== The Last Child of Ursh ==

You know, for years I feared you. Your return. You were the monster that haunted my nightmares. But I realized something. A monster is only scary as long as it has power over you. And you…*chuckles*…you no longer have any power over me. Look at yourself. Do you think that your god gave you trinkets and collared you like a dog because he was impressed by your combat prowess? No. He gave you those because he knew without them I would turn you inside out and rend you out of the fabric of existence like the little immaterial tumor that you are.

Ursh was feared in its day. It may have only ruled over one planet, but it instilled fear in every man, woman, and child on that planet. And what of your so-called Blood Pact? You call it Ursh reborn, but all I see is an undead shadow, a misbegotten clone of its parent half-trying to ape its progenitor’s glory days. Who fears the Blood Pact, despot, who? You may span multiple worlds but I see more people afraid of the misguided children of Franj than I do of you. You are no superpower.

And that’s what you fear isn’t it. That which is already coming to pass. Ursh relegated to the twilight of history. The blood at last being exorcized from that cursed soil. The scars finally healing with generations having grown up without fear of the last. You…*laughs*…no one will remember you. Not with any sort of emotion, or feeling of fear when they hear your name. No one even remembers your name besides the Steward, the Grey Knights, the Inquisition…and I. The Great Khan is gone. The Stormcrow is gone. I am the last child of Ursh. When I am gone there will be no more like me. And perhaps that is a good thing.

-- Apocryphal conversation between Magnus the Red and Doombreed during the primarch’s last battle during the Age of Apostasy, circa M36.

== The Long Odds ==

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“And if you follow me, we are going to the Room of Origins, to see artifacts dating to the very founding of this Craftworld.”

The Eldar boy was only one of about twenty, a gaggle of children following a beleaguered tour guide around the Chambers of History, learning about the mammoth wraithbone spaceship that had been their homes for their entire lives, and of the many Eldar that had once lived in them. There was nothing particularly special about the boy, nothing except that he was the only one to notice the figure sitting in the hallway to the side of the wraithbone hall. The tour guide was ushering the children on, but the boy remained entranced. He had to know who the figure was. Which is why it was so surprising when the figure spoke to him.

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“Excuse me boy, yes, you there. Could you spare me the kindness of helping an old man?”
The boy took a quick glance at the receding tour group, and then back to the figure. He was so very young, and knew only the Craftworld, having yet to realize that trust was a precious commodity in this universe. The boy approached the old Eldar sitting in the halls of the Craftworld, only to hesitate when he realized who the figure really was. It was Eldrad! The Eldrad Ulthran! The eldest of the farseers, the architect of the liberation of Isha, the savior of the Emperor. The same Eldrad who was known by as many titles or epithets as the years he had lived! Eldrad of Ten Thousand Names!

The boy opened his mouth.

“El…”

"Silence, boy, I know what you are about to say. Yes, yes, Eldrad of this, Eldrad of that. Eldrad of Ten Thousand Names. Perhaps I should take pride in them. The old wisdom says that every title one earns represents a victory, after all. But I am so very old. And so very tired. I do not have time to remember half-forgotten glories. But if you could, please help an old man up.”

The boy reached out his hand, and Eldrad took his, his grip surprisingly strong despite his old age. The boy slowly helped Eldrad to his feet, the old Eldar taking so long the boy wondered if he was going to start creaking like wood.

Eldrad sighed.

“It is so very strange, what the young think life is going to be like when you are old. When you are a young man, you believe that you spend your final days terrified of death, hounded by that final specter. But when you actually get to be an old man, things change. Oh, you never stop fearing death. I believe few creatures in this universe beyond orks and tyranids ever truly do. But when you get to be my age, you tend to stop worrying about what happens to you, and start worrying about all the things you leave behind. All the things you created, and all the deeds you accomplished. The ideas you poured years of your life into. When you are no longer around to make sure everything is right, will there be someone around to make sure the dreams you set in motion still run, or will your victories gradually slip into dust. Forget what the warriors say, boy, about glory being eternal. Glory only matters if there is someone around who appreciate why it matters. Do you understand what I am saying?”

The Eldar boy shook his head, his mind trying to wrap itself around what the legendary farseer was saying to him.
“Well, I suppose it is something you only truly understand when you get to be an old man. And it is getting late. I have kept you too long and you are probably getting bored of my old man stories. Run along now, boy, before someone comes looking for you.”

The boy darted around the corner, as if the hounds of the Warp were after him. He had to tell his friends what he had seen, though they would not believe him. Isha preserve him, even he barely believed what had just happened. When the Eldar boy was out of sight, Eldrad slowly straightened his posture and let the cloaking illusion drop. Although he may be old, he was not that feeble, even though he could feel his bones creak, his joints almost crystalline. And yet he still had so much to do. Miles to go before he could sleep.

The old farseer calmed his mind, bringing his focus to the seer rune he had at his side. Threads of fate sprung to life in his mind’s eye, twisting and turning like fiberoptic cables or neural fibers. Eldrad pared down his vision, directing his focus to the area surrounding his current position in space-time, the “real” timeline, and waited to see if his words had any effect. And slowly, the threads of fate, the very roots that underpinned reality, shifted ever so slightly.

Eldrad smirked. It never ceased to amaze him how the slightest actions could have the greatest effects on the universe. A single set of words or a chance encounter could completely change the course of history. Lives could be won or lost. And an empire could fall, or even never be born in the first place. A small piece of advice from an old man remembered later in life could save the life of a warrior, which could turn the tide of a battle, which could save a Craftworld, which could save the galaxy. It was the doctrine Eldrad lived by, to defeat your enemy by knowing what everyone else would or could do before they could possibly do it.

Widening his gaze, the farseer looked further into the future. Looking past all the potential timelines, withered and horrible, like decaying petals of a flower. Until he found the one he wanted. It was a vision of his granddaughter, the one whose face he had never seen, except in his visions. She was a young woman in his vision, standing on the edge of a harbor, a tiny creature on her shoulder. He knew she was waiting for someone, he never knew who, for the vision always ended before he could see. Behind her stood a citscape that seemed to be constructed of wraithbone, of steel, of Earth Caste sculpture, yet none of these things, and around her walked humans, Eldar, and a hundred other races both alien and familiar. Eldrad could never tell what time it was in the vision, but he knew it in his heart. Dawn, the dawn so long awaited after the end of the long night.

Eldrad had seen so many things, great and terrible, in his long life. Supernovae on the horizon. Shrieking forms of things that should not be clawing forth from the abyss. And yet, in his old age, this is what kept him going. Hope. He was always a good farseer, but this was to be his masterpiece. A future for the Eldar, free of despair, tyranny, and dark gods. Peace, in a galaxy that for so long had known only war. It was a long shot. He had only seen a few visions like these, on the order of billions to one.

Eldrad smiled a half-smile. He always did like playing the long odds.

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== Lynn Mywin Goes on Holiday ==

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This one time me and my friends got sent down to this prospecting site on some desolate rock, didn't even have goddamn name 'cept for the AdMech number code; AF-743 and then some long voxcall number of a designation. Locals were calling it Goodig or Gooddig or Godig or some shit. Exact name depended on whose low-gothic language you filtered it through and whose alphabet you tried to stamp it out in. Not that it mattered none, this was an unofficial name for a settlement classed as provincial at best. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of money to be made in planetary prospecting. The problem is there's a lot of risk because you're so far from anywhere that matters by the time anyone's realized somethings wrong it's already over bar the after incident investigation. That's where me and my friends came in. We were, on the official records at least, working for Inquisitor Abernaky. Not that we ever met him more than once in our time in his employ, he was just the name we sent the reports to and received orders and pay from.

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So anyway me and my friends, four of us besides myself, Henders, Jeffer, Toburt and Cooper. I think. Pretty sure Cooper was there. It was either Cooper or Carter. They were both Kriegers I worked with and they both had no names when we met but I'm pretty sure it was Cooper. Either way Carter didn't much like me for obvious reasons. Cooper, sorry. Both of them in fact didn't like eldar but it was Cooper on this mission.

So anyway we land the shuttle on an uncovered granite slab that did as the small craft landing platform for the settlement with the com-hub, on the subject of which we'd been given the silent treatment since we landed in the system bar the automated blips and pings. Toburt and the servitor piolet Ethan, one of the high class ones made from a brain damaged child, were told to stay with the boat. First rule when you work for the fucking Inquisition; always make sure you can run away when shit goes wrong. And it will always go wrong eventually. To cover ground we split up into two teams Henders and Cooper go to check out the communications tower and men and Jeffers head out to the Admin-bunker. Splitting up is risky but what ever had taken out an entire settlement of burley armed miners wouldn't have been stopped by four laser rifles, we needed speed and we needed quiet and then we needed to leave and we all knew it. Why only a five soldiers and a servitor you might ask? Because the Inquisition was spread pretty thin in that sub-sector and we genuinely couldn't spare anyone else for such an unimportant anomaly, HQ were still holding out hope that the astropath had had a heart attack and the warp-weather was just causing shipping delays. It was on the road into town that we saw our first body. We hadn't found any corpses in the starport itself. Blood stains aplenty but no actual bodily remains beyond that. Or at least we found half a body, someone's space suited ass and legs in the middle of the road, call us dense for going in but it was our job and we were payed very well.

Anyway we get to the walls of the settlement and it's as you'd expect, all ramshackle shit made from old cargo crates and air-cyclers rigged from old space suits. Atmospheric pressure wasn't a problem on Godig but it wasn't something you'd like to suck on. It was a fucking slaughterhouse, never saw a complete body in all the time we were there and by the looks of it they'd been taken apart by claws and teeth of something big and powerful. We've all got cameras on our helmets and are sending this all back to the boat to be stored in the blackbox as per protocol, no use in the data being lost if we were to die. I thought I'd seen something in the corner of my eye a few times but chalked it up to nerves until Toburt and Ethen confirmed that they were getting it over the pict-feed as well. There was something here with us that had a hell of a turn of speed.

Me and Jeffers make it to the Admin building. Only building in the settlement that looked like it had been built rather than thrown together. We find some shotguns near the door and a lot of blood, the weapons are loaded and there are expended cases on the floor, someone put up a fight here and it did them no good. Jeffers starts scavving their shells because he's an underhiver and that's what they do when Toburt tells us he's been going through the pict-recordings trying to figure out what the fuck that thing was but it was moving so fast and was so far way that "pretty fucking big, probably quadruped and pink" is about the best he can do.

Henders and Cooper by this point have gotten to the com-tower and then their cameras go blank, this wasn't immediately obvious because the tower was without power so it was pretty dark in there anyway and Toburt wouldn't have spotted it but for Ethan looking over his shoulder, he was too busy going through the pict record looking for the mystery creature and only had one set of eyeballs.

We're wandering into the entry hall of the Admin site whose lights still are on, thank the gods, with Jeffers walking backwards to make sure we aren't followed. Needless to say we've both got out weapons drawn and ready. It was pretty fucking obvious at this point that we weren't here to rescue survivors, now we just had to get the record box and com-logs, stick a quarantine marker in orbit and wait for a real inspection and cleaning effort at some undisclosed point in the future.

Cooper's camera has come back on and he claims to be fine. He says that he and Toburt fell through a weak part of the floor into the cellar and he can't find Toburt. His voice sounded oddly flat but a combination of the place freaking us out a little and Cooper being a Krieger and therefore always sounding a little like that and I wasn't paying as much attention to it as maybe I should. Fuck off, you weren't there. Toburt tells us that Cooper is moving again and it wasn't until days late wen I was looking through the records that the bleeding glaring oddness in terms of gait and camera height were evident. I'm inclined to cut Toburt some slack on not picking up on it as he'd just heard something land on the Boat roof and the external cameras had just gone down. I order him not to open the door unless he's got visual confirmation that it's one of us.

Me and Jeffers head slowly and quietly to the Admin Overseer's office. The building was pretty typical of it's kind. Coat room and entry way, big open hall for meetings and posh dinners, two ground floor wings left and right, swooping broad stair case pair on either side of the main hall up to a balcony, upper wings left and right, kitchens ground floor between the stair cases main office above the kitchens on the upper floor between the stair cases, under the stair cases two less impressive stairways to the cellar storage rooms. It's a basic design copied thousands of times without variation from one end of the galaxy to the other with the only variation being building material. It's probably the AdAdmin trying to make some statement about everywhere being equally part of the Imperium or some shit. In any case it made finding the records, the settlement blackbox was predictably under the Overseer's desk. About 40kg of lead-lined solid state storage crystal in a box designed to survive everything up to direct nuclear strike. It was also bright orange with blue stripes so why the fuck everyone calls this thing a blackbox is a fucking mystery to me. Anyway Jeffers crouches behind the desk with his weapon lined up with the door ready to blat anything more unexpected than dost motes between the eyes whist I root around under the desk trying to pull this bastard thing out of the recess in the floor, empty some of my gear into Jeffers's bag and somehow fit a size five brick into a size four hole.

It was that this point with us both crouched behind the Overseer's desk that we hear a tinkling sound from the main hall. We'd both seen the big chandelier on the way in, far too big for a building this size and fuck knows how something that should be in an opera house ended up in a provincial mining settlement but when your on the job it's not time to offer criticisms of interior decorating. In any case we can both see part of the Chandelier from the doorway and what we can see is moving as if it had just been pushed or moved by something heavy. In retrospect, because retrospect is a merciless bastard with no eyelids, we should have looked up a bit more when we came in.

I've got the fucking thing in my pack by now and fuck the rest of the shit we're leaving behind, just nutri-bars for the most part and it really is time to leave. Cooper isn't moving according to Toburt and Henders hasn't been seen or made contact with again yet. I try contacting Cooper with the com-bead asking him what's going on and he tells me that he's watching. I ask him what he's watching and there's no answer. With Cooper that could mean he's being quiet because he thinks he's being watched, he hasn't heard, he doesn't have an answer or he's deliberately being an ignorant little cunt. I order him to get back to the boat because it's time to get the fuck out and still nothing. Toburt tells me that his camera is still pointed over the settlement from the watch tower but is completely still which either means that he's stopped breathing or he's propped his helmet in a window and left it there. I ask him what he's doing again and he tells me again that he's watching. That when the oddness starts to get past a certain threshold and I know it's not just Cooper being Cooper. The phrasing and enunciation of each word was absolutely the same, parroted as if by a recording. I switched off the comm-bead and told as much to Jeffers and hoped to high heavens that Toburt was paying attention when I told him not to open the boat door without seeing us first.

I make a decision that probably save out lives. We aren't going out through the front door. There's something in the main hall waiting for us and Cooper either isn't Cooper or has been compromised somehow. As quietly as we can we drop out of the back window onto the sloped kitchen roof, Jeffers going first and me watching the door before following him. Just as I was climbing through I would swear that I heard the chandelier tinkle again.

We slip down the roof of the kitchen into a narrow gap between the Admin building and some sort of hab-block seemingly assembled by accident and very quickly but as quiet as we can quickly manage get back to the street and start weaving our way back to the borders of town along a street plan that seemed without a plan. We were going in the right direction, I think, but had to abruptly stop. I'd just seen something big and pink briefly on the roof of one of the buildings ahead of us, a glint of eye and then vanishing back under the lip of the roof.

Jeffers had apparently also seen it as he was already hiding behind a refuse bin without prompting. I don't know if it saw us but I did know we weren't going that way, not on foot at least. We decided that if these things, whatever the fuck they were, were stalking the settlement we would be found eventually and almost certainly had been discovered already given that one was waiting for us in the Admin building. They must have at least some degree of intelligence as they had encountered weapons before and were possibly wary of us because we were armed. If anything they were keeping their distance until an opportune moment presented itself.

We hadn't fully appreciated that they were a damn site more clever than that and we hadn't stopped to ask how they had gotten here in the first place, there wasn't any native life on this planet when the prospectors arrived and never had been. Point is that they weren't stalking us so much as herding us I think.

We zigzagged through the many winding back allies of the settlement, fearful to entre open streets and fearful to enter enclosed buildings. The track to the starport landing area was rutted with the marks of large transport vehicles the prospectors used to move their mined goods for transport off-world, we figured that getting one of those and getting the fuck out was the greatest likelihood of survival considering that because of the shitty atmosphere they would have an enclosed cab and the big stretch of open ground between town and the landing site.

We kept moving, Toburt said that he hadn't seen any movement from Cooper yet and repeated attempts to contact him had failed to get a response. We hadn't told Toburt or Ethan about Cooper, we couldn't be sure that what had taken his place couldn't use a com-bead and we had no intention of confirming for it that we knew he wasn't him.

We found the garages by following alleyways running parallel to the main through road, a less than pleasant task as the locals all knew where everything had been and saw no reason to invest in signposts. Jeffers went into the building first having arrived slightly before me thanks to the weight of the blackbox. The garage was just a big undercover area with a couple of big doors, a smaller door for pedestrians and a small brick shed at the other end built into the wall to a height of two floors, presumably housing a wash room and a cafeteria for the drivers topped by an office of some sort with a big glass window. There was movement in there, light and shadow against the ceiling inside the room but not looking out of the window. We scurried like frightened rats to the building, to get into the shadow of it as it was the only hope of getting close without being seen and we knew we had to get into that office, that's where the keys were kept and neither of us were confident we could hotwire one of these things without tripping a security measure.

As we climbed the narrow and somewhat rickety staircase up to the office we heard Toburt over the com try and contact Cooper for about the twentieth time, this time getting a response. He said that he was still watching from the tower but we heard the voice coming from behind the door to the office echoed with the briefest delay over the com. Jeffers had gone pretty pale and was raising his weapon, I could never tell if he was angry or afraid or if, Jeffers being Jeffers, there wasn't a difference. I raised my own, kicked the door so hard the frame came out of the wall and rolled as Jeffers sent a stream of ultraviolet laser fire hissing over my head into the creature that spoke with Cooper's voice. The scream it let out I swear made me feel like my ears and brain were bleeding and didn't stop until I'd sprayed it's head for a second with full-auto, draining an entire energy pack in the process.

Taking a closer look at them and they were ugly fuckers. Looked a bit like a hairless cat with a touch of lizard and a rat tail at least seven but probably closer to eight foot long nose to arse. I'd never seen anything like it before or since in my years in the Inquisition and I've seen plenty of weird and wonderful shit. It had been holding about half of Cooper's head and tapping the com-bead when it wanted to speak. I don't know how good it's grasp on High-Gothic was, couldn't tell you for sure if it know what it was saying or just parroting prey sounds to lure in food. I suspected the former as it seemed to have a grasp of technology above that of a mere clever animal. In either case we absolutely had to get the fuck out of the place and fast. I don't know how loud it screamed, if the pain was partly because of the volume or entirely due to frequency but I was pretty certain that others would be coming here and quickly. Jeffers grabbed a likely looking bunch of keys hanging on a hook near the door and darted down the stairs, he threw me the keys once we were on the main floor and went to slap the door button. As I was climbing into the drivers side door I heard a muffled scream and looked round to see Jeffers being held by one of the creatures, standing on it's hind legs, clawed hands digging into Jeffer's shoulder and under his left arm, lifting him up to its mouth time slowed by the horror of it Jeffers trying to reach his knife with his good arm, the creature licking the side of his head and grinning a mile full of needle teeth and I swear to the gods it was grinning. Jeffers couldn't reach his knife and he looked at me with pleading eyes filled with pain. My aim was dreadfully true, the first beam going through his head and the second and third and fourth going into the creatures. It fell to the floor pawing at it's ruined face and ruptured eye sockets, dropping the corpse of what had been a good friend I'd known for fifteen years.

The Truck went over the creature without stopping, and went through the doors leaving a trail of twisted metal. The truck was powerful but not the fastest accelerating construction of the AdMech I'd ever driven, designed to move heavy loads with efficiency rather than haste. The creatures followed me half way out of town and there was another figure there, humanoid and big watching with them from the windows of the comm-tower, my helmet cam recording every moment of it.

I did make it to the Boat and for a heart wrenching moment I feared that it had fallen as I stood out in the clear waiting for the door to open, vulnerable and alone. But the door did open and Toburt was standing on the ramp, carapaced up and holding a weapon. Ethan was already taking off before the ramp had started to close. I'm pretty sure that we were allowed to leave, that they could have stopped me somehow if they had chosen to. Cooper's helmet was still recording when we climbed back into orbit to await collection and was continuing to record right up until it impacted the ground when someone pushed it out of the window. As it tumbled It for a brief moment pointed upwards into the face of the humanoid in the tower, looking over the edge of the window.

The brass up at HQ went through all the recordings when we got back. The ugly bastard in the tower was identified as Dr. Bile, a name that means sweet fuck all to you but is pretty fucking infamous to us. Still no idea what those creatures were beyond probably his latest pets.

We nuked the place from orbit when the ship arrived but I'm almost certain we didn't get Dr Bile, cunning old bastard wouldn't have operated so openly if there was even a hint that he was in any real danger.

</div>
</div>

== Malcador's Log ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

'''Salvage log regarding unusual item 43'''

Item appears to be a quasi-biological construct in the basic appearance of man in mid to late twenties. Item is approximately 2.5 meters in height, broad across shoulder and pale skin. Attempts to determine ethnic group from visual analysis has failed. Subject is either from an hitherto in recorded group, an outlier of his group or of mixed ancestry. Nearest group to appearance seems to be the western Merika or Calbi tribals. Item appears to be alive and breathing although apparent internal temperature seems to be somewhat below that of a man in final stages of hypothermia. Attempts at awakening the item have so far been fruitless.

First-mate Varda suggested electro shock to awaken. No result beyond blown fuses.

Varda also suggested the use of drugs injected into subjects blood stream. Further attempts discouraged to preserve needle stocks.

Attempts to monitor brainwaves have given confusing results. Casual psychic surface scans indicate that the mind of the individual is that of a potent psyker but seem to be completely empty. Disinclined to probe deeper until nature of Item is further determined.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

'''Day 12 of return voyage'''

Item 43 appears to have regained/gained consciousness'''

Janitor Ujarak discovered Item standing upright next to it's shelf and came immediately to myself report development.

Item's eyes have been revealed to be an almost metallic golden in colour and follow sources of movement in it's immediate environment. No other sources of activity are evident.

Thermal scans still reveal unnaturally low internal temperature.

Item made no resistance to having the brain-scan cap put back on. No change in apparent brain activity. Psychic scans suggest an very minor increase in activity. In a normal individual the change would be all but unnoticeable due to background chatter.

Item appears to be growing a faint covering of dark hair on scalp and jaw consistent with a human male of assumed age. Attempts to remove a sample have been successful. Analysis of hair fragment shows it to be some sort of very dense composite-polymer similar to the sort used in the manufacture of low grade flack armour.

Further attempts to elicit any additional response have proven unsuccessful. Item moved to secure holding cell as a precaution.

Janitor Ujarak has named the Item Oscar after an uncle of his. I have approved the designation.

'''Day 20 of return voyage'''

Oscar has shown a marked increase in activity. Monitoring equipment shows him measuring the dimensions of his cell and trying to manipulate the door handle. Handle shows signs of having been bent slightly indicating Oscar has strength far superior to that of a baseline human.

When observation and testing teams entre cell Oscar stands immobile and merely observes visitors. Thermal, brain and psychic scanning still reveal no significant change in activity.

As of yet Oscar has not indicated any need or desire to eat, drink or sleep although basic sustenance and bedding has been provided.

As of yet no conclusive idea of what our ancient Cthonian cousins reason for creating this construct were.

Senior members of the salvage teams are convinced that Oscar is an unfinished product and Item 42 that was found in close proximity to Item 43 was a psy-graft machine that would have been used to provide Oscar with programing and purpose. Currently Oscar is a blank slate and we have no real chalk for him.

'''Day 28 of return voyage'''

Oscar has escaped from his cell by applying unreasonable force to the door. Was found in storage hold 12 staring at the container we found him in.

After 5 hours of no additional activity he returned to his cell without prompting.

'''Day 30 of voyage home'''

Oscar wandered into the mess hall this morning and ate a synth-meat pate bun. Brief flare in internal temperature was recorded by off duty tech-adept team.

Casual psychic observation is showing considerable increase in activity but still well beneath that of even a child.

Attempts to restrain or move Oscar when Oscar does not wish to move have been ineffectual. Oscar sat motionless for five hours in mess hall. Diners found the experience "creepy".

An overall work suit has been fabricated in Oscars size.

'''Day 33 of return voyage'''

Warp turbulence flared up this evening. Navigator attempted to drop us back into real space but to no avail. Anti-boarding teams were put on alert.

The turbulence ceased abruptly in the area surrounding the ship. Filtered external footage shows Oscar standing on the prow of the ship without a void suit glaring at the warp.

Method of survival is as yet unknown. Oscar did not return to the interior of the ship until cessation of disturbance some 39 hours later with seemingly no ill effects due to exposure to the vacuum of open space or total exposure to the Warp.

Oscar was placed in a decontamination booth. Oscar pushed open the door of the decontamination booth and returned his cell.

'''Return voyage day 36'''

Oscar was found in mess hall again today having consumed a standard portion of cooked vegetable strips. Oscar then closed his eyes for almost half an hour. This is possibly the only time he has "slept" since first being awakened.

Upon awakening he approached my office and spoke for the first time asking "What am I to do?"

Oscar has been tasked with categorizing and ordering the items salvaged Cthonian artefacts.

'''Return voyage day 37'''

Members of the crew with knowledge of ancient history have put forth the suggestion that this "Oscar" is a Man of Gold albeit an unfinished one.

I am now faced with somewhat of a dilemma. The return of this creature to the territory of Clan Terrawatt could be disastrous for all nations of Earth. From what fragments we know of history a Man of Gold, should he have a mind to be, would be a disaster of similar magnitude to that of another super-volcanic eruption and it is doubtful that the people of Earth would survive such again.

After due consideration I have decided not to detonate the reactor.

This decision will either be remembered as Malcador's Triumph or briefly Malcador's Folly. May the Ancestors guide us.

</div>
</div>

== Me Time ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

Arronax. A tiny dustball out in the middle of nowhere. A breathable atmosphere, but no native lifeforms more complex than an oxygen-producing prokaryote. Which was why it was so odd that a pair of Warhound titans were on its surface. The two colossal mechs stood guard, watching over a facility so well hidden it seemed to blend into the surrounding rock. The titans themselves were also just out of sight beneath a nearby rock face, out of the range of any orbital sensors.

Even odder was the presence of anyone else on this space rock. Yet the sensors were clear, there was at least one other lifeform on this planet approaching the facility. After a brief moment of communication between the two princeps, the two Warhound rose up as one, striding forward as the intruder came into view. The figure seemed to be alone and was obscured, covered by a simple woven robe. The Warhounds towered over the intruder, weapons bristling, as the vox crackled to life.

“This planet is off limits. Identify yourself or vacate the premises, otherwise we will open fire.”

The figure only smiled.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

---

Klaxons sounded across the Inquisition base. Stormtroopers were roused from their beds and weapons were immediately placed in their hands. Personnel ran to and fro like ants in a disturbed nest, each trying to figure out where they were supposed to go to perform their duty.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” one stormtrooper asked.

“Warhounds on the surface encountered an anomaly and haven’t reported in,” the sergeant, Jezhua, replied, “Protocol is to assume the worst. The facility is under attack.”

The combead hissed with static in Sergeant Jezhua’s ear, patching him through to the adept watching the security cameras.

“Uh, sir?” the adept said, “we’ve re-established visual contact with the Warhound titans.”

The adept turned to his screen, looking at the sole leg sticking up into the horizon like an upended drumstick.

“Well, what’s left of them, anyway.”

“Details, adept,” Jezhua barked, “What do you see?”

“Six figures on the landing pad. Can’t make out any details, the remaining camera is too far away. They’re standing right in front of the entrance, but the hangar doors are closed.”

The sergeant clapped his hands on the stormtrooper’s shoulder.

“There are six intruders just outside of the main door. Go, set up a defense in front of the door so if they try to come in they’ll find the appropriate welcome waiting for them.”

The stormtrooper nodded. He rushed through the base, travelling down two corridors and up a flight of stairs, to find himself in the hangar that represented the entryway to the rest of the facility. With calculated precision, he set up his laser carbine and aimed it at the closed metal doors of the entryway. Around him were at least thirty additional Guardsmen who had done the same. They were ready for anything to come through that door, at least, as ready as they were going to be. There was a pause. An eerie silence permeated the air, tension high despite the quiet.

BANG!

The sound echoed throughout the room, several Guardsmen flinching involuntarily.

BANG!

The second blow hit the door with a visceral effect, the vibrations so powerful that the Guardsmen could literally feel them through the floor. It sounded as though the forces of hell themselves were trying to force their way in.

BA-CRUNCH!

The door yielded with the third blow, the upper corner of one of the hangar doors bending inward from the force leaving a triangle-shaped gap in the door. Sunlight flooded into the room, momentarily blinding some of the Guardsmen. As their eyes readjusted to the change in light, a solitary figure stepped through the gap in the doorway and into the room. The figure was clearly an Eldar, given that it was at least a head taller than the any of the Guardsmen in the room and had short-cropped red hair that was a shade too dark and too red to belong to any human. The figure wore a garishly pattered suit of armor with a fur-lined collar, suggesting it was a Crone Worlder, and wielded a hideous-looking sword that looked large enough to decapitate a grox. Normally, the Guardsmen would have opened fire, but the room stood in stunned awe, fear overriding any sort of combat reflex. They knew who this figure was. Everyone knew who this figure was. They had thought they were ready for anything, but none of them had expected the person that had just walked through their door.

“Oh come off it,” she said, seemingly to no one as particular, “I am not turning you into an overgrown lockpick. Look, we’ll find someone to kill, and you’ll feel like your old self in no…”

The Eldar looked up, having just become aware of the thirty or so Guardsmen in the room. She seemed just as surprised as the Guardsmen, the two sides having formed an impromptu standoff. One of the Guardsmen fainted with a sound, the realization of exactly who they faced having just sunk in. It was one unfortunately stupid Guardsman who broke the pregnant silence.

“L…Lady Malys. What in Terra’s name are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know. Just needed some “me” time.”

With that, the hangar turned into a whirlwind of blades. Malys went into a frenzy, her eyes wild and her tooth-like jaw plates locked in a hideous grin. She moved with astonishing agility, cutting through the Guardsmen before they could even react. A Guardsman tried to yell to the others to open fire, only to have his head sliced from his body before he could finish speaking. Lasbolts fired through the air, but every one of them seemed to hit just wide of the Croneworlder. Guardsmen fired at where they thought the female Eldar was one moment, only for her to have already stepped out of the way the next, their lasbolt penetrating the helmet of their comrade on the other side. The Crone seemed to take particular pleasure in that.

The stormtrooper gritted his teeth as he watched the Daemon Queen tear through his comrades. Seeing them dead left a bitter taste in his stomach, but he had to be vigilant if his shots were to do more than just fly wild like the rest. Just then, he noticed Lady Malys had made a mistake in her movements. Malys had briefly paused in her deadly criss-crossing of the room, giving him the perfect opportunity to put a lasbolt through her unarmored head. The stormtrooper tried to take the shot, only to hear a whirring noise and feel a sharp pain in his wrist. Looking down, he saw that his hand had been entirely severed from his forearm. Another Crone Eldar, this one armed with a saw pistol, had come through the hole in the doorway following his queen. At first the fight was merely lopsided. When the five other Crone Eldar entered the fray, it simply became unfair.

---

As the battle wrapped up and the high of combat began to fade, the question became what to do with the survivors. One was the Guardsman who had fainted when Malys had entered the room. Malys laughed. That one got to live, if for no other reason than the delightful squeaking sound it made when it fainted into a heap. The other was another mon-keigh soldier that had been wounded in the leg and was merely injured, as opposed to dead.

“The injured mon-keigh, as you requested milady,” replied one Crone warrior, having bound the human soldier’s arms behind her back.

A female, if Malys recalled right. She always did have such trouble telling male and female humans apart. Malys nodded to the warrior. The Daemon Queen thought to herself for a moment, and then got to work.

“Well, well, welll,” Malys strutted across the hangar of the dead and the dying to look at the female guardsman. “What are we going to do with you. We could always take you into the Warp and leave you to the tender mercies of daemons. Watching them tear mortals limb from limb is always good for a show. Or we could seal you inside a marionette. Seeing mon-keigh claw at their skin as they struggle to come to terms with the sensory deprivation always gives me a shiver up my spine.”

Malys grabbed the guardswoman by the hair.

“I tell you what. I’m feeling merciful today. You tell me everything you know about this facility, then maybe we’ll pretend we pretend we overlooked you among the dead in this room. Otherwise…”

Malys swung her greatsword around, pointing its tip at one Slaaneshi Croneworlder standing in the corner.

“I’m going to have Asmordach here rip out your nerves one by one and we play a little game of ‘how much of an intact nervous system can you pull out of a live mon-keigh before they die’”.

The threat of violence apparently helped the mon-keigh find its tongue, though not in the way Lady Malys had hoped for.

“You vile fiend. I will not give you what you want, nor will anyone in this facility. Your day of reckoning will come abomination. Even if is not by my hand, then by the next person, or the next. The Imperium will never fall to the likes of…”

“Fehlkor?” Malys spoke over the dithering mon-keigh, her voice an annoyed growl.

“Yes milady?”

“Kill it like the rest.”

“Killing it like the rest ma’am.”

After that little pleasure was out of the way, it was time to decide how to proceed further into the facility. Maps of the facility showed the upper level was nothing but guard quarters and military ordinance, whereas down below was where the really fun stuff was kept. Malys crooked her finger at one of the Cronedar, beckoning the Slaaneshi to her side. The augmented vox taking up much of the Crone Eldar’s throat and lower face crackled to life, speaking to Lady Malys in a distinctly artificial voice.

“Your command, Lady Malys?”

“The five of you go on ahead down to the lower levels. You know what we are looking for and what to do with it.”

“All due respect but, are you sure that’s wise? Splitting up seems strategically unsound. We could be isolated and picked off one by one.”

“Today is not a ‘strategy’ day. Today is a ‘fun’ day. I want you to remember that. I picked this facility for a reason. There should be nothing here that poses a significant threat to you or the others. If not then, well, I expect you to be smart enough to do something about it.”

“Understood. Your will be done.”

The Crone’s voice was like screeching on a mon-keigh record player. He had claimed he had made his voice sound like that to honor the cacophonies made by the ancient musicians of the Eldar, but Malys suspected he just wanted to have a voice that was as annoying as physically possible while still having enough of a reason to not be justified in killing him.

Malys shuddered. Ten thousand years of service to the Dark Gods and there were still things in the galaxy capable of provoking a reaction from her. One learns something new every day. The five Cronedar having already moved out before her, she followed their path down to the lower levels.

---

Seargent Jezhua silently cursed to himself as he pressed himself against the wall. Everything was going to shit. His men were scattered, people were disappearing, and no one seemed to be answering from the hangar. The last transmission Jezhua had received had reported five Cronedar descending into the labs from the hangar elevator, so at the very least Jezhua could presume what happened to them. And worst of all, he was so busy coordinating everyone else he was only able to grab a stubber from the armory before things went to shit.

Make that six. Jezhua had just heard another Crone descend down the elevator and walk into the hallway just ahead of him. From the sound of the footsteps, the Croneworlder was walking forward at a leisurely pace, seemingly uncaring of the fact that it was standing in the middle of a hostile enemy base. From its shadow, he could tell the Chaos Eldar was a female, and was seemingly unarmed beyond a large sword strapped to her back.

Jezhua gritted his teeth. Everything had gone ploin-shaped. And so he was going to have to rescue his men and take back this facility. Even if he had to hunt the Crones down one at a time. And this nearly unarmed, sword-wielding Cronedar seemed like a good place to start. Jezhua broke from cover and levelled his weapon at the Cronedar’s head.

“Stop”.

The Crone hesitated for a moment, as if amused by the audacity of the situation, then slowly turned to face him. Jezhua remained firm. If he had recognized who the Croneworlder was, it did not seem to faze him. Malys chuckled.

“You know who I am, yet you are still foolish enough to point a gun at me?”

“Lady, I know a thing or two about weapons. I know that’s a six-foot long broadsword strapped to your back. That’s nearly as tall as you are. You don’t have any other weapons. I know that no one, not even an Eldar, can whip a blade like that out before I can fire. The blade is just too unwieldy, and I’m too far away. Try anything, and I’ll put a bullet in your head before you can even move. It’s simple physics. You just can’t move that fast.”

Jezhua pulled the trigger, but before he could react Malys was on him, impaling him to the wall through the gut with that sword of hers. The taste of blood in his mouth, Sergeant Jezhua looked weakly around He knew he had fired, he had seen the muzzle flare in front of him. There was no way he could have missed at that range. Then, he had a chilling moment of realization. Sergeant Jezhua looked down, only to see the shell of his bullet had been deflected into the ground, neatly bisected by the Crone Eldar’s blade. He looked back up only to find the face that had haunted the nightmares of every soldier in the Imperium merely only inches from his own.

“You’re very perceptive. But you made once critical miscalculation. I CAN move that fast. And now, well, my friend is hungry. So eat well.”

Jezhua noticed that the last remark had not been directed at him. He looked down to see the blade impaling his body glowing with a whitish-green, unholy light. He felt a pulling sensation, as if something he couldn’t accurately describe was being ripped from his body. And going into the black abyss which he realized the sword really was. Sergeant Jezhua screamed. But no one was able to hear him.

---

Standing outside the ruined entrance of the research facility, Lady Malys examined a small data chip, holding it up to the light.

“Here it is, data on all Inquisitorial activities and research programs within the subsector. Our prize for this day. So informative, so juicy, so…”

She threw the chip on the ground and smashed it under her foot.

“Useless.”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t entirely useless. Maybe some small squadron of Crone Eldar or local Chaos cult could have made use of the data. But it wasn’t useful to her, which was really mattered. And the facility had been so sparsely guarded. Just normal human mon-keigh, not any of her unenlightened kind or the augmented kinds of mon-keigh the Imperium usually had around one of its facilities. Malys sighed in frustration. How was she supposed to have any “me” time when all of the targets she attacked had turned out to be so damn boring. The Warhounds were fun for a warmup but then it was all downhill after that. Looking overhead, she watched as an Imperial ship warped into existence overhead. That was her signal to go, despite her enthusiasm a battleship was rather outside her current means right now and she wasn’t looking forward to dying again.

Well. Maybe the third time was the charm.

</div>
</div>

== Monster ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

I am a [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#New_Men|monster]].

Is it surprising, that I admit it so readily? Most monsters are only reluctant to admit it because they have been raised their whole lives to believe it is not so. I have never had the luxury of knowing anything else. I have always been a monster.

I remember everything. I even remember vague flashes of those that came before. Memories of those whose cells were cultured to create my DNA. The sheer pain of those tortured to provide the power to restore those dead cells to life and revert the differentiated cells back into an egg. I remember the sheer terror of my mother as she was clinically violated in ways unthinkable to the average mind, and then forced to watch for eleven months as an abomination grew inside her. All the while her offspring communed with her mind and was privy to her thoughts. When I was born she rejected me, threw her suckling and adoring infant from her breast. The Drukhari caretakers took me away and put me in a kennel, feeding me with a bottle before switching to kibble. Apparently this was not an uncommon occurrence.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

At six I was transferred from the kennels to the pens. Even though I was only a child by normal standards I looked twice that age. Our creator had tried many ways to accelerate our development. However, every attempt he crippled the batch’s ability to use psychic power. Something to do with the trade-off between soul development and time to adulthood. His solution was to accelerate body growth while slowing down mental development. Children in the body of adults. We were segregated into age-specific crèches and switched from a diet of kibble to live prey. Some kind of bird, I don’t know exactly what. At first I had trouble adapting to the change, but after watching those around me I eventually figured it out. Grab the head and twist. It was so simple.

None of us had names. Most of us were incapable of speech, beyond throaty screams and animalistic howls. We created a rudimentary language, composed of gestures, pheromonal signals, flushing of skin patterns, latent psychic communication, and what few sounds we could make. It was a crude language, but it worked well enough for our purposes. I had my own internal system for telling individuals apart. The one who always smelled was Stinky, the one who pushed the others around was Bossy, and so on.

[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Fabius_Bile|I remember our creator]]. How I hated him. I will never forget his odor, a strange mix of preservatives and death. Although most of the overseers smelled of death in some way, none of them smelled like he did. Sometimes he would come to the pens and take one of us away. They never came back. He considered us all failures. Stinky had digestive problems, Bossy was too aggressive, my eyesight was too poor, and so on. He also considered us failures as a group. He had expected us to come out of the womb walking, talking, and quoting philosophy. Instead he got a set of maladjusted ghouls, pale-skinned soldiers that seemed incapable of what he wanted. It was strange. He wanted to create supermen, humans that could grow into functional adults without the need of any other. Yet he treated us like animals, apparently not noticing or not caring about how we hid things in our pens, or filched things from our Drukhari caretakers. Stinky even broke out of his pen to kill one that had threatened his surrogate mother. She was one of the few who hadn’t rejected her infant abomination. I envied him for that.

I remember my first kill. I was fully grown at the time, both in body and mind. Our creator had struck some kind of bargain with a Drukhari Kabal, using our services as soliders against their rivals in exchange for reciprocity. Of course, we had no idea that any of this was going on. All we knew is that we were suddenly taken outside the pens and dumped in this strange, new environment. I could smell the pheromone markings of the ones who had gone ahead of us. The alluring scent of the males, the more familiar scent off the females, smells of battle and blood. They triggered some kind of curiosity in us, and we moved ahead.

I followed the rest of the herd until we reached the din of battle, where we started to split up as our interest waned. I came across a Drukhari taking cover behind a series of containers, more concerned about shots fired from the other side than an ambush from behind. Our eyes met for a second before I attacked. Like an idiot I charged him in a straight line, and in response he brought up his splinter rifle and put a round into me. It was painful, and the poisons covering it would prove problematic in the long term, but at that moment I stopped more due to surprise than to pain. The two of us stared dumbfounded at the crystaline needle sticking out of my chest, clear fluid already hardening and forming a scab on my pale, blue-veined skin.

Looking back on it today, being older and wiser I would have done things very different. I was young and stupid. Fortunately so was he. If he was smart he would have stayed back, using his superior speed and agility to wear me down from a distance. He had grown fat and arrogant glutting himself on mon-keigh souls that were so much smaller and weaker than he was. He wasn’t expecting a mon-keigh his own size, who could look him in the eye with their flat, grey eyes. In the split second he stood gawking at the failure of his splinter pistol to put me down, I lunged forward and snapped his neck. Grab the head and twist. Just like the bird.

When the fighting was over I was returned to the pens without any medical attention. My body temperature had dropped and I had gone into shock. Our creator half expected me to die from my injuries and the others to cannibalize my remains. “The inability of man to eat his own dead without preparation is yet another biological weakness of our kind”, or something to those words. However, his expectations were misplaced. The others in my crèche did not eat me. They huddled up to me, keeping me warm through the night with their body heat.

I remember the first time I was exposed to the trigger scent. Our Creator had picked another fight, this time with [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#The_Fallen|a group of humans even larger than we were, dressed in armor so heavy they were as wide as two of us put shoulder to shoulder, and smelling so revolting to our senses our creator smelled good in comparison]]. He wanted us to attack them, and we weren’t doing as he had wanted. Although we may not have been the smartest of beings, we weren’t dumb. That’s when he released the trigger scent. All of a sudden my nostrils were filled with a musky odor, and my vision was awash with a kaleidoscope of colors. We rushed at the towering figures with a sudden disregard for our own safety as we had before. The giants were bigger and stronger than we were, but we overwhelmed them in a tide of bodies. Bossy ripped out the throat of one of the giant men with his teeth, even though it took him several tries to do so. One of the other giants tore him in half for that with his bare hands a moment later. We killed and killed and killed, until there were none left to kill, and then we tore the corpses into tiny pieces in a frenzy. I heard an animalistic scream. It took me a second before I realized it was coming out of my throat.

I remember when I was supposed to have died. Yet another Drukhari Kabal had come to our creator with an offer. They needed bodies and hunting hounds for a raid on realspace. I was one of those that was given. It was the first time I set foot in the Materium. I was almost overwhelmed, the cool breeze on my skin, the feeling of soil between my toes, the sheer number of scents and sounds and thoughts around me. The raid did not go as planned. The Kabalites had expected to find a world of farmers and fishermen. They had not predicted that an army had been dispatched there on rotation. We fought like cornered beasts, but a raiding party had no chance against a dedicated army, and Drukhari and members of my crèche alike fell to lasgun and shuriken fire. I took a lasbolt to the shoulder and dropped, nearly trampled in the confusion. I was lucky to have “merely” broken a leg. After the battle the dead were piled high, the corpses to be disposed of by burning. I was buried among them, overlooked among the dead and the dying. Though my arm and leg would not regain function for another month, I was able to pull myself free and limp to the safety of the forest, the smaller humans apparently unable to smell my trail of blood.

Our creator had treated us like animals.

And if there is one thing that animals are very good at doing, it is surviving.

</div>
</div>

== My Dinner With the Emperor ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

“So what exactly happened during the Raid on Nurgle’s Mansion, anyway?”

The Emperor was glad for his enhanced reaction time at that moment, else he would have spit up the wine that he was drinking. To be honest he always considered himself more of a vodka person, or one of those "tanna" drinks the Valhallans always raved about having originally come from Earth. However, Sonoma was a planet known for its wineries, and that meant wine-tasting was the order of the day.

The government of the planet was a plutocracy, which meant that in practice the person with the largest voice in government was the who owned the largest percentage of the wineries on the planet. It was a world that had been part of the Imperium for some time, having been unified by one of the primarchs during the Great Crusade (Fulgrim, he immediately recalled), but one he had never been to personally, being on the far end of the Segmentum Tempestus. So when the Travelling Court was due to pass through that region of space, it was a lost opportunity he wanted to make sure to rectify.

The plutarch, as was often the case, was overjoyed that the Travelling Court had decided to visit his world, and immediately insisted on a stately dinner where he could introduce the Emperor and Empress to the other major shareholders in the vineyards on the planet. The Emperor was personally not that interested in a fancy dinner with the heads of state, but he didn’t want to turn down such hospitality. Now he was kind of wondering if he should. Isha was the epitome of civility as always, though the Emperor knew she was probably at least a little bit bored. Despite her demure nature, she always said she liked visiting former feral worlds more, claiming that the people there weren’t as repressed as these high society types and as such they knew how to live a little more.

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The Emperor wasn’t surprised that the plutarch would ask about that story, it was probably one of the two stories he was asked most often to tell, but he was rarely asked about it so bluntly and while Isha was with him no less. He didn’t mind telling the story, but when Isha was around he always felt slightly guilty because it always made her seem like a damsel in distress. Granted, she had been had been held captive by one of the most powerful entities in the universe for thousands of years and tortured in ways only a god could truly comprehend, but sometimes it seemed like the story made her look bad.

“That old story?” Isha said from across the table. “Come now. You've told that story from Ultramar to Xenobia. Everyone probably knows it by heart at this point."

The Emperor internally sighed, he was privately grateful to Isha for that. In part because it meant he didn't want to dredge up the bad memories that represented, and in part because he didn't want to embarrass Isha in front of the plutarch with one of the low points of their life.

"Here's an idea. Why don't you tell them the story of what happened down on Sarosh."

The Emperor almost choked on his wine again.

“Are you sure?” the Emperor deflected, “Most of that story is rather dry, and I don’t think this is the kind of crowd who would be interested in that kind of thing. Besides, you know everything that happened there already. I wouldn’t want you to get bored, too.”

"Oh you can tell it. I don't mind."

Isha positively glimmered, the edges of her upper jaw plate like little fangs as she bit her lower lip.

"I'm sure you wouldn’t," the Emperor grumbled.

“With all due respect, your majesties,” the plutarch said, slightly red-faced, “Would someone please just start saying what happened already? It sounds like there’s a juicy story to be had and the rest of us don’t know about it. It just isn’t right to have a good wine without a good story to go with it.”

“Very well,” the Emperor sighed with resignation, “But in order to fully understand the story you’ll need to be familiarized with the planet of Sarosh. Sarosh was discovered near the end of the Great Crusade, but the War of the Beast broke out before it could be incorporated into the Imperium. After the war fully integrating Sarosh into the Imperium became top priority. This wasn’t merely for charitable reasons. Sarosh had managed to survive the Old Night with much of its technology intact. They had lost some of their most advanced technology and were behind us in other areas, true, but they retained technology that most of the rest of the galaxy had lost and it’s possible they may have even had STC printouts on their world. The Saroshi even claimed that their government was the same as it had been all the way back before the Age of Strife. If Saroshi technology could be reverse-engineered and exported to the galaxy at large, the standard of living in the Imperium would have jumped dramatically, and it would have gone a long way towards reparing the damage done by the War of the Beast.

When the Imperium first discovered Sarosh during the Great Crusade, the Saroshi welcomed us with open arms, and eagerly joined the Imperium as a Survivor Civilization However there always seemed to be problems whenever someone tried to integrate Sarosh with the rest of the galaxy. Attempts to build infrastructure to connect Sarosh to the wider Imperium were sabotaged. Funds meant to improve standards of living were embezzled by government officials. And any efforts to figure out exactly who was mishandling things was stymied by a bureaucracy that was downright labyrinthine. As is so often the case, I heard that there was trouble on Sarosh and set that as the next destination for the Travelling Court to get things straightened out once and for all.

I ran into the exact same problems that all the people before me did. I even met with the leaders of Sarosh themselves, who tried to assure me that things were progressing as fast as they could. On top of that the Saroshi ambassador, who was my primary contact with the Saroshi government during my time there, seemed to have a dislike for me that was borderline pathological. I tried to read his mind to figure out what his problem was, but his thought process was too oily and muddled to get anything out of him without breaking something. Not exactly unheard of in a politician. At the time, I merely chalked it up to him thinking I was just another two-bit warlord here to try and take away Saroshi sovereignty, rather than a potential ally greeting another survivor of the Long Night. It turned out to be something rather worse.

The Saroshi ambassador had come aboard the ''Bucephalus'' every day for nearly two weeks straight with nearly nothing to show for it. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the Saroshi government reported to me that they had a major breakthrough in the integration problems, and they wanted me to come to the planet’s surface for the first time since I had initially came to Sarosh to tell me in person. They asked me to meet with the ambassador who was arriving on a low-orbit shuttle, and would escort me to the Saroshi capital personally.

The first sign I noticed that something was wrong was when Constantin Valdor came up to me and asked if he could stand in front of me when the doors opened to meet the Saroshi ambassador. I asked him if something was the matter and he just replied that he had a funny feeling about the whole thing.

When the doors to the shuttle bay opened, the ambassador entered the Bucephalus the same way he had for the past two weeks, surrounded by his nine bodyguards. Except of course, this time the bodyguards had their weapons unholstered and their rifles levelled at us. The ambassador had this wild look in his eye, ranting about how my hour of reckoning had at last come at hand. One moment the ambassador was having his moment of megalomaniacal ranting, spittle flying from his lips.

The next thing I knew, the ambassador had a handmaiden standing behind him, one of those thorn-swords jutting out of his chest. I'm used to the speed at which Eldar move and even with that in mind, I have to say, the followers of Isha and Cegorach are fast.

While I had been meeting directly with the leaders of Sarosh, the Handmaidens had made their way to the planet's surface by their own means and had been discreetly conducting their own investigation of the planet's population. What they found was rather disturbing. The inhabitants of Sarosh were, to put it bluntly, Chaos worshippers, and they were itching at the opportunity to take revenge against the man to openly defy the Ruinous Powers and the goddess who would spurn the affections of the Plaguefather. The ambassador himself had even been ritually prepared for the role, having accepted a major blessing from Tzeentch in exchange for the chance to strike a blow against the most hated foes of Chaos. The blessing not only prevented anyone from reading his mind, but even worse made psykers think it was absolutely normal that they couldn’t do that unless directly told otherwise.

“The Handmaidens reported their findings back to their mistress and their leader told the whole story to Constantin, which is how the Custodians knew. Those two always shared everything with each other.”

“Pardon me,” the plutarch said, “I don’t mean to interrupt a good story, but that reminds me of something. Where, might I ask, was the Empress during all this?"

"Ah, funny thing about that. She was down in the cargo bay, disarming the bomb. See, the insurgents had realized they needed a back-up plan in the likely event that Plan A failed. So they sent a re-wired cyclonic torpedo aboard, tried to disguise it as one of our own. While we were focusing our attention on the assassins, the torpedo would have detonated and killed us all. Crude but effective. It might have worked, if not for one thing."

"Which was?"

"It turns out the capacitors of a cyclonic torpedos don't work so well when they have a solid centimeter of Eldar rinnweed growing between the two conductor plates."

“The story, unfortunately, doesn’t have that happy of an ending. The Handmaidens and Custodians dealt with the intruders easily enough, but the planet was another problem. The Saroshi were gearing up a massive Chaotic ritual designed to pull a massive number of daemons into realspace. We ended up having to Exterminatus the planet to stop it in time. No amount of ancient technology was worth creating a massive, active Warp rift right in the middle of Imperial space. And even then it was hard to tell what tech and what were really “blessings” from the Ruinous Powers. I have my suspicions that the high level of technology the Saroshi had were either Chaos-derived or due to their leaders bargaining with the Ruinous Powers for sanctuary during the Age of Strife.

I learned two things from the whole debaucle. The first being you can never be too paranoid when it comes to diplomacy with unknown powers.”

“And the second?”

“Never underestimate your wife,” the Emperor said flatly.

Milady," a voice said from behind the plutarch, "the inspection is complete."

"What the devil?" He exclaimed.

"Ah, Galadrea," the Emperor said. "Glad you could make it".

He should have known Galadrea would have chosen that moment to intervene. Galadrea had always been as humorless as Valdor but she did have a bit of a flare for the dramatic. He had noticed the green-clad Eldar enter the room, but aside from Isha he was perhaps the only one to do so, the rest of the occupants too fixated on his story to notice. The fact that she had entered from the one direction where no one else could have directly seen her only furthered the Emperor's suspicions that she had chosen to make her entrance as dramatic as possible.

“Plutarch,” the Emperor said, watching the man continue to sputter in confusion, “I would like to introduce you to Galadrea, Head of the Handmaidens of Isha. Now, Galadrea, I believe you said you had something to report?”

“We found no signs of Chaos corruption. No worship of the Ruinous Powers. There are the usual issues, crime, poverty, but no more so than any other Imperial world. The world is clean.”

“Well, there you have it,” the Emperor told the plutarch, “A clean bill of health from the acolyte of a literal goddess of healing. You have nothing to worry about.”

"Thank you, Galadrea", Isha said, "You may go now."

The Eldar gave a curt bow and then left as silently as she arrived. The source of his shock eliminated, the plutarch gradually managed to calm himself back down.

“Well, that was a bloody good story, but that doesn’t really answer my initial question. Sorry for asking, but you don’t get answers of what happened during these things straight from the horse’s mouth every day you know. You hear so many rumors but it’s hard to believe even half of them are true. I’d still like to know what really happened during the Raid. And what about that whole hulabaloo with the ork diplomats during the War of the Beast?"

Internally, the Emperor sighed. It was going to be a long day.

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==A Necron's Duel==

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Obyron met Imotekh on the great plaza outside of the palace, an expanse of finest marble over a mile wide. He stood and watched, a modest honor guard flanking him, as Imotekh's ornate barge descended from orbit. It came to a silent halt hovering a meter over the stone and Imotekh's honor guard marched down the ramp in inevitably perfect order, far larger and more ornate in full ceremonial apparatus. Behind them strode Imotekh himself, towering above the lesser Necrons of his guard, scroll marked with the physical seal and hologramic codes of the Silent King in one hand.

"I come bearing a message for the Nemesor Zandrekh from the hand of his liege the Triarch Szarekh," Imotekh intoned. "Where is he? The message is to be delivered to him personally."

"I am Lord Obyron, empowered by my liege Zandrekh to speak and act in his name," Oberon replied. "I may receive the message as though it was delivered in person."

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Imotekh responded by releasing the scroll, which unrolled itself while hovering midair. The scroll projected columns of shimmering glyphs from its surface, carrying the force of the Silent King's will like a physical blow, subliminal command codes embedded in the hypertext.

You are commanded, it read, to travel to the court of the Triarchy and present yourself there to the Triarchs to renew all oaths of fealty, so that... Oberon needed to read no more to know the meaning. Submission and slavery. The command codes washed over him without finding purchase.

"No," he replied.

"You defy the will of Szarekh?" Imotekh asked.

"I do, and I challenge you to an honor duel to determine the matter."

Imotekh did not hesitate. "I accept," he declared, and in a flash of teleportation his ceremonial robes and scepter were replaced with warplate and warscythe. With the challenge issued and accepted, their respective retinues fell back to give them space, and a dome of glowing energy sprang up around the two Necron lords from the pavement. The duel was to the death; the force field would not fall until one or both of them were dead. Until then, they were in a little universe all to themselves.

The two duelists stood motionless for a long, frozen moment. Then they exploded into motion. The basic necron warrior may be slow to move and react; not Obyron or Imotekh. Equipped with the finest bodies necron science could provide, musculature that had more in common with railguns than anything nature had ever devised, they moved like lightning. Their strikes cracked like pistol shots, the edges of their blades breaking the sound barrier with every swing. A human observer, had there been one present, would have seen nothing more than blurs as the two necron lords traded blows. Sparks showered across the arena as the exotic energies contained in their blades and armor clashed with every blow.

After a couple of minutes of this furious violence, the two combatants stepped back from each other. Both Imotekh and Obyron were covered in dozens of cuts, all of them already healing as necrodermis flowed back into its proper place. Necrontyr dueling tradition had always placed a strong emphasis on allowing the enemy to get in a minor hit in order to set yourself up for a more devastating counterblow. This tradition had been immeasurably reinforced now that their bodies were made of living metal instead of flesh and blood.

For all its furious violence, that exchange had merely been the opening bout as the two rival Lords sized each other up. Now, given a brief respite as they both strategized their next moves, neither was terribly impressed by what they had seen. In Obyron, Imotekh saw nothing more than an up-jumped street brawler, his strikes and parries devoid of subtlety or grace. In Imotekh, Obyron saw someone who, for all his mastery of the traditional forms, was unable to innovate and go beyond them.

Still, neither was about to underestimate the other. By unspoken agreement, the brief moment of stillness ended, and the two Necron lords charged once more.

The two clashed for over an hour in inconclusive battle, untiring, neither quite able to gain an advantage. The end, when it came, happened in a matter of seconds.

Obyron's warscythe was of the finest quality, but Imotekh's was the very best that all the armorers of the Silent King could provide. The incredible intensity of the duel pushed even Necron craftsmanship to its very limits and beyond, and it was Obyron's weapon that gave out first. Blocking another thunderous strike the haft shattered just below the head, the blade spinning away and leaving Obyron holding nothing but a useless, sparking shaft. Without hesitation he dove to retrieve the blade, scooping it up from the flagstones. But Imotekh took swift advantage of the opening, and even as Obyron turned back to face him his blade was scything down. Obyron tried to dodge, but was only able to move just enough that the warscythe only took his arm instead of his (un)life. The arm which was not holding the broken blade.

Expecting the strike to be a killing one, Imotekh had overcommitted slightly; just enough to give Oberon an opening. He lunged, closing in an instant with Imhotekh to absolute minimum range where the two were almost directly touching. Now, despite his missing arm, Obyron held the advantage. The warscythe, a two-handed polearm, was not a weapon for a knife fight; and though he was trained and experienced to the peak of perfection in the formal dueling styles of the warscythe, Imotekh had little experience in knife-fighting. Oberon, on the other hand, had begun his career as a duelist in the gutters armed with a shard of broken glass. Now, he was truly in his element.

Imotekh tried to open distance again, but his single mistake had already doomed him. Oberon drove his shattered scythe into a gap in Imotekh's armor, right into his neck, and then severed it entirely. Imotekh's head fell to the pavement, his body remaining rigid and upright, until both were whisked away by the recall mechanism. The force field enclosing the dueling circle fell.

None of the assembled honor guards said a word; there was nothing to say that would not have been redundant. In perfect unison Imotekh's retinue turned and filed back aboard their ship, which then rose into the heavens in the same perfect silence with which it descended. Oberon watched its ascent, hypertechnological eyes refocusing again and again to keep it in view as it rose hundreds of kilometers to reenter Imhotekh's ship in orbit. Then, a brief shimmer, and the ship was gone.

Oberon stood there for a couple of seconds more, then turned and strode back into the palace. He had an arm to replace.

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==Ork Diplomacy==

Editor's Note: Needs to be adjusted, since it was decided Fabricator-General didn't die in the Beheading.

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Deep in the heart of the Imperial Palace, decisions were being made that would affect a galaxy.

“Reports from Triton indicate that most of the moon has been taken by the enemy.”

“Give the order to all remaining forces on Triton to retreat. If the Orks take the outer planets of the Sol system any surviving assets will be blockaded on both sides, and we don’t need them cut off from the rest of our forces.”

“The facility on Cthonia has sent a message indicating some kind of combined Crone/Dark Eldar fleet has descended on the planet.”

“Alert the Fire Wasps and the 299th. Tell them the first chance they get finishing their current missions to head to Cthonia. They probably won’t get there in a while, but unfortunately we are short on free resources.

The room itself was large and spacious. It was a war room, with a large table in the center, currently home to the highest military commanders in the Imperium. At its head was the Steward, eyes closed and seated in an position that seemed almost meditative. He needed to focus. The chair he was sitting in wasn’t the Golden Throne. That little piece of Imperial heritage was sitting on a floor approximately four levels above him. The Steward wasn’t even sure whoever built that thing ever intended for people to sit in it. Instead he was sitting on a much plainer, comfier chair, albeit one built for his frame. He needed it. His mind was good, but he needed absolute concentration to process the sheer amount of information necessary to organize the Imperial war effort. He had to make the right decisions, the lives of millions of people hung in the balance, and ridding his mind of any kind of external distraction helped.

“Intelligence indicates a portion of the main Ork WAAAGH! is diverting from the main fleet. Projections say it seems to be heading to Molech…”

“Enough,” he said, having finally reached his limit.
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The Steward opened his eyes, looking at the three dozen or so concerned faces surrounding him.

“Give me five minutes. I need to take a break.”

With some consternation, the assembled military commanders of the Imperium stepped back, allowing the Steward to get up. Rubbing his face, the Steward walked out of the room and kept walking until he reached a small balcony overlooking a small garden in the Imperial Palace that was mostly untouched by all the excitement. He could feel the tension in the air. People were already anxious over the current state of the war, and recent events had only made things worse, to the point that the Steward had assigned the most significant members of the Imperium bureaucracy a Custodes bodyguard whether they wanted it or not. Truth be told, the Steward was starting to feel the stress eating away at him as well. He hadn’t had decent rest in over a month. Although he didn’t need the sleep of a normal human, even he was reaching his limits. He had spent most of that time sitting there in the war room, exploiting his ability to process information as best he could in order to organize the defense of Old Earth and its surrounding planets. He swore, if he had to sit in that chair for one more minute it was going to be the death of him.

Oscar, last of the Men of Gold, Warlord of Earth, Steward of the Imperium, was not having the best six months. To be honest, things hadn’t been going well for quite some time, what with the whole galaxy-spanning war going on, but the last six months or so were particularly bad.

First, there was the treachery of Grandmaster Drakan Vangorich, who in addition to being a master of the arts of assassination, it seemed, had a terrible sense of timing. One would think that one would wait until after all human life wasn’t under threat of being wiped out by Orks and corrupted Eldar from the Eye of Terror to spring their attempt to assassinate and replace the High Lords of Terra with their own puppet council. The Steward had found it necessary to leave the war room to personally deal with that. Four High Lords and numerous high ranking figures of the Administratum were dead at a time which the Imperium could ill-afford their loss. The loss of the Fabricator-General was a particularly devastating blow. Oscar had liked the previous Fabricator-General, who had been remarkably open to cooperation since the Unification of Sol, whereas his likely replacement, Kelbor-Hal, was a bit flaky. At least it was better than the other possible option for Fabricator-General, Zagreus Kane, who had the personality of steel wool.

Then, the Orks had decided to one-up Vangorich by teleporting an Attack Planet in-between Earth and Mars. The Imperium knew the Orks were coming, they had been blazing a path through the Segmentum Solar and had been expected to arrive on Sol’s doorstep any day now, but to teleport past the fleets blockading the way to the Imperium’s heart and just appear in the Sol System was something no one had expected. To the Imperium’s credit, between Perturabo, Dorn, and a thousand other siege tacticians, the Sol System was one of the most heavily defended systems in the Milky Way, and as soon as the leering iron skull had appeared in the sky it was immediately fired upon by the Sol system’s defense network along with some of the best ships of Battlefleet Solar and the Phalanx itself. Nevertheless, the Attack Planet was undeterred by the assault, shrugging off point defense systems and Nova cannon blasts as if they were mosquito bites.

Nothing even seemed to slow it down as the Attack Planet advanced on Earth, and as the two planets got dangerously close to each other’s Roche Limits the Imperium realized with some horror that the Orks meant to ram the Attack Planet into Earth.

The situation had seemed hopeless until the Phalanx swooped in and rammed itself into the Attack Planet that had once been Ullanor at a fraction of the speed of light, creating a bright flash which for a moment even outshone Sol. Everyone had seen that. Oscar could have sworn he felt that, even though he knew no vibrations could be transmitted through space. After that, the hollowed out planet shot through the Sol system like a billiard ball before finally teleporting out of the system somewhere around Pluto. Someone, apparently a man based on the voxcast that had gone out from the Phalanx just before the insane stunt, had commandeered the 30 kilometer ship and ordered a mass exodus before taking a skeleton crew of the bare minimum of people necessary to pilot the Phalanx and ramming it into the Attack Planet, though no one knew exactly who.

Oscar stopped. The man had singly-handedly saved Earth and the entire Imperium, and no one even knew his name.

It would be child’s play to figure out who it was, of course, assuming they weren’t all killed by Orks first. They had his voice on record, giving the order to pick up the survivors right before the Phalanx rammed itself into the Attack Planet. Still, the fact that no one on Earth seemed to know who they owed their lives to was a sobering thought. He would have liked to think that single act had killed the Beast and saved the Imperium, but reports indicated that a significant number of lesser Rokks and Ork ships had survived the loss of the Attack Planet and were currently regrouping for another push somewhere in the Oort cloud. Estimates said they would be ready to make another push for Earth in a matter of months. At the same time the primarchs and their legions were gradually trickling back into the Sol system. Sanguinius and Vulkan were expected to be back within the week. Angron was already planetside. A few primarchs were not likely to be able to get back to Earth anytime soon. Lion El’Jonson was still trying to sort out his legion’s massive rebellion issues. Perturabo was in a coma for the foreseeable future. Guilliman, Horus, and Curze were all still trying to hamstring the Beast’s hordes.

There were even reports of eldar entering the system to reinforce humanity, courtesy of Eldrad and their allies among that alien race. Regardless of what Oscar wanted, it looked like Sol was going to turn into a battleground. Not for the first time since the war began, Oscar found himself wondering if accepting Eldrad’s crazy proposal to rescue Isha from Nurgle’s mansion had been a good idea. Perhaps the war would have been inevitable, Chaos was truly a threat to humanity and the Ruinous Powers never seemed to like the idea of something that they couldn’t control, but having seen the cost of directly antagonizing said entities part of him was starting to regret having made the deal.

Oscar was so lost in his thoughts that he almost didn’t notice the small Administratum scribe running up to him.

“My lord,” he said, clearly out of breath from having run the entire way, “I bring important news.”

“What is it?” the Steward said, silently wincing at being called ‘my lord’.

“Three diplomats have just touched down on the landing pad in Uralia. They seek an audience with the Steward of the Imperium.”

The Steward grimaced. It appeared Draco Vangorich wasn’t the only person with a horrible sense of timing. Just before the War of the Beast, the Imperium had been in negotiations with the Auretian Technocracy. The Technocracy was a highly advanced human civilization spanning multiple star systems, with several technologies that appeared to be based off of STC designs that were previously unknown to the Imperium. Right before the War of the Beast broke out the Imperium had been in negotiations with the Auretian Technocracy to bring them into the fold as a Survivor Civilization. Although the Auretians were a peaceful people and amenable to the idea of joining the Imperium, they were not going to just roll over and give in to the Imperium’s demands, and the negotiations over the conditions of them joining the Imperium and the concessions both sides were willing to make had been particularly intense. Unfortunately, it seemed that total galactic war was not enough to stop that debate from continuing.

"Great, more problems,” the Steward muttered, “Tell them they will have to wait; I’m kind of busy right now.”

"But sir. The ambassadors aren't from the Auretian Technocracy. They're from the Orks."

And in response to this statement, perhaps the greatest revelation in the War of the Beast since the appearance of Attack Planet Ullanor, there was only one thing the Steward could say.

“What.”

"Nuhnuhnuhnono. No. This is a bad idea Oscar, I can't let you do this."

"I'm doing this, Arik, whether you like it or not."

The two gold-clad figures, the last Man of Gold and the gilded man who had watched his back since the Warlord’s armies had first marched out from Terrawatt, briskly walked down the halls of the Imperial Palace. The Steward had given the order to let the Orks be heard and had told the Administratum adept to have someone escort the Ork “diplomats” to have an audience in front of the assembled military commanders of Old Earth in the war room. If the Orks suddenly felt they had something important to say he wanted everyone to hear it.

"With all due respect this is likely some sort of trap. Most likely a spy to send information back to the Beast or some kind of sabotage ploy. They're Orks. Diplomacy just isn't in their nature. Since when have the Orks ever shown any signs of higher intelligence?"

"When we found out they had built an empire at Gorro. When we found out that it wasn't the only one. When we found out they could organize themselves into a galaxy-spanning WAAAGH!"

Arik groaned, but Oscar knew that response. He had won this debate, for now.

Having reached their destination, the door slid open for the two men and the two entered the war room. As the Steward entered the war room from the side, he looked over at the numerous generals of the Imperium, who were debating the best course of reaction over the map of the Sol system and its immediate neighbors in the center of the table. In the Steward’s absence, they had picked up where the Steward had left off, arranging for the inevitable Siege of Terra, as the Fabricator-General had called it.

Chief among them was the short woman standing at the side of the table, who seemed to be taking the lead in organizing the Imperium’s defense during Oscar’s momentary break, mostly by barking orders at men that were nearly twice her size. Honen Mu, former Uxor of the Geno Five-Two Chilliad.

Honen Mu was far from the most imposing figure, the recaff-colored, dark-haired woman being no more than five-foot flat and probably weighing only forty kilograms soaking wet, but by Terrawatt if she wasn’t one of the best strategists that Oscar had ever seen. Give her a regiment of soldiers, and within a few days she would have them dancing on the battlefield. Hers and the other guy’s.

When the Imperium had first encountered the Chilliad during the Unification Wars, Mu was already at the point where the rejuvenants wouldn’t do much more than prolong the use of the Chilliad’s psychic powers, or cept, which eventually burned out some time during the Unification of Sol. Although most Uxors retired to non-combat roles after their cept burned out, Mu had proved talented enough that she not only remained in the Imperial military, but had actually gotten promoted. She may have lost the cept that made Uxors of the Geno Five-Two Chilliad so dangerous in battlefield-level engagements, but she hadn’t lost any of her wider scale campaign management ability. Mu hadn’t been using her psychic powers as a crutch, she was genuinely talented at strategy. In terms of long-term theater-scale planning Guilliman was probably her only equal, and Oscar hated to think of what the two of them would do if they ever decided to go at it to see who the best was. Probably destroy half a sector in the process.

“Mu,” he said, nodding to each of the generals in turn, “MaSade, von Asterberg, Temoc. How are things going?”

“The Imperium hasn’t fallen apart in the five minutes you stepped out to take a break,” Mu said, speaking for the assembled generals and administrators of the Imperium. “So I think we’re doing fair enough.”

“I trust you all heard the news regarding the visitors we are about to be receiving?”

“How could we not? Ork diplomats. Are you serious? When we it we made the messenger repeat herself just to make sure she hadn’t misheard something.”

On that note, the door on the far side of the room slid open with a hiss.

“And here are the figures of the hour,” Taranis muttered under his breath.

Three imposing figures strode into the room, led by another stuttering Administratum adept. There were three of them, a leader and two hangers-on, all heavy-set and ape-like in proportion. The two flanking figures were nearly seven feet in height, whereas their leader could probably look the Steward in the eye. The three were clad in simple robes, which obscured almost every feature of their body. If it weren’t for the reinforced leather armor on the figures’ joints and their leader’s three meter long iron staff, topped with a roaring metal Ork skull at the tip of the scepter, he would have thought they were kinebrach. The Administratum adept continued to gibber, though one would admit that would be the normal reaction to dealing with a figure twice their size.

“And…as you can see, the Steward is already here, awaiting your message,” he said, clearly trying to square away his diplomacy training with his natural fight-or-flight reaction, “Food and drink are available for all diplomats to the Imperium. And, of course, if you need an interpreter, all you need to do is ask.”

The lead ork reached up and pulled back his hood.

“Don’t need an interpreter. We tell you how to surrender, you surrender. Easy.”

The silence in the room was palpable. The Imperials all looked at the Ork as if he had just stood up and spoke Gothic. Which, to be fair, he had. Not just Gothic at that, Oscar grimly noted to himself, but fluent Gothic. Yes, the intonation sounded like it came from a tortured Grox, but there was none of the hesitation, none of the misplaced emphasis typical of those who spoke Gothic as a second language. The Ork spoke Gothic as if he had spoken it his entire life.

The Ork seemed slightly bemused by the Imperials’ reaction, as if he was taking pleasure into finally stunning the yappy humies into silence. Nevertheless, he soon seemed to grow annoyed by the continued silence. He had a job to do here, and if the humies wouldn’t start the conversation, he would.

“Oh come on now, don’t look at me like that. Name’s Bezhrak. Here as a diplomat, just like I said, swear to Mork. I even brought you a little gift as a...whaddya call it...a peace offering.”

The Ork reached into his robe and pulled out a shiny, dark object, hefting it across the table. It resembled a Custodian's helm but with a red, ponytail-like crest and a narrower face visor. Oscar recognized that helm.

Jenetia Krole's helm.

Oscar's eyes darted to the Custodian, noticing his hand was gripped so tight around his guardian spear it would have probably left finger marks if it wasn't made of auramite.

"Taranis," he said, voice level, though he wasn’t sure if it was Taranis or himself he was trying to keep calm.

“Fought good and hard this one did. Made some of our Weirdboyz heads explode just by being near ‘em. Course, even the best warriors can’t hold up when you’re being piled on by a few hundred boyz at once. Killed nearly fifty of us before they finally went down. We know you humans have some weird rituals you perform whenever one of your best warriors gets killed, so we thought we’d bring what was left of her back as a token of…

"You monster!" Arik exploded, "Have you an idea what..."

Arik was obviously about to go on some moral spiel about how barbaric the Ork's actions were, but he was stopped by a sudden larger-than-usual excitement-induced coughing fit.

"And what are you going to do about it, shinyboy, cough blood all over me?"

Bezhrak sneered, before apparently remembering something.

“Oh, that reminds me. A mutual friend wanted me to pass this along to you.”

The Ork drew a coin from his robes and flicked it at the Steward, the coin bouncing across the table a couple of times before finally rolling to a stop at the Steward’s feet. It was a gold coin, albeit one that had been heavily stained with dried, blackened blood. Human blood, ork blood didn’t stain that color. The Steward didn’t want to know where that blood came from. Embossed on the face of the coin was a symbol that was very familiar to the Steward.

The symbol of Ursh.

"And what is that?" The Steward said, eyes darting to the symbol like he had just spotted a venomous snake.

"Oh, that? That's just a gift from an old friend of yours. Couldn't remember the chap's name, he just kept going on and on about all his titles. Said he was busy dealing with the khan, the priest, the slave, and the sorcerer, but he just wanted you to know he was back and that he'd get around to seeing you soon enough.”

“I highly doubt you were sent here just to give gifts. You said you had a message from the Beast? What is it?”

“Want to get straight to business then. Respectable. All right then. The great Beast has you by the guts. Struggle, he’ll rip ‘em out. Surrender, and all you lose is your pride.”

“And that’s it,” the Steward said as dryly as possible.

“Well, you’d have to submit to Ork rule of course. We’ll even let you keep your homeworld, even though you took ours.”

All the mirth briefly disappeared from the Ork’s voice at that last line.

“Oh,” Bezhrak said, slipping back into the role of smooth diplomat, “One other thing. You tell us where the pansies are keeping the lead pansie that the other group of spiky pansies wants back. That gets them off our back and then, as far as we’re concerned, the war is over.”

“And what exactly would Ork rule look like?” the Steward said rhetorically.

“Oh I think you already know what that would look like,” Bezhrak said, a hit of smugness in his voice.

Indeed, the Steward did have some inclination as to what Ork rule would look like. When the Orks descended on a world, occasionally some of the local people would submit and worship them as gods, considering them agents of divine wrath made manifest. If there was one thing humanity seemed to excel at, it was convincing themselves to worship powerful natural entities as gods, something he knew all too well. Sometimes he really felt embarrassed by some of the things his species did. Those that the Orks deemed sufficiently Orky were allowed to fight alongside the Orks as cannon fodder, painting themselves green and firing autoguns into the air. Digganobz, they called themselves.

And the Steward had seen firsthand from the helmetcams of the Iron Warriors on Prax what the Orks did to those they deemed insufficiently orky. Turned into cattle, teeth knocked out and pumped up with steroids and growth hormones to the point that they could barely be described as bipedal, let alone human. Brains insensate to the point that all they could do is open their mouths upon stimulation by light to have nutrient-filled industrial hoses forced down their mouths. Personally it almost reminded him of the Slaugth.

Bezhrak looked around the war room. “So?” he asked, his expression basically screaming that he was surprised the assembled humans hadn’t answered immediately “Give up or die? Choose.”

The room remained deathly silent. Bezhrak looked back to the other orks, as if seeking affirmation that they were all seeing the same thing, before turning back to the humans.

“Don’t want to die? Last chance?”

The Steward broke the silence.

“I think you know our answer.”

Bezhrak sighed.

“Useless,” he said, “worse than snotlings”.

He looked over to his fellows, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

“No reasoning with humans. They’re just illogical. Break ‘em, kill ‘em, eat ‘em, they understand that. Try to talk to them in terms they understand, and they turn around and do the exact opposite. They say they want to live but try and offer that to them and all of a sudden they want to fight, which is fine by me, but…”

"Enough."

The Steward's voice was flat and monotone, low but just on the edge of hearing. Almost more felt than heard.

"You send us veiled threats in the form of gifts. You give us an offer that we cannot possibly fulfill. This isn't a peace offering. It's intimidation. What is the purpose of all this?"

Bezhrak snorted.

“You look down on us. Call us ‘barbaric’. Look at us being proper Orky and think we’re dumb, think you’re better than us. Because you’re ‘civilized’. But look at us now. Look at what the ‘barbarians’ have done. It’s not the ‘civilized’ folk of the galaxy who beat you back all the way to your home planet and come knocking at your door, now is it? We’re much tougher than you give us credit for. You push us, we push back. You hit us on the head, and we become more clever. You try to kill us, and we just come back for another go.

And look where being ‘civilized’ has got you. You lot just let someone walk right into your halls and insult you all right to your faces. But you wouldn’t dare harm ‘em. Because they’re a diplomat. I mean, after all, it wouldn’t be the civilized thing to do.”

The Steward stood, his hand grabbing the ear of the chair and snapping it with a loud crack. His face was a mask of stone, only his eyes showing the sheer anger burning underneath.

“I have, tried, time and again, to be reasonable. Tried to be optimistic, to assume the best in people. And I keep getting it thrown back in my face. Well then. Maybe it’s time I stopped being reasonable. Perhaps it’s time I get unreasonable.”

Bezhrak grinned, teeth and tusks bared.

“So what are you going to d…”

The Steward thrust his hand up in a claw-like gesture, palm facing him, the sheer psychic force stopping the Ork' retort in his throat. As if crushing an orange, the Steward slowly clenched his hand into a fist, the Ork’s body crumpling in time with the flexing of his fingers. As he died, the Ork screamed “WAAagh!”, like many of his kin. But it was a high-pitched, wheezing WAAAGH!, one that if people heard it would have sounded more like a cry of desperation than a battle cry. Though that may have just been the air being forced from his lungs. The Ork’s body burned with golden fire, spores erupting into golden motes before they could even hit the ground. If he didn’t know better, the Steward could almost have sworn he saw fear in those eyes.

The remains of what had once been the Ork known as Bezhrak hit the ground with a wet plop., both Orks and humans shocked by what they had just seen. Then the Steward snapped his head to look at the remaining Orks, methodical and almost robotic in his motion.

“I assume the rest of you are smart enough to carry a message?”

The Steward did not even wait for the Orks to answer.

“That”, he said, pointing at the fist-sized, leaking remains of the Ork on the ground, “That is my message. Go back to the Beast and tell him that is my answer to his demands. Now get out.”

The Orks left the room as quickly as they could, having seen what happened to their leader. The rest of the room looked between another, unsure as of what to do. Even Arik Taranis and Honen Mu seemed torn between whether they should come to the Steward's aid or leave him be. For most of the people in the room the Steward was their leader, and for many he was as close to them as a family member or a friend. However, they had also just seen their friend crumple a full grown ork into a lump the size of a beverage can. Finally, it was Mu who worked up the courage to break the silence.

"Are you...okay?"

Oscar took a moment to compose himself, taking a deep breath in and out. He had let his emotions get the better of him, and that was wrong. He wished Malcador was here. Malcador had known how to get through to him better than anyone else. It was times like this that he wished his adoptive father was still around.

“Yes,” he said, easing back into the role of stoic, unbreakable Steward of the Imperium, “I’m fine.”

“So what happens now?” Arik said, looking over at the remains of the ork on the ground. "It looks like diplomacy went about as well as expected."

“I don’t know,” the Steward said, once again feeling that gnawing feeling of uncertainty in his gut, “I just don’t know.”

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</div>

== Nails ==

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My eyes grow dim. My strength is spent. My rage is quenched. My blade is clean.

I was born in poverty, I think. Simple eyes of a child do not see clearly. Was it poverty? We weren’t unhappy. At lest I don’t think we were.

I can’t remember their faces any more. That’s a lie. I can remember their faces. I always will. Mother. Father. Sister. Brother. Grandmother. Uncle. We all lived together in one small home above the bakers shop. I think that’s what my parents were. Bakers. Not warlords. Not priests. Not great warriors or adepts or wizards. I wanted to be like them. I should have been like them.

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I don’t remember what happened to them. That’s a lie. I do. I do. Oh God I do. I don’t want to. If I do I am that screaming, weeping child again. No more. No more. Never again.

I was weak and tried to run. Better if I had run back into the burning home. Better to have ended there.

When the Warlord found me it was at the head of army like no other. All I had know of armies were cyber-flagellants and howling marauders spurned on by men with whips. But not these. They marched with eerie harmony and brought death with precision. No berserker charge, no frenzy, no bloodlust just the steady unstoppable wave pouring into Carthisisa.

I was a pit fighter. I murdered people for the entertainment of other people. They gave men the pick of the slave pens for my troubles. They expected me to indulge base urges. They wanted me to fall like them. Be a Not-Person. I picked for the sake of pity and charity of the most wretched and hopeless.

One of the giants came to my door and I stood before him, my adopted children behind me. I was big but he was a two head taller than me at the least and clad in armour like a tank. Expressionless eye lenses swept over me and mine and I prepared to sell myself dear. I don’t know how but I knew he met my eye through that helmet and he looked away and moved on.

Scholars like I am not sometimes say that history goes in circles. That things happen because they have happened. One tragedy only needing one just like it as cause for more. In that moment I felt the hateful wheel of fate wobble. I was still alive. My family were not enslaved, out masters were dead, we were free.

At the head of this army was the man who I would spend most of my life serving. I would give my life for the sake of my sons and daughters. I killed for him. I lead his soldiers. I became like the monsters he had set upon my masters. I gave my health and my sanity for him.

Why? Because he didn’t ask that I kneel. He demanded that I stand. That I never again bow my head to unworthy men.

I lived longer than I should have. Longer than I was expected. I watched my children grow up and become mothers and fathers and grandparents and eventually die. A few even managed to die peaceful. It seems a novel way to go. I will soon go that way, to no ones surprise more than my own. All bar one of my children are gone, one way or the other. I am told I have many descendants but I have not met them. They are distant to me but I wish them only goodness, to be and to have. Kharn is still with me. I remember when he was a snotty nosed child with scabby knees. He has grown and I am proud.

He is a new type of soldier for a new era. I am a relic of an old one.

I feel it now. I sit in my chair and I know that I have seen my last sun rise. My heart slows. My bones grow cold, but I feel warm. Though I am filled with darkness the light will lift me away.

I have regrets. I have lived too long not to. Few will mourn my passing.

I will not see the sunrise and that is good.

+++ Data-slate entry attributed to Angron the Red Angel, Primarch of the Warhounds +++

+++ Property of Carthissia National Museum of Posterity +++

[[Special:Contributions/204.210.204.209|204.210.204.209]] Those Nails you carried in your heart should never have been yours to carry. We will carry your name but those nails have been laid to rest [[Special:Contributions/204.210.204.209|204.210.204.209]]

> "Nails" Addendum made by unknown hand several years after acquisition of the Data-slate. Meaning has been of much speculation down the years but no conclusive answers of who or why has been gathered.

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</div>

== New Neighbors ==

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Ambassador Cyrus Kebede was not typically used to being summoned at such an unreasonable hour. No day in his opinion should contain more than one five o’clock. He knew it wasn’t the Por’s fault. The blue bastards had applied for a replacement Aun three years ago and were still waiting. Por’El Sana’ta Atha was doing the best he could with what he had. For one thing he was still and El when he should by all justice have been and O and that wasn’t making his job any easier, Acting O was a poor substitute for actual O. Especially with rival El’s on the register sheet. But truth be told O or not Tau biologically required less sleep than humans. Or at least less sleep than Ambassador Cyrus Kebede did, especially at the age he was with his grey hair and clicking knees.

Two lean and powerful Fire Caste stood before the door, splendid in their gear and menacing in their armaments as was proper. The inside of the room was… comfy Cyrus assumed. Or at least tried to be by Administratum style. Books around the walls, a desk, dark green leather chairs and carpet. He couldn’t be mad about it, not really. They got heir ideas of what was in style from what they saw on vids. Hw knew damn well that Tau had shot kneel-stools that they half knelt and half stat on and their desks were tables and much shorter.

The ornately decorated door parted and indeed he did see something that was of interest to him. The chair with it’s back to him was not as he had assumed as empty as it looked and a diminutive figure sat in it, covered in layers of old looking cloth.

“Oh” Cyrus said rather flatly. “Oh”.

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“You have met them? Good, that’s going to save us all a lot of time” El'Atha said. Clearly he was happy or at least relieved about something.

Cyrus hesitantly walked around to the front of the chair and let out an involuntary groan. “It’s a Hrud. Late juvenile, young adult judging by the size”.

“Wonderful, you have familiarity!”

“Sadly”. Ambassador Cyrus turned towards the figure in the chair several sizes too big for it, it’s feet hidden by rags but presumably dangling above the floor. “how many are coming?”

The hood of the heavy layered robes turned towards him, he caught a glint of what might have been compound eye and a voice like something slithering over a tomb a thousand years dry “Me. Me my kin. Me my folk. Other folk. Time is now of travel, time is now of move. Me my kin, others. We move. Need come here, need scurry, have night here, have places of night always here. Me my kin we Linger here”.

“Can we persuade you not to?” Asked ambassador Cyrus who was fully expecting a weeks worth of duplicate form filling by this time tomorrow. Or actually later today.

“Hold on, hold on. This is a Tau world, I invited you her for your experience, not to claim authority in the matter” said the water caste. It wasn’t an angry statement, they had known each other too long.

“Maybe, Maybe for me my kin. Not for others. We not asking. Can’t stop. Mirror Devils, Mirror Devils awaken from long sleep. Long time. We hide now for now. Hide in the shadows of others. Linger. Once we once built such worlds as this, now no more. Now Linger. Hide. Scurry far from light. Stay safe. Linger. So our Lord tell us. So we do. Maybe me my kin, maybe we leave if asked. Not others. They not me my kin. They come. Can’t stop”. The figure reached a hand further than expected, slowly towards the tea tray on the desk and from the overlong sleeves fell a carved bone totem. The sleeve retracted with the jar of honey.

“Is this a Migration?” Asked the increasingly old feeling Kebede

“Maybe. Maybe more yes. More yes then no. Other come. The godly but godless they build places to hide. We linger there. We linger here. Need to linger and hide”.

“Atha, my friend, I would advise that you don’t try to stop them. You won’t be able to if you tried”.

“Why is th-“ started the grey skinned tau.

Cyrus hoped that what he saw was an optical illusion. He really did no creature should be able to survive being folded 270 degrees on a horizontal axis and then folded in on itself like a collapsing house of cards. The creature vanished and the quill fell from Por’El Sana’ta Atha’s hand as they both stared in horror at the place the chair and it’s occupant had been.

“How did he do that?”

“No idea.”

“Is it teleporting?”

“No”

“Then he is still here but hiding”

“No. He’s gone. The door isn’t air tight”

“It hasn’t opened since you came in, Cy”

“Doesn’t matter. It will have folded itself thin enough to get between the door and the frame or under the door maybe. We don’t know how they do it”.

“Then how can the Empire-“

“Listen, my good friend Atha, there is an old saying amongst my people; Better in here pissing out than out there pissing in. This applies to the Hrud. They are only dangerous if cornered and they don’t take what will be missed. They instinctively try to hide and so will try not to be noticed by you and you people. If they are here the only way to stop them getting to the rest of your Empire would be to quarantine this planet for the rest of time. I suspect that’s not an option”

“It is most certainly is not”

“Then the Tau Empire is going to get a Hrud colony. Don’t worry the rest of the Imperium has them, even the craftworlds”.

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</div>

== Once More Unto the Breach ==

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It feels like a warm fire but smells like the first fat drops of rain on deep summer dust. He remembered that smell from childhood, one of the few things he could. There was grass between his toes and the distant sound of surf on shingle, he raised his hands to his brow to block the sun as he looked towards the beach. His hands were not right. He remembered this day, one of the last perfect days of childhood summer before what seemed eternal war called him but these hands were not right. These were not the hands of children, these were hands of a warrior, gnarly, leathery, scared with crooked fingers on the right and the ends missing of the middle and ring fingers on the left. And the raven marks of his kin on their backs. Warrior hands. Soldier hands. Not the hands of a child, his old hands.

There was a hand upon his shoulder firm and strong but not unkind. He knew that hand and had stood in the presence of it's owner many times though he had not yet looked upon her. Death; she stood with him always. As a warrior of the Kraken Bay she was the deity he had to favour above the others of his tribes pantheon and in return she put her gentle hand upon him in silent benediction. She had been with him now as his longest and truest friend. His tribe were long dead and forgotten to history now, the land they once dwelt in made unrecognizable, he had outlived notions of kin reluctantly.

He looked towards the warm sun, the sound of the shingle and the sea. The smell of it on the breeze. The hand squeezed his shoulder slightly, welcoming, inviting him to turn around and come with her. He knew that with her was his children, his wife, his siblings, his parents and legions of people he wanted, desperately and painfully wanted, to see again.

CLANG!

Murmurings from the multitudes above for a moment, the comforting and more recent smalls of old socks, camphor, engine oil and a hint of beer fading into the blackness, the comforting blackness in the safe depths of his sarcophagus.

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The blade missed taking his head off by a worryingly slim margin and instead deflected across the crown of his helm with a deafening clang, a bestial howl of foam flecks and stink and a similar roar from Russ, Primarch and fellow Dog Soldier of the Sixth Legion, brought the axe down on it's head like the storm god Thukko. The Ambush was working perfectly, the orks had them completely surrounded when they sprang from the ground and dropped from the trees, now they could charge in any damn direction they wanted and still get some trophy teeth. For lesser men this would be stupid to the point of suicide but they were far from lesser men and the orks did not know who they were fucking with.

A large red creature hopped over the falling brute and clamped down hard on his left hand, he swiftly brought his right hand up to tear it off, taking finger chunks with it leaving the axe dangling on it's chain and swinging back up to his blood slick hand. Bringing the creature swiftly up to his mouth and dug his own choppers into it's head and biting out it's brain as his axe caught another green creature in a chin splitting upper cut. Plate and chain and flack steaming with the blood of the slain, heart thudding like a war drum on amphetamine, and all about the screams of the dying and the damned. This was living, this was the white hot living of a Dog Soldier in the Imperial Army.

And her hand upon his shoulder, her breath in his ear singing to him softly. Comforting. When the weight gets too much, when the pain is too much to endure, when he stumbled for the last time she would be there to catch him when he fell. She would wait for him, he was one of her flock.

CLANG!

The smell of turpentine, expensive incense and cheap air fresheners. Muffled and muted voices growing clearer and closer and more familiar filtering into his sleepy metal box. He didn't much care what they had to say, it wouldn't matter to him.

The grass was brown and grey now, the shingle blasted out of the beach, even the coastline was a different shape. He couldn't find his village to say nothing of his house. How could he bury his wife if he couldn't find her? How could he bury his children? The tears came freely now, great hacking undignified blobs of salt water mingling into the ash mud of the radiation burned grass. Seemingly of it's own volition his hand moved towards his belt to the simple home forged steel eating knife his father had given him an eternity ago, pride shining in his eyes as a humble blacksmiths son went off to be a noble warrior of the Unification. His father had been buried long ago. Buried properly, an apple pip in one hand and a piece of bone in the other and old mother Varða raising the family, the tribe of Kraken Bay, in song to the gods of a man who lived not just well but good.

Who would sing for his people now? For his wife and children and their friends and neighbors? There was only silence. He would join them in that silence. He felt the metal part his beard hairs. Her hand was on his shoulder, she would catch him and hold him close. He was one of her flock.

He had once charged through a literal garden of despair, in a Hell like no other to raid the halls of a mad god. At the time it had been the most horrific thing he had ever seen. He now had new and terrible perspective.

The knife was slapped from his hand just as it pricked flesh and drew the first drop of blood. Turning he half expected to see her face. In his grief he had not heard the foot falls of his Primarch and friend.

"Not like this, old friend. Not like this. Not by your own hand. Take that hate, take that sorrow, hold it crush it 'till it get hot and hold it 'till it burns. This that we feel; let it keep us warm on cold nights, let it fuel our retribution. I promise you this, for every sorrow they have inflicted on our people we we repay them, we will take a steep bloodprice".

He looked out to the sea, to the setting sun, and knew that no matter how long he lived the price would never be filled. Not even when all the stars burned red.

CLANG!

"Has he died in my absence" The voice was resonant and very familiar. If a chunk of depleted uranium could talk it would sound like that.
"A heart still beats in that chest, though whether he can be awakened now is a matter between himself and his old gods" This voice less so, it was a buzzing thing, half or more machine. Though not cold like stainless steel but warm and welcoming like burnished brass and polished copper. Feminine, if metal and machine could be. Not that he could care, it no longer mattered to him.

The voices grew more distant again, fading away before dreams of other times and old memories once more.

CLANG!

"Oi, you still in there?" It was the first voice, all lead and half-life "Is this a box with my old friend or is it a carrion holding coffin?"

CLANG!
CLANG!

That's what that insufferable noise was, someone was hammering on his shell! OF ALL THE IMPERTINENCE! Weren't the half-dead allowed some sleep? He crash booted his eyes and stood up suddenly, servos and pistons springing to powerful life, his fortress form standing up to it's full and terrifying height. Leithon the Wraithguard, jester of Cegorach, huntsman of Kurnous and fellow veteran of the Long War and the raid on the mansion.

"You can't be sleeping at a time like this. Do you know what time it is?" He asked standing there dressed in animal skins and paint made from marrow and egg white and ash and dust. "it's time for another adventure, are you ready?"

"Ready? Ready?! Bitch please, ready does not even begin to fucking describe it!" Bjorn stepped forth from his workshop berth like the footsteps of doom, adamantium fist raised high above his head as lightning crackled about his clawed fingers. Doubts and horrors of the past melting away for a time and for that time he was young again and full of fire.

"To the Great Hall, somewhere up there is ale worth drinking and a mug big enough for me to drink from and I have slept for far to long"

Some hours and some kegs later Bjorn settled down, the bloodclaws and greyhairs alike eager to know what had roused him from his long slumber. All eyes turned to the wraith guard and his animal skin and woad wearing cohorts.

"We hunt a strange breed of monster, a creature of primordial awfulness, born of ancient sins and vices, it skulks in it's lair of a world made into hell where my kin once dwelt and once called itself kin to my kind" Leithon opened his hand and formed a hologram of a fearsome creature. It might have been an eldar once but blessings of gods too terrible to contemplate had made it so no longer. "It is beyond me and my followers to land the kill but not so the fearsome children of Fenris" A cheer of agreement resounded through the warriors gathered round to see the image of the monster "it is cunning and it is powerful and it is evil beyond words. Who here wishes to visit misery upon it?" Another cheer, another drink.

"Then we leave at first light" declared the ancient Bjorn, Fellhanded warrior of Kraken Bay.

The moment the rays of the mourning sun struck the doors of The Fang the waiting wolves and huntsmen charged out into the snow and the dark pine trees where once a king had walked and vanished. Unlike that old and infamous king of antiquity for the most part they returned several months later, though most had new scars and a troubled expressions, at least the younger men did.

To the greyhairs and the hunters and especially Bjorn and Leithon such sorrows and pain were old acquaintances. More ale was drunk, meat consumed and acts of casual intimacy perpetrated when appropriate. In time the revelry died away. In time Leithon once more said his farewells to old friend Bjorn and he and his huntsmen went to find new game. In time Bjorn felt tired once more, the years settling heavily upon his shoulders and he made his way back to the tunnels beneath The Fang, to a comforting berth in a familiar workshop with the sounds of home murmuring from above and he closed his eyes once more.

He could still feel her hand upon his shoulder, comforting. His gods had not abandoned him, he would turn to her in time. Maybe a time soon and she would catch him when he fell. When the years got too heavy, the sorrows too deep. He was one of her flock. One day soon.

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</div>

== Omega Girl ==

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''"Eldar, like others sapients, pass from a vital period between the unconcerned childhood and the responsibilities of the adult age. During our teen years, we must cope with changes, biological, psychological and spiritual, that wreak havoc on all levels of our lives. Until this point, there are not many differences from others species with similar vital rhythms. But... Those differences create an abyss that other beings can´t understand. Eldars teens must cope with two maddening factors that define our society. The first is that our minds were groomed be the Old Ones to enjoy the thrill of battle, to soar over its chaos unscattered to their horrors and to process millions of factors in an instant... This great gift, is our greatest weakness, as we just can´t simply wind down. Emotions, urges, passion, instinct, pain, regret... An Eldar feels them with the same intensity and can become lost, a prisoner in his own mind. And here comes the second factor to our curse... "She Who Thirsts" that accursed false-god who claim entitlement to our souls. That being born of our own sins and hubris is always in the periphery of our lives. Mother Isha and the soul stones give us some measure of protection against that unnatural hunger but are nearly not enough. We in the craftworlds must restrict our own minds and emotions to have a chance of survival. That is the reason for the rigidity of our society and the Path System... Is so hard to understand that a young mind can feel overwhelmed, trapped between its urges and needs?. We try again and again to make it easy for the younger generation... but not always succeded. Sometimes we fail and a young mind is lost."''<br>
---From The Living Chronicles of Féin-Cineálan. As written by Osurad---

The Council Chamber was closed to procedures, only Osurad, Farseer of the Féin-Cineálan Enclave and Lynn Minwen, up-an-coming Musician are present. It was easy to differentiate them, he in his formal clothes, regal and not showering emotions and she... Being she, pacing wall to wall, nervous and altered.

"You can´t do this to me!"
"Interesting. Lynn, I don´t feel that the time has transformed enough to accept that perspective of my reality."
"Cut that Farseer crap! You can´t force me"
"Hmm... Your vulgarization of the High Tongue is appalling. I think that less time loss in human-derived holofilms and more in your studies must be enforced."
"..."
"Well, it seems you are learning. One of the things I want you to understand is that it wasn´t me who decided in this course of action. The council AND your parents were consulted, and after a long deliberation, it was decided that you need discipline and a somewhat more broad education. It seems that we can´t give you that, so... the Imperial Guard will open his arms to a new recruit."
"But... But I don´t want to! I must change Path and... and the Governor has invited me to a party! Half the nobility will be there to hear me!"
"I´m sure you can continue practicing your Moonlyre skills as a hobby. And the Nobility can understand your little tenure in the Guardians."
"That... That is... This is... a witch's hunt! I´m not The..."

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There was a little change in the stance of Osurad. Just a change of weight and balance. For a human it was barely perceptible and inconsequent, but for an Eldar? It was the same as he shouts in rage. She stops in her pacing and shut up, quickly putting the hands over her mouth on instinctive fear. He walks slowly to the young Eldar, towering over her, and obviously displeased.

"Lynn Mynwen, don´t dare mention that title in our conversation! You talk about The Fall without respect! You talk about our lack of integration with the humans without knowledge! That end now! This is not about some childish prank! You, my child, has let a group of strangers roam through the security of this Enclave!"
"But, they are the Inquisition! They are the good guys!"
"The good guys!? You believe that I'm going to swallow that excuse! You know nothing about the Inquisition! I foresee their arrival and informed The Council! Whether you want it or not, the security protocols stand for a reason! Sigh... The sad part is that you don´t help them for a service to the community. You do it only to have some "Fun""

Lynn stood there, silent, adverting the Farseer gaze. Then slowly turn back and begin to left the room. As she crosses the door, half-crystallized tears begin to fall her cheeks. Her mind was in turmoil, racing through the scene again and again, and during a moment the mind barriers constructed during thirty years weakened, letting her hear the howling of Slaanesh. She barely registered the embrace of her parents and their words of comfort as they slowly guide Lynn towards their home.

Sometime later, she recovered from her grieving trance in her home, sorrounded by her parents arms. Slowly, to no break their own meditations, Lynn disengaged the mess of members and left. She needed to talk to somebody that doesn´t judge her, that listen to her, to a friend. And she can seek it in the form of Caellatyra, the only other girl of her age, currently serving her novitiate in the Isha's temple. As she cross the temple doors, a little kid runs to her legs and grab them. Fortunately, the All-Mother has given her people the reflexes to prevent the two to collapse in a heap. Giggling, the pair begins to play, trying desperately to exceed one another in the tickle fight. All this end when the little kid is raised to the heavens as Caellatyra take charge of her rambunctious ward.

"No... Let go! Want Ly!"
"Shh... Kaenel you are going to awake the other kids."

Half smiling, half sniffling the kid let the young priestess take him to the creche. As they walk the temple´s hall, Lynn reflected about being a priestess. For some time she(Like all girls) toyed with the idea of join Caellatyra, but in the end, she choose to not. The problem was, that she did not see herself popping child after child in existence. Her friend on the contrary, not only wanted a family, is that she has been blessed be Isha with the sort of body that humans dig. Finally, the trio reaches the creche and tuck the little Kaenel. After some moments the kid falls asleep and the young women begin to talk.

"Well Lynn, in the end, what is gonna be your punishment"
"Hm... They are going to exile me and erase my name from the Chronicles."
"Lynn don´t joke about that."
"I am only half-joking. They are going to send me to the Imperial Guard."
"Hm... And the problem is?"
"What!? I am a political exile! They fear my ideas!"
"Lynn can´t you take it seriously?."
"Ok, ok, but you must do the same!"

Caellatyra stands there a moment, looking to the sleeping children. Then walk to the altar and slowly pass her hands over a series of whraithbone effigies, as she offers a prayer for the lost lives, green flames illuminate the psyco-reactive material.

"Why do you think the IG is so bad?"
"Ugh... Is not that I think bad about the service, is just... That I don´t want to be forced to go."
"The most probable outcome is that you pass the next years doing guard duty. Even without being sent now, you must eventually join the Guardians. You can always return to the Musician Path. So... What is the difference now than in twenty years? Especially that now we are in relative peace."

Lynn sit there observing her friend and thinking in silence. Caellatyra meanwhile was silently congratulating herself as her words have finally induced an epiphany in Lynn. Finally, she answers the question.

"Because I want to be different. Sigh... My parents don´t talk about their service. They lost friends and saw literally millions die. All that to let us have some sort of future. And that is important! But when they return home, after the war, they changed Path and breed like humans until fathered me. And the weirdest? They act like that part of their lives wasn´t special, mostly because they live with fear. For Slaanesh, their emotions, the future etc., Etc., Etc. When I meet those humans, it was, I don´t know who to define it. They were different... They were... Different... Hm?"

As her friend fall silent again, Caellatyra serene expression change to one of horror.

"Oh no, Lynn! No! That is a horrible idea!"
"What?! Come on, I think it resolves everything! I will left and do something for the Imperium. It will be fun and after my return, I will be a heroine! Nobody will ever question me!"
"Look, Lynn, the Inquisition is not a game!"
"Of course not, but they don´t have a dress code! Is a win-win situation!"
"Dress code? Lynn! This is serious!"

Caellatyra drops the wise and serene priestess visage and was grabbing Lynn by the shoulders. Her friend was again losing herself on a whim.

"Lynn, please! I beg you to rethink this!"
"Hm... No!"

Lynn disengaging from her friend grasp, and giggling, begin to dance around the chapel. A mortified Caellatyra stand there, looking with apprehension her mad friend.

"Lynn can you stop to do that. Sigh... I don´t like your jesting."
"Nope! This deserves a dance! I have accomplished my goal to make you lose your shit!"
"Sigh... You see too many human holos. Lynn, I´m sure that Osurad will rethink his punishment if you talk whole-hearted to him."

Lynn stops and looks to her friend. Suddenly she feels revitalized and smiling, hugs Caellatyra, leaving afterward for her home. But she wasn´t going to talk with Osurad, her parents or any other stuck ass grow up. Nope. She has made a decision. She was going to be a heroine and then nobody is going to tell her how to live. So... He needs a plan... Well, she is a supersoldier, what will Loriel Zig do in the same situation?...

Epilogue:
Osurad was trying to meditate in his chambers. The news has altered his mental focus, and the paths to the future look altered. Somehow Lynn Minwen has passed beyond the curfew and left as a stowaway in Inquisitor Hand´s ship. Her parents were griefing, half the enclave was angry to the disparagement of the runaway girl, the other half was actually glad that the troublemaker has left, and the poor Caellatyra has been admonished for her lack of vision. But that was predictable, the sort of reactions that people make when they lose their focus over the truly important questions. Who, a girl know to all, pass beyond the Guardians without notice? Who, a girl without training, sneak in a ship secured by the Inquisition? Who?

Slowly, the ancient runes begin to dance before him, colors, forms, and more indescribable things were shown to his powerful warp-senses. The carefully crafted future of Lynn has been changed, and new paths formed, leading her beyond his grasp. But where? He pushes, but something powerful, different and... Alien, seems to grow in her Path. Tired and frustrated, his mind returns to the material world and proceed to analyze the now static symbols. "Dead" "Born" "Cry" "Cell" "Snake" and... "Eldrad"

Continued in [[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#Alpha_Bitch|Alpha Bitch]]

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== Pathlost ==

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“Why are we here?”

The question surprised Keir to such a point that he stopped stitching the open wound. “Pardon?”

Long and vibrant lavender hair parted as the Eldar woman, Tal’hina he had come to know, turned her head to look partially over her shoulder.

“Why are we here Guardsman? You are quite lucky our band managed to spot you alone. I’m curious as to what could have driven you so far from your lines, especially with a group of Orks on your trail.”

Keir hesitated for a moment before focusing on treating Tal’hina’s wound. They had found cover in a cave thankfully and his pack lights were powerful enough to allow him to work at least basic first aid. Tal’hina had mentioned something about other warriors of hers that guarded the entrance to their hideaway. Keir hadn’t seen a trace of them though.

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“I promise you it wasn’t cowardice that drove me out here.” Keir finally formed a response as his fingers worked deftly. He was wondering just how far he should go with the truth. He was among allies at the least, but what drove him on this battlefield was extremely personal.

“I was… in charge of escorting a civilian band.” Keir tried to keep his tone steady. “They had been forced underground by the initial Ork invasion and we found them locked in a sub-basement. We weren’t told to expect ambushes so far behind the front-.”

He stopped to reach for the anti-septic again, one could never be too careful with Ork and the wounds they inflicted. Tal’hina was quiet throughout his explanation. He wondered if she believed him at all. It was unsettling to say the least, like he was trying to explain his case to an Arbiter judge.

“So you failed?” Tal’hina spoke suddenly, catching Keir off-guard. He did not answer which prompted Tal’hina again. “I find you alone and beset by Orks from all sides, not a single civilian or other human soul in sight or sound, so your mission was a failure I presume?”

Keir supposed he should feel some sting of anger or reprisal. Instead he felt numb; perhaps it was the pain suppressors the Eldar woman had given him when she had healed his wounds or maybe it was just a stark realization that in some way he did fail. He finally answered in a subdued tone.

“I don’t know honestly. I was cut off almost immediately and forced to fight for my life. The soldiers I had were good, but…” He trailed off as he realized he had finished closing the wound. He tapped Tal’hina on the shoulder as he set himself heavily against one of the cave walls. She turned with entirely too much grace for how injured she was supposed to be to finally look at Keir face to face. The small smile she wore spoke of consolation, or was it haughtiness? Keir had never any Eldar before today so he wasn’t entirely sure. He quickly realized she was still expecting some more of an answer and stammered one out.

“The soldiers were good and the civilians were survivors. They would have made it out alright.” Keir turned to regard his shredded and not empty medical tote bag. He was beginning to feel the inkling of shame crawl into his mind and wanted to look anywhere but at the Eldar woman.

He heard a small hum come from Tal’hina. She had seemed to decide something and turned to look away from Keir. This sparked something in his mind that caused him to start speaking with a rising volume.

“No matter what you think of me, let me make one thing perfectly apparent. I’ve had countless people from almost every walk of life go through my hands as a doctor. Many of them have died, because I wasn’t fast enough, or they were killed before I ever reached them, or some random accident of happenstance. Every one of their lost lives live on in my mind; I see the last fleeting moments of a thousand different people flash through my head every time I’m called on to help those in need.” Keir spoke as evenly as he could, but the loss of his voice did not help in his efforts to explain.

“Even if I wanted to forget them, I would not allow myself to. I have been forced more times than I wish to remember to allow some to die so more may live, and the choice doesn't become any easier.” Keir was no distinctly aware of his eyes become more blurry. “All I ask Tal’hina, whatever you may think of my decisions, is to not patronize me. I try to work every day to make up for my mistakes; I could not live with myself otherwise.” Keir finally clamped down on his mouth by biting his tongue. He was close to fully spilling out into a tirade but ultimately managed to school his swirling thoughts and quiet his fears about what had happened to the civilians who he was charged with protecting.

“...I promise you, I will do everything in my power find them and ensure their safety; that is my mission. There is no other alternative for me.”

Tal’hina muttered under her breath. All Keir could make out was something about being lost but he could not be sure. Tal’hina locked eyes with him. He could not tell what she was looking for in his own eyes, but he was startled at the simultaneous steel that spoke of a warrior and silent worry that he had seen in so many of his more idealistic medic-brethren.

“Is that why you walk this path then; to try to help the helpless and save the damned?” Tal’hina asked an almost soothing tone, turning where she was sat so now she fully faced Keir. The look of confusion from Keir at the question let loose a small laugh from Tal’hina. It was a sound that Keir admitted was quite breathtaking, internally of course.

“I meant if that is why you are a healer? Your equipment and heraldry mark you as such.” Tal’hina kept that small smile as she regarded Keir. “Our path is not an easy one, and there are easier ways to fight for your people, so I’m curious as to what drives you.”

Keir didn’t know what to make of the question. This whole situation had grown far beyond what he could have imagined not a few hours ago. Then again he did owe his life to this woman. He figured he might as well indulge her and himself in speaking.

“I don’t recall much, only the festering odor. I still don’t know what they were, what they wanted, where they went, all I can remember is that terrible stink.” Keir felt strange dredging up a very old memory, but it felt like a much needed venting from his current emotional turmoil. Tal’hina quickly lost her smile.

“A minor chaos incursion, or so I’m told; I was quite young then, young enough that the memory of it stands out as some of my earliest. I remember trying to help but I could scarcely keep myself calm let alone assist in treating such disaster. It was then I decided that it was not enough to fight. So many of the garrison there fought and they died doing their duty. I knew I needed to do something more than just pull a trigger.”

Keir slowly made his way shakily to his feet. Tal’hina followed so that both of them stood apart from the other. Keir was surprised to find themselves equal in height, although the fact that Ta’lhina was not wearing most of her armor was not lost on him.

“So I decided I would try and help people through healing. Where else would that need be the largest than with the Guard? I enlisted as soon as I was able and have been walking this ‘path’ ever since.”

He started retrieving his equipment as Tal’hina was content to simply watch him as she seemed to be trying to judge something for herself. She regained that smile of hers and spoke.

“You are considerate to bear these questions of mine, and I don’t think I have properly thanked you for your own assistance to my wounds. So, properly now, thank you and know that you have gained the gratitude of Tal’hina of Yme-loc.” She dipped her head towards Keir who made no attempt to respond to the gesture. She brought her head back up and began to gather her own equipment and reequip her armor gingerly.

“Rovenko.” Tal’hina turned while continuing to adjust her armor and stared in apparent confusion. Kier spoke again with a bit more surety. “My name is Kier Rovenko, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Tal’hina nodded again, seemingly satisfied in the information, before turning back to her armor.

“So why do you follow this path?” Keir could not resist asking. Tal’hina stopped abruptly in adjusting a greave and turned to look at Keir again. “It is tale woefully similar to your own I would say. My most prominent memory of my decision was the sound of the dying and the anguished.”

Keir averted his eyes from hers. “I apologize, I did not mean to drag up-“

“It does not matter,” Tal’hina interrupted him, “You have been more than accommodating of my own inquiries, so there is no reason I should respond in kind. Although you will also forgive me for being as elusive in my answers as you were.” Keir swallowed a small lump that had suddenly caught in his throat. He turned back to see the full regalia of an Eldar warrior, armor he did not recognize, covering Tal’hina’s lithe frame all besides her helmet which she held couched in her arm.

Both healers gathered themselves and moved toward the entrance to their small hideaway. Tal’hina, her face now covered by a full helmet, turned to Keir.

“Are you well enough to perform your duties?” Her voice rang clear despite the now electric twang it had. Keir rested his hand against the grip of his las-pistol as his eyes adjusted to the natural light again. He could finally make out the burnt orange form of a set of guardian armor standing guard just a small ways from the entrance.

“I’m still breathing aren’t I?” Keir allowed a smile of his own at Tal’hina’s metallic laughter. Maybe she was impressed; maybe she was just amused at his dogged pursuit. Either way he had found that sound of laughter to be comforting. The set off in step with the other, both of them ready to go back into the fray once again to hold death itself at bay.

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== The Rant ==

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"This was our galaxy once. The Old Ones, the predecessors those that made us, left it in our care. It was ours to tend. Reward, for all that we had suffered in our war against the Yngir slaves. Entire generations, entire histories, entire cultures were lost in that dread war, but this, this was our reward. Freedom, and an unblemished canvas to write our fate upon it. We were stewards of life, the victors over death, and we were told not to waste it."

"And we didn't. We flourished, taking barren rock and tainted ground, and making fertile and green pearls of them. We made such works of art, such wonders of technology. We even made gods. For millennia, we worked, honed our art, and at every turn, brought life to this scarred galaxy. We had peace, as strange as that sounds today. It's a distant dream, isn't it? But you know it's there, that it's possible. You feel your spirit rise at the very thought. We had peace."

"But then we had the Fall. And it was all lost."

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"Every eldar that is taught our history- even, the warped and half complete history of those led astray by the dark gods- is struck by that. Here, here is our people at their peak! We are surrounded by their works, the very galaxy owes its life to them in their power, but yet, we lose it all in a matter of years, reduced to this shadow of ourselves? How could this happen?"

"Arrogance, my child. Arrogance blinded them so far back. Arrogance of a few, that sought power at the cost of the many. Even, at the cost of their very gods. We were at the very cusp of ascension, when those, the fanatics, the usurpers, the primitives out of fear and envy destroyed the greatest work of those halcyon days."

"They tried to make a miscarriage of the birth of our greatest hope. The distillation of all of our gods in to one, purer being. Our Child Goddess, Slaanesh."

"The birth cries were terrible. What should have been a moment of joy and celebration would prove, with the treachery of the usurpers, traumatic. A great storm of pain tore the warp asunder, as eldar turned against eldar, brother against sister, mother against son, all for what? A handful of dirt balls the exodites call planets so you're free to freeze in mud and gnaw on roots. Flimsy scraps of wraithbone drifting the void called craftworlds, where you can have your fate decided before you are even born by the dead that rule. And that pathetic pantomime of glory in Comorragh, where they pretend at the past that's dead and gone. What glories have those rebels have earned? What proof of righteousness do they have in their miserable lives? They have turned their backs on Slaanesh, only to suffer under the lash and call it freedom."

"Thank the Many-Gods-in-One that they did not succeed in circumventing our child goddess's ascension, or we might all be trapped under their rule. Slaanesh is mighty, but her might is tempered with kindness. She waited patiently on the other side, in the dimension unbounded, waiting for the souls of her wayward children to be reunited with her. She did not snuff them out, though they truly deserved it. She did not hunt them down, though they wished her dead. She kept her arms wide open for them, ever welcoming their arrival."

"And then came the mon'keigh. And their insult."

"How gullible are those that lay outside? Short lived, murderous, stupid, and unworthy creatures come to them, and whisper poison in the ears of those already poisoned. They whisper of raiding like a band of thieves in the immaterium, of stealing and murdering. They speak of defiling the realm of the gods, and these that dirty the name eldar smile and nod, that ancestral sin of greed rising in them again."

"Those misguided heathens outside begged for the collar of the mon'keigh on their necks, in exchange for injuring a goddess that only loved them."

"Isha? Is that so? They speak of Isha, long gone, returned to guide our people unto a golden age? It is a lie. Look upon the histories- all the gods and goddesses save Cegorach agreed to combine, to set aside their individual identities to unite and make something better of themselves. Through those thousands of years since the fall, no one spoke of Isha, except in the past. Through these thousands of years, eldar hands were not up to the task of rescuing her? Preposterous."

"Now, now they claim that Isha, goddess of health, the harvest, and life bearing was kept captive in the hands of Nurgle? This betrays the work of the mon'keigh to misguide and mislead you. The lie is at the root- the mon'keigh would believe our goddess, pure and strong, could be captured and caged like an animal by that brute Nurgle? The story betrays their own intent! Like this false Isha, they would want us caged by them, used by them, made slaves by them. The story of her 'rescue' is a lie to convince the unwary that the eldar are weak, and it is only with the help of mon'keigh they can do anything. It makes me sick to the think children are being raised to believe this, and to think themselves less than mon'keigh. Trying to indoctrinate us into slavery."

"But they did attack a god that day- the mon'keigh and the false eldar. And they did perhaps even see Isha. Isha, as one part of the Many-Gods-in-One of Slaanesh. I was not there that day, but a comrade was, and he wept bitterly at the very memory of the sight. Slaanesh, in her radiance. In her glory. The innocent child god, looking curiously at these strangers that came to her. She smiled. Even among the black hearted and soul sick eldar infidels, some stopped and for a moment the truth came through. They fell to their knees and wept, tried to warn Slaanesh, tried to stop their fellows. They were slain by the mon'keigh, filled with bloodlust and eager to tear the flesh of the innocent."

"We counter attacked of course. Drove them back into the blighted materium, sending the cowards shrieking as soon as they faced something more than an innocent goddess. But the damage was done."

"Once it was, any eldar was guaranteed as soon as their soul left their body or the cruel soul traps devised by the craftworlders would be reunited with Slaanesh automatically. They would return to the child, and we'd be one step closer to divinity, and our heaven in the immaterium, when the eldar could claim the birthright of the old ones, and remake the unreality as we had remade the reality."

"But the evil ones broke that bridge. They severed one more strand of Slaanesh's goodness to your world. And now Slaanesh withers."

"The Child Goddess is no more. Innocence is no more. Denied the very love of her people, she withers and hungers. And she has learned from her mistake of trust. And we, in our sorrow, now must redeem our failing. The Crone Worlds must unite again, the masters of the warp must be awoken, and our goddess's due must be retaken. We can be patient no more as paradise itself is under threat. We can no longer wait for the misguided to realize their mistake, and come once again to the embrace of the Many-in-One. Our goddess hungers. And we shall feed that hunger. Just as we did so long ago against the slaves of the yngir, so must we do for the slaves of the mon'keigh."

"The War for Heaven calls. You shall serve- either in Her warhost, or as Her sacrifice. Either is better than your kind deserve."

-Unknown, Battle of Merr's Reach, speech given to prisoners.

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==The Saga of Fedor Jiao==

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''Homo sapiens navigo'' is a sub species of humanity that was once a necessary cornerstone of the Imperium, and mankind's proliferation throughout the galaxy. From generation to generation, from their pivotal position in society, they have gathered wealth and power that outshine even planetary governors. However, at the dawn of the 42nd millenium, they are now at risk of losing it all through eons of mismanagement, greed, and complacency.

Due to their genetic nature, Navigators are organized by great houses, vast genetic lineages carefully recorded and kept track of to keep inbreeding at a minimum. By necessity, they can't have new blood. The result of a navigator and a normal human produces a human without the dubious blessing of navigator powers. They may carry an abundance of less than stellar physical traits inherited from their navigator parent, but none of the metaphysical traits, and they are not a carrier of any of the traits. Though there are a great deal of genetic markers associated with the navigators, none of them seem to activate the legendary third eye. It's speculated that the atypical warp presence of the navigators may bear some manner of information that is past on to the infant, and that it is only the combination of two such warp signatures that can produce a third, or perhaps it's some form of Dark Age of Technology copyright protection for navigator reproduction that can't be cracked. Whatever the case, the navigator houses have cornered the market on those able to guide the way through the warp, and supply is limited, much to the rest of the Imperium's discontent.

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The foremost irritation is the arrogance of the navigators. Navigators have always held a very high opinion of themselves. They are necessary for any long range warp travel, and so have proliferated across the whole of human space, and reaped great wealth and prestige for their tasks. Somehow, the navigators manage to hold an arrogance beyond even their high station. To the irritation of those that revere the Throne and He That Sits Upon It, they consider themselves peers of the Emperor. In the minds of the majority of navigators, the parallels are obvious. The Emperor is a product of the Dark Age of Technology, so are the sub species Homo Sapiens Navigo. The Emperor has powers far beyond the normal man, and so too do the Navigators. The Emperor, by dint and right of these powers and his wisdom, rules. So, the Navigators deduce, must they. Most navigators take a benign attitude to this, content to live the pampered life of the ultra rich and enjoy generation after generation of accrued wealth. For them, the tedium of governance is something they should not suffer, but they take for granted that they shall be granted every luxury and consideration with none of the responsibility outside of ensuring vessels are guided safely through the warp.

Although many outside of the navigators criticize and deride their hedonistic attitude, it's worth remembering all navigators serve. From birth, navigators suffer from a host of genetic diseases and maladies as a side effect of the inbreeding necessary to preserve the powers that make warp travel possible. Their childhood is spent learning and memorizing star and warp charts for the routes they must work for the rest of their lives- charts which are notorious for failing to keep up with the realities of navigation. The demand for navigators has spiked severely as shipyards produce more vessels to respond to the various threats that besiege the Imperium.

Navigators are recorded to have been pressed into service at ages as young as twenty two, with only ten year's worth of training, and no practice on the safer routes closer to the Astronomicon (Which are generally crowded by the richer and more influential families unwilling to see their scions die on useless crusades). Navigators will spend years trapped in claustrophobic conditions, seeing horrors never meant to be comprehended by mortal minds, and painfully aware that the lives of thousands could be snuffed in an instant if they made a mistake.

Is it any wonder that the navigators have taken a bon vivant attitude? On every civilized world, the navigator houses have a presence, and they have a code: all navigators on shore leave are to be treated as family. Though later they may charge the navigator's actual house, when navigators go ashore they are denied nothing by their hosts. A celebration for living another day. These bacchanals can be truly hedonistic, at times even spilling beyond the navigator compounds to welcome any curious citizens in as alcohol, mind altering substances, sex, and other stranger diversions are offered freely. It's frowned upon to involve the common people however, as not everyone gets festive at such a gross display of wealth. If the arbites come calling, it can be truly expensive to clear up the matter, and if an Inquisitor's ire is roused, well, even the familial bonds of navigator houses have their limits.

In the face of the navigators flaunting their wealth, the fact that they consider themselves another species, the fact that they assume they're predestined to inherit their high status from birth rather than any deed, they rankle most of the rank and file.

The Emperor, for his part finds the lack of obsequiousness among the navigators refreshing, but does not let that color his assessment of the Navis Nobilite: An antiquated aristocracy that should be (gently) set aside as soon as the technology allows it. In the Imperium as a whole, there is a tacit acknowledgement that the Navis Nobilite will soon come to an end, or face a great humbling. Either from the eldar opening up the webway, the geneticists finally cracking the navigator code and permitting mass production of them, or some new technology from the Tau or Mechanicus, everyone begrudgingly tolerate the Navis Nobilite, feeling that someday, they'll get their comeuppance, and slide into the waste bin of history.

This assessment may change with the latest Paternoval Envoy.

The current Paternova of the navigators is Lustran-Gibb of House Nostromo, a once minor house that managed through a stroke of luck involving a rogue trader, to rise in ascension and place one of their own in the prestigious position of Paternova, the head of the navigators. An outrage to the other navigator houses, but one settled through a series of (questionably) legal duels with the other heirs apparent. Lustran-Gibb, after killing his rivals, was content to remand himself to the Navigator Palace on Terra, where he spends the majority of his time in an aquarium with rare marine life imported from across the galaxy. In a move of reconciliation, Lustran-Gibb left the selection of the Paternoval Envoy to the houses for a vote, and then secluded himself with his strange menagerie.

The navigator houses were not used to this. After the diplomatic but bloody takeover, most of their leadership lay dead as the result of ritual combat. And rarely did a Paternova ever deign to ask others to decide things. They might have thought it weakness, had they not witnessed the Paternova kill most of his competition bare handed.The houses feared a trap, and so, appointed someone they wouldn't mind see dead.

Within an hour, the reply came back, blandly approving. Paternova Nostromo was at the moment fascinated at the prospect of recovering the porpoise of the distant past from genetic samples found in an ark dug up out of Catachan. He read Fedor's name once, and then dismissed it.

Paternova Nostromo was only interested in the position of Paternova as it allowed him power and money enough to pursue greater heights of marine biology. The competitors he slew, the bargains he struck, the pleas to the emperor and the quests he and his house had undertaken, were all bent to this purpose. Paternova Lustran-Gibb Nostromo, despite his heinous power both physical and mental, had no taste for politics. To his understanding, the Paternoval Envoy would take care of that. For the great navigator houses, they had made the greatest possible miscalculation. Because Fedor Jiao was very interested in politics.

Fedor Jiao, after reporting to Terra, undergoing the anointing, and taking the great oaths and suffering quietly through the vast ceremonies, immediately bypassed the great banquet set for him, and reported to the Imperial Senate. Once there, he sat quietly through an interminable meeting, accepted well wishes and congratulations, and patiently waited until the agenda was clear enough for him to provide a list of names and evidence of smuggling operations that House Garibald, House Strahovsky, and his own House Jiao were involved with throughout the Segmentum Tempestus. For Fedor Jiao, though bewildered by his sudden rise, bore no delusion that the great navigator houses were his friends. He immediately sought allies through the rest of the Imperium to protect him.

For the next thirty years, the Imperial Senate suddenly had a great ally in Fedor Jiao as he performed a great house cleaning of the Navis Nobilite. Corrupt navigators that had knowingly looked the other way when their members served on pirate ships found themselves raided by arbite agents. The more jaded navigators that required darker thrills to entertain themselves found themselves at the wrong end of an Inquisitor's bolt pistol. Even the Paternova Nostromo himself received a visit from a detachment of Adeptus Custodes, as the Navigator Palace was searched top to bottom for hidden Xenos Terribilis, with proof of warrant that the Paternova signed dismissively when Paternoval Envoy Jiao offered it.

For the navigators, it seemed that Paternoval Envoy Jiao was their worst enemy. Devoted to ripping out corruption by the root, and sending the Navis Nobilite as a whole into disarray. Assassination attempt after assassination attempt was mounted on Jiao, but none got through. He was well guarded by the highest levels of the Imperium, pleased that Jiao was humbling the once arrogant collection of mutants.

It was more than just cleaning house. Jiao was working to rein in the absurd wealth and influence of the Navis Nobilite houses, while also trying to improve the lot of the common navigator. Controversially, he designated the safest trade routes to be opened to all novice navigators so they could get up to speed before being thrown into the fire blindly. He forcibly dissolved several trade monopolies held by the greatest navigator houses, providing much needed reform for trade in the Imperium. There was chaos, but for once, the Navis Nobilite seemed to have a brighter future.

Then one day, the Emperor himself summoned Jiao. Jiao answered those summons, and the door shut behind him, barred by the Adeptus Custodes.

Two hours later the Emperor requested a different Paternoval Envoy, and ordered a closed doors meeting of the Senate Imperialis in the Imperial Throne Room.

Envoy Jiao was diligent. He was devoted to mankind. To ending corruption throughout the whole of the Navis Nobilite, and to a greater extent, throughout the whole of the Imperium. He used to be like any other navigator, eager to live life to its fullest after the grueling journeys, so many lives in his hands, guiding through the warp. When he got to port, he feasted, he drank, he fucked, he enjoyed all he could of life like every other navigator.

But his other great love was astronomy. He had collections of charts, all kinds, dating back even to the days before the Imperium. He collected them, compared them, and sought to make his own grand map. As a young man, he had been frustrated at all the inaccuracies of star charts, and sought to correct those failings as an adult. It was an activity that brought him true joy, unlike the base pleasures of the flesh that were offered to him.

When the good ship Dauntless was attacked by corsairs, Fedor was certain he would die serving on his vessel. He felt the air slip away, heard the screams of the dying around him, and did his best to face death with dignity. But the corsairs were interested in him. When the eldar stormed the bridge, the lights were out- he saw flashes of power swords swinging, but nothing else when a hilt struck the side of his head, knocking him to the ground dazed, before a bag was put over his head.

When next he came to, he was in his sumptuous personal quarters. The terrible tang of burnt steel filled his nose- they had cut the whole of the section away, and attached it to their own ship. Arrayed in front of him were the star charts he had collected, and at the top of the heap, was a new map. Older than the others. It depicted the empire of the eldar, he realized belatedly, and the older extent of mankind. A message, Fedor concluded, but what for, he was not sure of.

He shortly realized afterwards that the corsairs had physically cut his quarters out of the Dauntless out, and placed it somewhere within their own vessel. He could leave, and wandered around in a daze about what he assumed was a cargo hold, with all manner of strange things. A necron plinth here, a caged Catachan Devil there, a crystallized fragment of some squid like entity there- Fedor was free to roam the hold, but whenever he tried to get beyond a further door, he found the way barred by veiled and robed eldar that refused to say anything. Crone, craftworld, exodite, dark, Fedor did not know what variety.

He slept forty three times there, not including his initial capture. He couldn't be certain, but he assumed that corresponded to the days in captivity. When he looked through his third eye, he realized he was not in the warp. He assumed the vessel he was on was in the webway.

The forty fourth time he awoke, he was somewhere else. He was before a great window sleeping on a smooth, tiled surface, the only company a chart, the one depicting the eldar empire at its grand extent. Behind him, a crowd of shrouded eldar, staring silently down at him. In the window before him, he saw the galaxy, as if from above, from a distance enough that he could see each end of the milky way. The awe swept all fear away from his mind, all thoughts except reverence. The bright collection there, that would be the halo stars, the stain there, the eye of terror, the dark divot, that would be the dark maw, and so on and so forth. And when he opened his third eye, let himself see the warp in all it's glory, he could see the shining pinprick of the golden throne, and the shadows of the collected psychic miasma of all life in the galaxy.

But then the view turned away. It slowly slipped away from the galaxy, and Fedor felt a bitter disappointment at that, for all there was out there was darkness. Physically and spiritually, there was nothing shining out beyond the galaxy.

And then Fedor realized something. There was nothing beyond the Milky Way. The ship continued pivoting- at the bottom of his view, there was still the distant light of his home galaxy, but outside of it, nothing but the dark. No orphan stars. No nebulae. No Andromeda. The darkness was closing in. And then, when he opened his third eye again, he felt the shadow passing over him.

At that moment, Fedor realized how alone he was in the universe. All he felt surrounding him, surmounting him, and washing over him was the Hive Mind. In that moment, though Fedor later denied it, fought the thought, tried desperately to disprove it, he felt a certainty. There was no more Andromeda. No more galactic neighbors. No more universe.

All there was was tyranids, and now, his home, as they descended to feed, as they had so many times before, on all the other galaxies that Fedor had once dreamed of seeing.

Fedor Jiao remembered little after that. He was dazed at the realization, and was led back to his quarters with little effort. He slept, and stared, and thought, a changed man. He could no longer enjoy life, in the face of the indescribable certainty that all he knew was doomed. When the corsairs released him in an escape pod, and he was picked up by the imperial navy, he didn't bother to relate the truth of the story. He simply said that he was ashamed to have survived.

When he was appointed paternoval envoy, at first he thought he would arrive at Terra and reject the choice. He would explain, humbly, that he was not capable of the great responsibility before him, but that he was glad of the chance to tell them of the nightmare he had seen, of the overwhelming dark that was to come.

But then Jiao saw the greatest navigators, and realized they were just as stupid and greedy as Jiao had been. And he decided that he would do his best to save the Imperium.

And he did great things. He made enemies. Lived boldly. Pulled out corruption by the root. But his every deed, he set against the overwhelming darkness he had seen, and he thought how little of a difference he was making. The galaxy was a thimble of light in an ocean of darkness. All the Imperium's work was for naught. Mathematically speaking, it was an impossibility. If the tyranids had already consumed Andromeda, and who knows what else, they had more mass than the Imperium could ever produce of bullets, missiles, lasers, bombs, and swords. Victory was impossible.

Unless he did something unthinkable.

In greatest secrecy, he hired a crew, brought a spare navigator, and personally guided a sword class frigate to a distant point of space he'd heard only rumors about. His crew trusted him, hand picked to be ones that were starstruck by the reputation of the heroic corruption fighter. They didn't question why he was so far from civilization, operating under radio silence.

They came to an asteroid, and Paternoval Envoy Jiao disembarked with a shuttle alone, and told the spare navigator to return to imperial space, and leave him behind. The ship navigated to a safe range to warp jump out. An hour later, Paternoval Envoy Jiao saw a distant explosion. He wasn't surprised. Soon after that, the pirates surrounded him, on their void suits the bleak marks of dark gods showing them for chaos corrupted.

Jiao had privately hoped they would break the deal. See him torn apart, and fed to their vile daemons. But they held. They took him to their captain, the legendary and loathsome Azariah Kyras, who was amused at their guest. He in turn took Jiao to a local pirate base operated by Dark Eldar. And there, on the base called Odom, with the aid of a captive Crone Eldar oracle, Jiao contacted the daemon of Nurgle called Ulkair with a plea.

The daemon was pleased that Jiao saw the futility of resisting the tyranids conventionally. Ulkair jovially explained that Father Nurgle had also been worried. In his great cauldron, Father Nurgle had been brewing something up to get rid of this oversized insect infestation. In fact, it was with the aid of beloved Isha that Father Nurgle had been making this. Those tyranids were so quick to adapt after all. With Isha on hand to test his poxes upon, Nurgle could be sure to make something real nice and lethal so the tyranids would shrivel and die before they spoiled all the fun in the galaxy.

But then the humans and eldar had to go and take Isha away. Which made Father Nurgle very sad. He could barely even cook up new plagues now, he was so depressed. Without company, he just couldn't get into the spirit of plague making. Everything he made nowadays seemed so trite. The past twelve epidemics he cooked up were all just the same old bursting boils disease he'd done last year. His heart wasn't in it any more.

Ulkair at this point offered the Paternoval Envoy a deal. Nurgle knew that a mere human couldn't spirit away a goddess. But, that avatar of hers could do a fine substitute. A simple trade. A plague for the tyranids, for the avatar of Isha. Save the galaxy, all for a girl. Who could turn that bargain down? Nurgle wouldn't even infect Jiao, though he honestly should. Wouldn't touch a hair on his head. All he had to do was go back. Make sure it would happen. And the bugs would come down with one hell of a case of the sniffles.

The Paternoval Envoy was silent. Ulkair smiled. That was enough for him. With a corrosive wave of his hand, Ulkair instructed Kyras to make sure that the Paternoval Envoy got back, safe and sound.

When the Paternoval Envoy made his way back to civilized space, he was picked up by an imperial patrol. They asked no questions of the great Paternoval Envoy, figuring he had been doing something of great import in his fight against corruption. On the trip back to Terra, they seemed happy, chipper, and praised him for all he had done. Jiao wondered if maybe no one had noticed. He was certain that, despite all his precautions they wouldn't be enough. He almost relaxed on the journey home, convinced he could fight his inner struggle in peace and alone.

It was only when he touched foot on Terra, and saw the Adeptus Custodes waiting at the space port that he found himself back in reality. They said nothing, simply putting out their weapons. Jiao was just as silent, and allowed himself to be escorted to the Imperial Palace on the Emperor's summons. The Emperor already knew of his errant servant, and where he'd been.

He entered the throne room.

Two hours later, Paternoval Envoy Fedor Jiao still hasn't emerged. But the Emperor has requested a new Envoy be appointed. And that an emergency session of the Senate Imperialis be held.
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==These Animals==
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Two people, man and woman, prone behind a low ridge atop a hill among some scraggly bushes. Hiding. The terrain, low dry scrub one step away from desert, does not offer much concealment unless you are skilled. They are skilled, and have cameoline.

Below them-
“Shit,” the woman, Sergeant Arn Kasparova, not that it will be relevant much longer, hissed. “Looks like a whole damned command section.”

A profusion of bizarre and unwholesome color. A- command tent? decorated in abstract shapes that suggested exaltation through pain and suffering. Coiled up mecha-centipedes on the scale of heavy tanks. A small forest of crooked ghastbone spires, suggestive of an antenna farm. A major force.
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“Call it in now?” the man-Corporal Saram Ostokova, not that it will be relevant much longer, asked. She shook her head- no telling if they could pick it up. Sometimes the Chaos Eldar were utterly ignorant of any communication besides psionic. Other times they fought vox-war as well as the Mechanicus.
They would need to get some distance. They turned to leave.

The Mandrake behind them gave them a second to appreciate their situation before shooting them. A nonlethal weapon. Not a positive development.

They came to, kneeling, without visible or tangible restraints but still immobile, in a room. Riotous and baroque, seizure-décor. The eye could settle on details- twining figures in the heart of a gem, a burning tesseract-city, a newborn infant still placenta-wet crowned and enthroned- but refused to resolve any kind of whole. Only the other figures in the room could be clearly comprehended, drab in comparison, practically silhouettes against the background of nauseating splendor.

“What is to be done with this mad animal?” the first, head fully enclosed in radial quicksilver-fungus sensory apparatus, twitching on the edge of information overload, asked. Perfect Low Gothic, a performance for the benefit of the captives.

“I could debone them and fold them into glass jars as ornaments,” the second, naked with razor vines growing into and through him, cutting him with every movement to bleed in a continuous stream upon the carpet, offered.
“I could bend and break their minds into perfect little toy soldiers,” the third, clad head to toe in featureless vantablack bodysuit (or is it its skin?) studded with grinning maws like zippers, said.
“I could kill them and dump their bodies in a ditch out back,” the fourth, near transparent, organs and bones mere suggestive twists of light beneath invisible skin, silk drapes and gun belts only certain evidence of her presence, stated.
“Enough,” the first said again, completing the ritual debate. “I have decided. We shall give them mind-knots, and body infections, and set them free to bring ruin to their fellow animals.”
Arn and Saram both tried to commit suicide. Hollow molars filled with neurotoxin. A commonplace among soldiers fighting the Chaos Eldar. They could not move even that much. They could not flinch or scream as the cutting started. A hole in the skull, and a slimy convoluted something pressed into the wrinkles of the brain. Holes in the body, and rotten-looking ghastbone nodes slipped inside. Then, everything sealed back up, with not even a scar or drop of blood to show what was done.
Then, dumped back outside, their bodies no longer their own. They punched the right codes on the vox, knew the sign and countersign, the name of the voice on the other end, called in an artillery strike on the position they had just left (vacated only minutes before). Then, they started the long walk to link back up with the main body of the Godspire 1888th Infantry.

The 1888th was destroyed within the week.
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== The War for Heaven ==

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Please, just call me Oscar. There are no need for such formalities when it's your ceremony.

You wish to know why? That is a question I have been asked many times before. Are you sure about this? It's a very long history lesson, one that your Schola teachers have probably covered in depth.

Very well, take a seat. The Mechanicus technicians will make you comfortable.

The straps are for your own safety. Shall I start at the beginning?

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Eleven thousand years ago, my adopted sons marched into the depths of hell side by side with the strongest warriors of a dying race, and struck a blow at the heart of the Great Enemy. In a display of psychic might equal to mine, my father held the portal open long enough for a god to be broken free of her cage, setting the foundation for the Last Alliance, the agreement between Man and Eldar that would uplift both our species out of the chaos of the Age Of Strife.

Centuries later, the same man, old and tired, said he was proud of me, lying in a simple white bed, connected to a panoply of medical equipment that whirred and beeped rhythmically.

He told me that I and my eighteen generals had wrenched humanity free from the horrors of the Old Night, and that they would need me to be its leader. As the spikes on a green line grew erratic, I said that no mere relic of a lost Golden Age should be the master of its creators. To think, that I would waste the last of my time with my father on an argument, of all things.

Despite that blunder, Malcador forgave me with a serene smile. For that, and so much more, I will be forever grateful to a man who found a stasis chamber in a run-down laboratory on Cthonia, and spared the life it held inside.

Then the War Of The Beast happened, leaving a trail of shattered worlds in its wake and an uncertain future on the horizon. The Imperium nearly died then, as we were pushed back further and further by unending waves of savage Orks goaded into battle by the unrepentant instigators of the Fall. In Terra's ruins, only the death of an angel and the sacrifices of heroes beyond counting was enough to allow Farseer Eldrad and I to kill the monstrous Beast at the hordes' head.

A hundred centuries have passed since, and the world has changed. The stubborn Tau suffered through multiple schisms and two thousand years out in the cold, but they now fight for the Imperium. In the Age Of Apostasy, the Demiurge helped the brave Inquisitor Sebastian Thor and myself end the rule of Goge Vandire, earning their acceptance through blood and adamantium. They are not the only ones, for among the stars are many more who have joined the Last Alliance and aid the Imperium's war efforts.

But all my eighteen Primarchs, chosen from the finest and bravest of Terra's stock, lie dead, whether by war or because of the march of time. There have been no replacements for their seats, which remain empty not only out of deference to each of their lives, but because none have been found worthy of taking up their titles.

Enemies both new and ancient have opened new fronts all across the Imperium's vast Segmenta, all thirsting for our blood. Some are clad in liquid metal, others in sculpted chitin and claws, and some are manipulators cloaked in shadows. Others are false idols which will not die, praised by legions of fanatics who seek to bring the taint of Chaos into our besieged empire. There is no mercy to be found here.

In some great irony, I, a Man Of Gold, a human simulacrum, have ended up in the Golden Throne of an empire, bonded with Isha, one of the last survivors of a pantheon of true gods. Some say that Eldrad chose an arranged marriage as repayment of his favor a way to prevent humanity from going back on its promises to the Eldar, but I suspect he really just found the idea funny.

One thing has not changed, however. The War For Heaven, the war that began so long ago, goes on, the tune of its siren call tugging the strings of every sentient being of this galaxy. Everyone heeds its call eventually.

While the morning sun shined upon Perturabo's shining Terran hive cities, a veteran of the War stepped out onto a field of mud and rain, armed with a lasgun and the blind faith of his platoon of Guardsmen. He flinched as he scanned their youthful profiles, constantly reminded of brothers and sisters who wouldn't stay in the past. The night terrors of his sleep no longer had the decency to stay out of his waking world, and he grew more and more tired as one excited private explained how he had signed up for his wife and kids back home. Few soldiers ever returned to their homeworlds after joining up, at least, not alive.

Today, when the sun sets on the Imperial Palace today, an Ordo Securitas Inquisitor may watch his acolytes celebrate the resolution of a sector-wide fraud case that drained millions of gelt from Imperial accounts. Before tomorrow's dawn, he may lie face-down at his desk, poisoned by a bottle of wine. For the Inquisitor's white-haired Sororitas bodyguard, summary execution of the childhood friend who brought it will be enough to soothe her anger. Afterwards, she will learn that it was the unwitting crime of a clueless man.

Our libraries and datastacks are filled with tales of tragedy and joy, of valor and cowardice, of liberating adventure and crushing defeat. Yet the galaxy grinds on, dragged onwards by its own inertia, careless of ghosts haunting the living or the deaths of Inquisitors and childhood friends. It takes no favors, listens to no pleas, and defies classification by human logic. With all its beauty and mystery, the galaxy has been the birthplace of our loftiest dreams and our most terrifying nightmares.

In the end, all it has to offer us is War. And who are we to deny its gift?

I do not put my faith in gods, despite the fact that one sits next to me right now. That belongs to those who call me Emperor, who struggle to maintain their shard of normality in an unforgiving universe. They fight as men and women who have everything to lose, never to receive anything better than the galaxy's gift. If we stop now, if we loosen our grip even the slightest, everything that they have lived and died for will be in vain. My faith, and by extension their faith, belongs to a promise built on hope.

One day, the War will end, and the Imperium will be witness to a new dawn, where our children are free to live and smile, to grow old in peace, no matter the price.

Have I answered the question to your satisfaction, psyker?

Good. Isha, if you would be so kind as to dull his senses to pain, thank you.

Let the soul-binding begin. Initiate proced-

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</div>

==Unnamed Emperor's Scythes Story==

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The shrouded, other-worldly tint of the Immaterium peeled away as the first ships of the 219th Expeditionary Fleet exited the hell realm. The various attendant ships quickly repositioned to their surrounding places as the few larger ships ponderously oriented themselves in the new system. Destroyers began languid corkscrews around their command vessels while the smaller frigates ballooned outward to form picket lines. Void measurements, order requests, sensor scans, and myriads of other data all flowed into the command deck of the ‘’Basilica Emergent’’, the head of the 219th. Easily the largest of the fleet, the ‘’Basilica’’ was a battleship unlike any other. The pearl-white, marble gilding gifted to her after the rescue of an Eldar world long ago set her apart from the two other large tonnage vessels of the fleet, the smaller battleship ‘’Tantamount and the battlecruiser Dirge of the Warlord. Now organized, the 219th moved in system towards what the frigates had just started pinging at the extreme edge of their sensors: Tyranids. It was not unexpected that the locusts were here for Myriandros’ precious resources. In fact, it was the very reason that the 219th had an extra two ships amongst the fleet. The Scythes of the Emperor had been returning to their own fleet when Myriandros found itself in the way of a tendril from Leviathan. And so ‘’Chitinbane’’ and her sister battleship, ‘’Unyielding Protest’’, despite losses and weariness from previous campaigns, answered the call along with the 219th.

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The locust fleet split into halves around the gas giant, Myriandros Quartus. A small contingent of bio-craft entered orbit to engulf the gas harvesting void stations about the planet. The rest trudged onward towards the human fleet and the populated world of Myriandros Secundus. Myriandros Secundus was in the latter half of its orbit being around 10 o'clock. The first planet in the system was located at 1 o'clock about the center star while Myriandros Quartus was as at 5 o'clock. The third planet had broken up into a moon sized rock after a moon from Quartus was eventually flung off and pulled towards the system center. The collision created an asteroid ring. The ball consider Myriandros Tertium was at 7 o'clock amongst its debris. The 219th Fleet was approaching from the system north in a prime position to defend Secundus and receive the extra-galactic invaders. Admiral Dega aboard the ‘’Basilica Emergent’’ voxed his orders to the fleet. The bulk of the 219th along with the ‘’Chitinbane’’ moved in support of Myriandros Secundus and her people preparing to deal with the now east half of the Tyranid fleet. A pair of destroyers and a triplet of frigates broke off to follow the Unyielding Protest on a long burn on the inside of the system's eminent debris ring. The six vessels orders were to corkscrew around the field and catch a gravity-aided sling about the moon, M. Tertium, and slam into the westward fleet. Dega intended for the smaller contingent to punch through the formation and then flank the eastward sub-fleet. A practical and tactical strategy on the void maps but in the cold, uncaring black, best laid plans are put to the test.

The opti-sensors of the Unyielding noted multiple ichorous puffs on both hive ship. Minutes later, scans identified tentacled-boarding bio-ships. Cogitators spit out flight paths and projected intercepts upon pict-screens. Several flights of the living craft were headed towards the Unyielding. From a dais in the middle of the command deck, the Captain Lyras bellowed with a voice untainted by bionics, “Listen up boys! All hands to stations, we got a fight comin’ our way! Huh-ha-ha! These vile bugs think to board us and eat us from the inside! I'll be Emperor damned if our magnificent vessel will see their likes in our decks! Plus, our esteemed Astartes Captain Phiras and his men are far too tired to fight right now! Poor guys are all tuckered out! Ah-hah-hah-ha! Now spool up those flak turrets, ready our first salvo of macrocannon rounds and remember 'don't drop the ordinance'! Ah-ha-haha! For the Emperor!” The vox caster across the decks went quiet, drowned by the cacophony of of an Imperial voidship mustering for combat. At the utterance of 'all hands’ the men and women jumped to their stations already in the process of preparing even whilst Captain Lyras continued his boisterous cast. Mechanics greased autoloaders even as they fed rounds. Magos and engiseers monitored the banks of plasma reactors as they dipped and spiked at the whims of the charging lance batteries and flaring drives. Auger arrays and cogitators began to relay firing vectors and predicted flight paths of the invading craft, updating as different permutations were analyzed. Amidst the din, Captain Phiras perked an ear towards the vox caster nestled in the corner of his armory. Even amidst the din of clanking ceramite, bolter slides being racked and battle orders being administered, the men of the 5th Company heard their captain respond to no one in particular. “The mad man thinks we're tired? Heh!”

Flesh, vitae and bony armor exploded out of the living boarding craft. The bubble surrounding the Unyielding and her retinue was criss-crossed with flashing dash lines of flak rounds and the cottony contrails of small anti-craft missiles. The bio ships loosed compressed digestive gasses to jink and dodge while augers and cogitators corrected their life taking ordinances. The calculated mechanical precision of the human ships was still being swamped by the sheer number of locust vessels. Some were getting through. One of the destroyers had already been impacted on the top decks; the rasping, diamond hard teeth, enzymes and acids of the craft ate through the meters of adamantite to deliver its deadly payload. An escort bio-ship had found a blindspot in one of the frigates flak screens and careened headlong into the side. The bloated ship burst smearing the vessel in acids and viruses that dissolved through the decks at a frightening rate. Entire bulkheads vented, spattering the viscous juices across the inside of the void shields until they shorted. Boarding vessels dove toward the stricken ship like vultures. A many-limbed bio ship, roughly the size of a frigate, had rushed inside the Imperial formation, impervious to the smaller ordinance. It raked talon-tipped appendages across the vessels ripping up thick plating and flailed limber, coiling tendrils that tried to crush and tear away anything they could grasp.

The Unyielding Protest was faring much better. Her defense networks were nigh-impenetrable. Void creatures that strayed too close were subject to overlapping screens of flak. Missiles tracked and obliterated whatever was beyond the range of the autoguns. Entire flights of troopships and escorts were vaporized as lance batteries fired actinic beams through them at the hive ship and her escorts. Likewise, living craft smeared and then vaporized as macrocannon rounds barreled through their formations towards larger targets. However, Unyielding and her companions were taking just as much punishment. Hundred meter long chitin spines shattered against the void shields. Globs of corrosive bile crashed over the ablative fields eroding them as the tides of a beach might. Sections of Unyielding's void shields were failing. Troop laden craft swarmed towards the holes that had appeared in the overlapping fields. Lyras’ thrust was being blunted.

Warning voxes blared. Dingy, soot-covered yellow strobes illuminated the metal bulkheads. The gun decks of port battery three were filled with a coagulating fog of acrid smoke, corrosive vapors and venting mists. Whorls formed as bolter rounds rocketed towards fleshy gaunts. Linear wisps formed as talons sliced towards servitors, naval conscripts and Astartes alike. The drilling maw of the living dropship had punctured two floors up from the deck. Captain Phiras and his squad were fighting a daunting vertical battle. The locusts would scramble up from underneath catwalks whilst some would jump and leap from above. Others skittered down stairs and through open bulkworks. At any time Phiras and his men were surrounded. The gunnery crew was still drilling even in the toxic miasma and xenos intrusion. Their belief in their captain and the trust in the Scythes gave them courage even in the face of the tide of locusts. The huge macrocannon fired. Backblast and sonic concussion parted the fog. The force nudged Phiras back before the magnetics in his boots activated. Conscripts stumbled but regained their footing instantly; they were used to it. The captain could see gaunts bent over like blades of grass in a wind as their clasping legs fought for purchase. Some were blown wholesale over catwalks and into bulkheads. An unlucky dozen or so locust were crawling on supports and bearings as the autoloading gimbal rocked backwards. The machinery masticated the yielding flesh and chitin of the invaders. Ichors and biles began to ineffectively eat into the metal. Across the deck, the wet corpse of a gaunt sagged onto an autoloader for one of the many flak guns. The overseer stared at the body he had shot several times. The autopistol shook in his nervous grip. Unlike the macro gun, the enzymes and caustic blood quickly dissolved the much smaller structure of the autoloader. It furiously self-destructed. Large caliber flak round detonated in the feed racks killing the overseer, the gun mechanism, it cogitator banks and anything else unlucky enough to be near it. A stray round pinged off of Phiras’ pauldron.

Phiras looked up; he had one more level to reach. Above was the second floor of the gun deck where the troopship had punched through. The locusts were still trickling out of the slimy, toothy orifice. He heard a clang behind him as a pair of gaunts landed on the catwalk. He wheeled and his bolter barked. A quintet of mass-reactive shells obliterated the intruders. Phiras turned back towards the staircase and sauntered on. The locusts swarmed the captain as soon as he reached the landing at the top of the stairs. Phiras whirled into a flurry of measured sword strikes and bolt shells. He pumped round after round into the gaunts that rose from below the catwalk and clambered up the stairs behind him. His sword separated snarling heads and swiping talons even as he ducked and blocked them. His bolter had clicked empty so he resorted to crushing one of the last beasts beneath his heel while swing his gun around to crumple the skull of another offender. He finished it with a bifurcating swipe through its thorax. Another miniature battle was over. The evaporating ichors fizzed into mist off the floor and his armor. His chest piece had a rent in the left side and his pauldrons were covered in a myriad of scratches. An errant boring beetle had gnawed and melted a hole into his right shin guard. “Damn. They managed a couple hits,” thought Phiras.

The macrocannon fired again. Down to the other end of the suspended floor Phiras finally saw a pair of his squad round the landing. “You boys are slow,” he smiled inwardly. The creatures scuttling towards them met grisly fates at the fiery maw of a storm bolter, smoking bolt pistol rounds and gnashing chainsword teeth. The three Astartes joined up at the quivering mouth of the troopship. Phiras yelled out over the din of battle, “Burn the infestation out men! Get your meltas out!” Grenades were tossed into the gullet. The sizzling meat and tortured screeches of the dying ship were ignored. “Set that patch up Ordin,” Phiras ordered, “Graid, finish off the remaining creatures in this deck.’ The marine placed a mesh field over the hole as inertia pulled the bio ship out of the cavity. The shimmering field would hold the void out until an adept could patch the damage. The other marine jogged off to confront the few gaunts scattered about the gun deck. Meanwhile, Phiras voxed the various other squads he'd sent to other puncture sites. Some reported they were still in the process of repelling the borders. Others had successfully eliminated the locusts and were moving amidship to new breaches. The macrocannon fired. Suddenly entirety of the Unyielding lurched throwing the marines and conscripts to the floor. Immediately Phiras’ comms pinged with a priority hail from Captain Lyras, “Phiras! We got a problem!”

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==Unnamed Writing 1==

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"So it's been two years."<br>
"Since...?"<br>
"Since. Y'know," Calper leaned in conspiratorially to whisper, "SHE joined up."<br>
"Wh-" Kred was for a moment bewildered before she remembered who she was talking to and sighed, "Right. The farseer."<br>

Kred was not in the right state of mind to talk about their strange alien auxiliary. For the past week she'd been going through the same drill with the rest of her company of weapons specialists of digging in and setting up her lascannon, and then unpacking it and getting it ready to move again. The goal was to get the entire process down to three minutes. And they had. On a planet that wasn't a frozen ice ball like this one. She was numb, and sore, and tired, and thrice cursed Calper was still fresh as a daisy, probably because he was leaving the digging up frozen ground to her and invariably took his sweet time fiddling with the lascannon so she'd have to do the hard work.

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"She going to help me dig this ice up?" Kred growled. If Calper understood the sentiment he didn't mention it. He was looking off in the distance, over the rest of the company swinging shovels and cursing the icy ground.<br>
"There, see? She's talking with Lieutenant Feldham."<br>
"And?"<br>
"Annnndddd," Calper was straining over the lascannon, before a distant bark of the Commissar reminded him to focus on his work, "You think, y'know..."<br>

Kred stopped, looked at Calper. He was raising his eyebrows suggestively.<br>
"What?"<br>
"Y'know," Calper started a strange bobbing motion with his raising eyebrows, "The farseer. And the dashing captain of the kasrkin?"<br>
"He's a lieutenant."<br>
"Lieutenant. You think she's into that?"<br>
"What? What," Kred blinked, snuck a peek over the gun. Frowned, shook her head, went back to work with her spade, "Nope. Not at all."<br>
"What? What do you mean?" Calper looked back, then back down and hissed, "She's holding on to him by the elbow!"<br>

"TIME!" Commissar Gebbet bellowed across the field. Kred looked down, sighed. No, it wasn't very good, but it would have to do. She set the lascannon over the mound, and crouched herself in the behind it, as Calper mirrored her, attending to the capacitor and charge packs. Gebbett would have a field day with this- please, please, please just let him walk past...<br>
"Seriously, I bet you she's getting the monkey D tonight."<br>
Kred rolled her eyes.<br>
"First of all, it's pronounced 'mon-keigh', secondly, there's no way she and Feldham are an item."<br>
"What? Who made you an expert on human-eldar relations? Seriously, she's eye fucking him on the field right now!"<br>
"A year's stint with Ulthwé Black Guardians. First thing's first, do you see what Feldham is holding in his left hand?"<br>

A bit of silence, as Calper leaned over, then said dejectedly, "A crutch."<br>
"Yeah. Training accident. And he's got that bionic eye on the fritz. So, no, it's not eye fucking that you're seeing, it's her lending a hand to a wounded comrade, and some concern."<br>

Somewhere behind them, Elid's crew was getting chewed out. Commissar Gebbett would take his time. And in that pause, someone desperate to distract herself from her own inevitable chewing out, Trooper Kred made a mistake that she would soon regret.

"Besides. I'm sure she's not into guys like that."

"What? Feldham's a badass. Sure, he's got the eye thing, but chicks dig scars."<br>
"Not all of us. Nah, nah. The Farseer would go for..." She hesitated, glanced behind her. Yep. Anton was still tearing into poor Elid.<br>
"-Like what?"<br>
"Somebody a bit more...intellectual."<br>
"You saying Feldham's dumb?"<br>
"No- well. Okay, keep it between us, but there's a reason he's spending training hobbling around on a god damn crutch, and I hear it has to do with some unauthorized demolition training, a glacier, a set of melta charges and some watches that he never bothered to sync. Besides," She looked over, shook her head as Farseer Taldeer gave a final salute, and then turned away from the Kasrkin, "Waaay too short."<br>
"Fuck Kred, that's cold. He's taller than me."<br>
"She's a giant, she can't help it," Anton Gebbett's rage subsided behind them, so the last was a whisper from her, "So shut up, and look like you're a real soldier."<br>

Commissar Anton Gebbett strode up the line- though Elid's men had suffered the full burst, he still had plenty in reserve to shoot in passing as he strode the line. As Anton Gebbett walked by Calper and Kred, Kred inwardly cringed, doing her best to stare down the lascannon barrel.<br>
"Despicable. Lazy. Shoddy. Pathetic," the Commissar grumbled, marching through the lines, locking eyes with each soldier as he passed. Making it clear that this wasn't directed to the air aimlessly, but in due consideration of each soldier's faults. Brennan's team, aimless. Gherehg's team, the work of children. Ysmir's team, useless. Kred's team...<br>

Commissar Anton Gebbett halted in front of the pair of them and their makeshift fire pit, and glared down at them. He scowled. Looking them up and down. For a moment, Kred thought she might have lucked out, that he was looking for something minor- then she noticed the inhaling. No, no. He was tallying up everything wrong. Preparing. She winced, squeezed her eyes shut-

"Commissar Gebbett, a word please?"

Relief. Farseer Taldeer was at the other end of the parade ground, hands in the pockets of her Cadian officer's coat over her xeno mesh armor stained with snow and mud, a green beret denoting her auxiliary status on her head, long hair cascading down- Hell. She was dolled up. What for?

Gebbett paused, gave a finally acidic glare, then shouted, "At ease!" Murmurs of relief, before he shouted again, "But you and you!" The Commissar's hand stabbed at Kred and Elid's teams before they could relax too much, "You stay here. I'm not done with you idiots yet. The rest of you, pack all this back to the armory!" With a final grumble about the quality of Cadian soldiers these days, Commissar Gebbett spun on his heel and stalked back to the Farseer, grumbling all the while.

Kred slumped against the cold of her lascannon, hopes dashed. The rest of the teams laughed and trotted off, leaving the four of them behind in the field.

"What about him?"<br>
"Shut up Calper," Murmured Kred.<br>
"Who? Who we talking about?"<br>
Elid had come forward in the meantime. Another chatterbox, but one that Kred knew so she could forgive him. Had Martz with him. Didn't know her. Tats suggested a hiver. One of the new recruits.<br>
"Commissar Gebbett," Calper whispered, glancing back at the Commissar and the Farseer, talking animatedly as they made for the command post. Doubtless where there was warmth. There wasn't freezing mud about their ankles. Probably had warm food-<br>
"Oh yeah, right prick isn't he?" Elid shook his head, "Don't like him. Last Commy was nice. Even before he got tore apart by the wossnames."<br>
"Yeah, but," Calper leaned over, raised his eyebrows, "What do you think the FARSEER thinks?"<br>
"Wot?"<br>
"I'm saying-"<br>
"Shut up, shut up, shut up Calper-"<br>
"-Maybe the Farseer sees something in him? Y'know, a commanding man to lead her in the sheets?"<br>
"What?" Elid leaned back disgusted, "Taldeer and Gebbett? Fuck off. That's disgusting!"<br>
"Yeah, to you and me, but Eldar are aliens. Maybe they'd like him?"<br>

Elid frowned, shook his head, "No. Nowhere in this universe would anybody think Gebbett is handsome. I was thinking Lieutenant Feldham."<br>
"That's what I said!"<br>
"He's too short!"<br>
"And he's got that weird eye," Martz added, hand going to her own and peeling back the lids for emphasis to stare at the other three in mocking pantomime of Feldham's bionic, "Rich girl like that would turn her nose up quick at that. Probably use her brain to set his skin on fire right quick."<br>
"She wouldn't do that."<br>
"She would! Hear about it all the time, those eldar tarts and their fire starting, you look at 'em so much as sideways," Martz waved her hands, "Fwoosh! Burnt to a crisp. Sides," She shook her head, "Feldham's an idiot."<br>
"Okay, let's lay off Feldham..." Kred felt a little bad now for what she said earlier. Feldham wasn't THAT bad, and making fun of a kasrkin was probably a really unhealthy habit to have.<br>
"And a bit true. Nah, rich girl like that," Martz tapped her chin thinking, "She'd go for someone with a bit more class. I'm thinking Ordnance Master Hymnal."<br>
"Hymnal? She's classy?" The others started laughing as Martz glared between the three.<br>
"Yeah! Yeah she is! She's always in her best duds, always got that fancy baton and all, she's plenty classy!"<br>
"Clearly you haven't seen her three amasecs deep yet." <br>
"God," Calper winced, "And what she did with that colander, the lho pack, and the priest..."<br>
"What? What'd she do?"<br>
"How about Sturnn?" Elid rapidly changed the subject, looking over his shoulder. If a kasrkin was dangerous to mock, rememinscing on the master of regimental artillery in the open was suicidal.<br>
"Sturnn? No way. He's ancient."<br>

"So's she. And, he's brave, rugged, smart," Calper was counting out traits. Kred shook her head.<br>
"No way. Wife and kids on Cadia."<br>
"-And proven to be responsible," Calper finished, nodding, "Makes sense. She asked to serve in Sturnn's regiment special."<br>
"You think she's a home wrecker?"<br>
"Nah, it's true," Martz started nodding fervently, pointing, "No, I've heard about this. Eldar witches, see, they love that. It's like psychic stims for them, that heartbreak."<br>
"And who says Sturnn agreed?" Elid took on a faraway gaze, "Forlorn, reciprocated love. Eldar love that!"<br>

"You know what I think that Farseer Taldeer loves?"

They all froze at the voice.

They slowly turned back to see Farseer Taldeer standing above them, looking down with the frozen smile of the predator that's caught a lovely family of defenseless bunnies in a dead end.

"I think, what Farseer-Auxiliary Taldeer would LOVE, is hearing that you four broke the three minute record," She leaned in, tooth-like jaw plates still bared, "In the dark."<br>
"But- but it's going to get below-"<br>

She narrowed her eyes.<br>
"If you'd like, I can start a fire."<br>
Inside, Kred's heart withered. Goodbye sleep. <br>

"Farseer Taldeer!" Gebbett jogged after the auxiliary, baffled at her attention directed at the weapons teams, "We were wondering where you'd gone, the dinner still isn't-"<br>
"Nothing's wrong Gebbett," Farseer Taldeer turned away from the pair of teams frantically shoveling at the frozen ground, and strolled past them, aiming for her quarters, "Just thought I heard something. I was mistaken."<br>

Gebbett frowned, looked back at the soldiers digging, snorted, "Finally found your spirit! Come on! Snowstorm is coming in, and you're working until you're up to snuff!" <br>Gebbett nodded, quite proud of himself. Yes, those years in commissar school had proven that fear had a wonderful effect of focusing the mind. He idly wondered for a moment which of his insults had landed home, then dismissed it. If he could do it once, he could do it again.<br>

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==Unnamed Writing 2==

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Officio Tacitum archives have no record of subject "LIIVI" until after formal registry into Temple Vindicare, local site Carolus 5A. Sicarius investigation reveals earlier mention of a "Livvi" found during the Galbraith Campaign as a war orphan, and was subsequently drafted into the Cadian 412th under order of General Sturnn (See attached document, Cadian 412th draft order, signed by General Sturnn and approved by Lord General Castor), before disappearing from regimental records. Of note: this was the only draft order recorded that General Sturnn has ever invoked, and the drafted "Livvi" was recorded as being sixteen years old (the minimum draftable age without a state of emergency declaration from a planetary governor), while the "LIIVI" that the Officio Tacitum trained was estimated to be approximately ten years of age.

Background of the Galbraith Campaign was an attempt to uproot an insurgent assassin cult, headed controversially by (Still extant) Inquisitor Made. Ordo Sicarius records of this time include several criticisms of collateral damage, overzealous prosecution of war efforts, and an over reliance upon divination sourced intelligence. Despite this, Made was vindicated by proof positive evidence of old {SUPPRESSED BY ORDER OF IN JOACHIM, ORDO SICARIUS} and hard evidence corroborating such. Reports of whole sale massacre of juvenile combatants after capture provoked censure from the inquisition as a whole afterwards. Though tenuous, I request a formal investigation into ties between subject LIIVI and {SUPPRESSED}.
{Ed. Note: Denied.}

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Problems with socialization and authority marred an otherwise excellent pupil from LIIVI's time in the Officio Tacitum's tutelage. Psychological assessors ascribed it to his unusual childhood, available at {SUPPRESSED}. Details are scarce- Officio Tacitum archives are spotty at best.

By the age of nineteen LIIVI had an impressive roster of missions under his belt (I think. Every record is under three levels of encryption with two interchangeable ciphers applied on top of that, typical bloody assassin nonsense) and it was decided LIIVI was ready for dedicated field work. Curiously, LIIVI was not assigned to a typical forward operating post that assassins are usually held in to answer summons from inquisitors. He was assigned permanently to a regiment of the Imperial Guard. The Cadian 412th, currently known as the 1st Kronus Liberators. A year later of high value target removal and artillery spotting, LIIVI had his meeting with destiny when Farseer-Auxiliary Taldeer was assigned to the 412th.

Reports and interviews point to a formal relationship at the start. At this time, Taldeer was still engaged to Lithian Sylander as part of House Ulthran's politics (The fact that Sylander wasn't even born yet was no matter) so she remained aloof to all interest. Judging by interviews and journals, there was plenty of it. However, Farseer and Vindicare would prove to be an impressive combination. Mission after mission would lead to the pair working ably in concert to turn the tide of battle with a single well placed and well timed bullet.

But then there was the debacle at Lorn V and the death of Sturnn.

General Sturnn was much loved by the 412th, and Taldeer and LIIVI were no exceptions. Though the details of that day are still unclear, and investigations are still ongoing regarding this {Ref. "Pariah/Untouchable Necron Interest" "Lord of Kronus" "Sea Prophecies"} the death of General Sturnn at the base of the Titan is a matter of heated debate for the 412th. Taldeer, LIIVI, Sturnn, and Sturnn's bodyguard entered the monolith, and only Farseer Taldeer, LIIVI, Commissar Gebbet, Preacher Coates, and Sgt Falker emerged. General Sturnn had fallen in battle, and Farseer Taldeer became Colonel-Farseer Taldeer. Rumor holds that LIIVI had to save one of the two and, under orders from General Sturnn, chose to save Taldeer over her objections. Or, perhaps it was that Farseer Taldeer (Affected by the aura of the Pariahs at the Necron Lord's command) had earlier blundered in her predictions, and LIIVI mistrusted her at a critical moment, leading to the General's death. Or perhaps Colonel-Farseer Taldeer took her rank seriously, and sought to head off a scandal of cross rank fraternizing before it started.

Whatever the case, interviews point to a rift between the two opening up. Where before they worked together efficiently, they sought their objectives separately.

Farseer-Colonel Taldeer would go on to lead the 412th new, notable new victories on Skaldheim, Kronus, and the orbital rings of Barrack Vol. Initial skepticism for an Eldar Farseer running an Imperial Guard regiment was replaced with acceptance, then aclaim. For the Imperium at large, here was the proof that Eldar and Humanity were better together. It also helped that Taldeer renounced her citizenship with Ulthwe, and her family ties in a formal ceremony to prevent any appearances of a conflict of interest. At the same time (If less famously), LIIVI was proving himself an adept agent as well, in most instances supporting the 412th, but notably also in independent operations as called upon by the Ordo Securitas.
A few notables are gunning down the feared Arch-Arsonist of Tarronis {Note: 'Gunning down' does not accurately describe the event, making it sound far too simple. The massive ork warboss required a full six magazines of exitus hellfire rifle rounds, and the full discharge of LIIVI's exitus pistol, and subsequently three blows with a chunk of concrete to the skull before the fiend perished), stealing the list of allegiant governors to the Children of the First Emperor's Conspiracy before they could coordinate a revolt, and being the first and thus far only one recorded to permanently kill a creature only known as Entity 218. Ordo Xenos as usual hoarding info. {INQ JOACHIM: Note to self, talk to Interrogator Garden about professionalism in reporting.}

Throughout the course of these operations, each encountered problems they couldn't handle alone. At first begrudgingly, then out of habit, they grew to rely on each other once more so they could survive what came. Commissar Gebbet at one point got involved, summoning the pair and announcing, coincidentally, that he had had to break up a cross rank relationship between two soldiers earlier that day, that it was clearly stipulated in the military code and regulations that an inferior and superior officer could not engage in any manner of romantic relationship of one another for fear of impacting their judgement in the heat of battle, and that he was very glad that the Colonel-Farseer would never stoop to any such thing like that.

A later report filed by Commissar Gebbet noted that his superior officer had 'emitted a string of profoundly foul utterances that disrespected his person, station, and heritage to such a degree that he was convinced for a moment that a particularly foul mouthed daemon of the warp possessed [Colonel-Farseer Taldeer] and he feared for his immortal soul for a moment" but that it had successfully convinced him that there was no relationship between the two.

As we know now, this was false.

At the same time as they were reigniting their duplicitous relationship {Inq Joachim: Professionalism, Interrogator.} they cultivated worrying friendships. LIIVI has been recorded meeting, and working with a team of assassins, even outside of the bounds of sanctioned Officio Tacitum operations. Though their identities still elude me (Damn the Officio Tacitum!), there is one eversor, a callidus, and a culexus. {Inq Joachim: Useless.} When Officio Tacitum agents fraternize outside of what is necessary for work, one should worry. Interestingly, LIIVI seemed to build a certain rapport with Ronahn, Taldeer's exodite ranger brother. This connection gave LIIVI (inconsistent) access to the webway, something very helpful for an agent.

Farseer Taldeer for her part focused on traditional politics, coming under the wing of Lord General Castor, and by extension, his ally Inquisitor Adrastia. Though still nominally a Colonel, Taldeer is becoming known on a galactic scale as a problem solver, and in demand at Imperial High Command. Accompanying that is a certain resentment. Despite generations of cooperation, some human officers still feel threatened and insulted that an Eldar commands humans. Presumably, after her recovery from the assassination attempt, and after her pregnancy has run its course, she and the 412th will be at the front lines once more, for good or ill.

The other connection is more interesting. Taldeer's unwillingness to associate with Ulthwe for fear of an appearance of conflicting loyalty does not extend to Cegorach's cult. The harlequins have taken an interest in Taldeer's fate, and often the Farseer disappears into the webway escorted by a troupe. Taldeer has offered no explanation of where she has gone, or what her arrangement with them may be, saying only that it is a very personal matter. Cegorach's ilk only answer in riddles not worth repeating. In any case, she is one of the rare few in the galaxy to reliably have harlequin support in battle.
Reports indicate a growing closeness between the two again. At the Sanctuary Masquerade in celebration of the victory on Kronus, LIIVI was seen as part of Taldeer's honor guard. At the consecration of General Sturnn's memorial, the two were seen after the service in deep discussion. At Colonel-Farseer Taldeer's first thwarted assassination, LIIVI managed to evacuate her before harm came to her.

After every such occurrence, the two sought to hide their affair. Though we now know by necessity they would have had to be lovers after the Krasnitz Siege, I speculate that going by reports and overlapping leaves of absence, the must have reignited their relationship, their relationship started far earlier, perhaps just before the Sturnn memorial. Though the present court case in the commissariat argue that the both of them are outside of the traditional command structure of the Imperial Guard, and thus free of the rules against fraternization, the extreme secrecy undertaken to hide their relationship speaks to the reality- they knew it was wrong, and they sought to hide it. {Inq Joachim: Or they were just trying to have some privacy. Their relationship, and legality there of is a matter for the commissariat. Not the Inquisition. Next report, don't stray from the mission parameters again Interrogator, or you're going back to alphabetizing the whole of Tabula planetary archive.}

Which brings us to the modern day, and the unfortunate events of this past Terran month. The Sapiens Supremis attack, the hospitalization of Sreta Ulthran, and the reveal of the 'impossible' pregnancy of Colonel-Farseer Taldeer. The possibility of a natural born human-eldar hybrid is at once shocking and frightening. By my research, I do agree that the dates match up. The Farseer and the Assassin have had a relationship for long enough to match up the current state of gestation, and it has been an increasingly poorly kept secret.

In which case, we live in very interesting times indeed, on the eve of M42.

But the question is, how is this possible? They are far from the first in such a relationship. And for this, I have three theories.

First, divine intervention. The Harlequins took an interest in Farseer Taldeer for a reason. Cegorach or Isha are the most powerful extant that we know of. Isha would be most likely, seeing as she is a goddess of fertility. But the question then comes, why the Farseer, and not her chosen representative married to our Emperor? A trial run, perhaps. Humankind is famously skittish. To you and I, the notion of our great emperor having a divine heir would be a cause for celebration, but certain segments of the population might view this uncharitably as a seizure of power from an alien god, seeking to supplant their Emperor with a half god creature. The other possibility is far more unlikely, but it may be this is Cegorach's doing. Perhaps this is one of those famous pranks of his. For everyone's sake, we must hope this one of Cegorach's more benign pranks.

Second option points to the mysterious origins of LIIVI himself. Though I feel almost certain that the war orphan conscripted by General Sturnn is one and the same as the assassin we now know, I can not say that for certain. I have managed to attain a genetic sample of his at great expense (And great difficulty- Officio Tacitum enhancements) and it is currently being tested and matched against the general population, but as you know, the Imperium has many, many people. It could take decades to find similar genetics, and even then, it wouldn't give us much to work from. However, the Ordo Securitas still has Inquisitor Madek's files on the Galbraith Campaign. They are currently sealed. I request permission to unseal them, and find the truth. Perhaps it was some manner of renegade human-eldar hybridization program, or some adaptation of human to interbreed with eldar? {Inq Joachim: No. There is nothing of that sort in the files. And they remain sealed for a reason. Request denied.}

[[File:Lofn_all_growed_up_still_adorable.jpg|thumb|The horror! The HORROR!]]

The third option, I hesitate to even mention. There have been certain...Signs. Prophecies. My contacts in the Ordo Malleus and Ordo Xenos have offered me a great deal. Bleak fortunetelling from the Chaos Eldar describe something similar, an unholy union of our emperor and their queen. Weirdboyz across planets hoot and holler, speaking of a beast returned, waiting on the other side of the veil for a great rumble. And possibly, most frightfully, I've been told in confidence by a most reliable source of great prognosticating power of the Great Devourer, the tyranids, seeming to converge on Farseer Taldeer's position. Something seems to be attracting them. Already, what few psykers that have been allowed to see Farseer Taldeer (She is currently recuperating in Eldrad Ulthran's care- frustrating my every attempt to investigate) have described a great calm, and serenity surrounding Farseer Taldeer.

Is it not true that, without synapse creatures to control the tyranid hordes, they go wild and revert to bestial primalism? And yet, when reintroduced to one of those synapse creatures they obey, regiment, organize, and act as one? And, though my hand shakes at this, my very spirit quakes, I must tell you to look upon the attached- a vision of this creature, this horrific possibility that may even know gestate, drawn in weak and fearful hand by that soothsayer, of the vision of what might become this child. Look now! See what lurks close by? The awful familiarity of the scene? Maybe this isn't merely a human-eldar hybrid, but something far worse?

I beg you, Lord Inquisitor Joachim, to take this seriously. The fate of our whole galaxy may rest on this!

{Final Notes: Inquisitor Joachim.}

{Interrogator Garden. I was wrong. You're not going to be sorting the archives. You're fired for this ridiculous nonsense. Please wait for security to escort you out of the building.}

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==Unnamed Shadowsun Writing==

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She awoke as always to emptiness, always the same feeling. Loss and regret and creeping dread of all the things left behind knowingly and the things she had not realized each time. When she was young T'au had been a far different place, better it had been to her mind or at least more familiar. She had barely known her parents or siblings as with all Fire Warriors though what she did remember was love and warmth. Old comrades, lovers, friends and even the rivals all lost to the Time Thief.

In the moments before the deep sleep, when the steel sheath came down over glass but the drugs hadn't put her out like a candle there was a moment of darkness. Candle flame is brightest in pure darkness without stars. In those moments before the sleep as all distractions ceased the light, the impossible light shone brightest. The light beyond space and stars and the inferno of war. In the stillness of a beatless heart, still lungs and almost total biological shut down, in the quiet and weightlessness of a sleep impossibly deeper than mere death her lidless eyes were naked before eternal warming flame.

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It was in that fire that her ashes were reborn upon awakening, time stolen from death, life beyond the Thief of Time. Usefulness once more in sacrifice to The Greater Good. More days stored away like winter grain offered in sacrifice to the heathen gods of ancient days, life, her life offered in stolen days for the lives of her people.

She had only seen the light of that candle flame in one other place. Reflected in the eyes of another living relic washed up on the shores of this strange era. In those eyes it was not candle flame flickering and dancing and gentle. In those eyes it was the constant glare. Two holes cut into a man's face right to the heart of a star, unceasing, incomprehensible intensity. It ultimately brought life but it was not gentle, it was inferno and holocaust and it was eternal.

The Thief of Time had stolen her friends and lovers and rivals but it clawed seemingly in vain at the stony countenance of Aun’o’T’au’Acaya’Va’Denta. Aun'Va, he of granite and basalt. Timeless as a mountain and about as stubborn. She knew that he lied, he was the old man she had spoken to in her youth, he who had commanded her into battle in another era. He told others that there had been a line of Va, a lineage of the name unbroken since the days of Aun'Da. But she knew that for the centuries that she had seen and knew of him he had always been himself. The same old man in whom the Greater Good burned like star fire.

How far back did he go? Was he the First Disciple of scripture? That would be impossible she knew, unthinkable and unreasonable, but these were unreasonable times that had seen things unthinkable and horrifying. He had lived impossibly long, how far did impossibility go?

And he knew that she knew. How many other knew of his unnatural longevity? How many had he lied to? Did it matter? Deception was one more weapon of war. Used when needed and put aside in times of peace.

Much like herself.

Her heart beat again in the darkness. The flame receded. Blood began to flow through her veins, sluggish at first, her heart a timid and flickering thing now in this time of rebirth.

Now was the moment of true darkness. The steel sheath still enclosing, protecting her as she awoke. The device she lay in was a relic of her era, familiar and comforting. One day she knew she would not wake up from it and it would be a deathbed. She was fine with that, her ashes would return to her people, distant now as they were.

Another beat of the heart. Stronger now. Blood forced to move. Sensation returned to her extremities, burning as the capillaries adjusted oxygen binding to cobalt as the decades old oxy-gel in her lungs was finally put to some use.

Another beat, she risked the opening of her eyes, blood red and bright, a sliver.

Light. Blinding, clean and white. She wanted to close them again but, that was cowardice and she knew it. Nothing born without some pain was worth keeping and she forced her eyes to open wider, to take in the light.

She could hear muffled sounds, mechanical sounds of antiquated medical equipment and the more hushed, gentle and deeper sounds of Earth Caste technician voices. With the speed of a glacier she moved one aching arm forwards and rapped gently on her glass enclosure as the blinding light resolved itself into people shapes. They jumped to her amusement she saw as she turned her head slowly to the side trying to ignore the light sensation as the anesthetics that had sat long dormant in her body finally found something to do.

The seals on the glass broke with a half hiss, half crack of still machinery coming away from rest, the fluids she had been suspended in drained away and left her resting on an old and faded polymer web mat. She swung her legs to the side and say upright, she felt weak, hideously weak, she always did. She could not afford to show it. She was a legend, a living legend. Unlike Aun'Va she had no problem with the public knowledge that she was a historic relic, it was good. She was a strong helping hand from the days of legend reaching forwards through time. Clarity was returning to her eyes now, some small measure of strength flowing back into her limbs. The figure before her was resolving itself into the robed figure that always greeted her when she awoke. She should feel honoured, she did not especially. He was another old legend like herself.

Grabbing a bucket from an Earth Cast orderly she emptied the oxy-gel from her lungs with as much dignity as could be mustered and took deep of the air of another century she should never have known.

"I have awoken and there is a war". She knew that this day would be recorded. It was always recorded. She had to play her part at all times. "I serve The Greater Good in all things."

There is always a war when we call upon you to serve." Replied the gaunt old figure standing before her. They had both played these parts many times down the eons, always it would go like this. It offered a chilly sort of comfort.

Shadowsun did not remember anymore how many times she had awoken. How many times she had lived and died and lived again. How many wars there had been. How much the Thief of Time had taken from her.

There would be a war. New combatants, new soldiers, new weapons, new horrors aplenty and that was for damn sure and always new faces and names and allies and friends as the Greater Good, the philosophy of unity and purpose was adopted across the stars under new names knowingly or unknowingly. It was the triumph and universally recognized truth of civility over barbarity realized time and again across the stars adopted by those that would survive and would survive and prosper because of it. She would sacrifice all she was or would ever be for it and do so gladly for such a truth, one death at a time. One day sacrificed at a time.

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==Unnamed Fallen (Chaos Space Marine) Writing==

"What have you done to the Imperium? This is not how I remember it. So many fresh faces and everything changed. I knew Eldar troops cooperated with Guardsmen but not to such an extent. Is the integration truly finished? Oh how times differ, kind of hard to track when fighting on a daemon world with 20 times slower speed. You know, I didn't get to participate in the last Black Crusade. The Warp does all sorts of peculiar things to time, space, and minds. Back when Luther ordered us to fire on Lion's retinue, I was questioning the order in my mind whilst pulling the trigger. Now isn't that funny? Little more than two years ago I think, we started that war against the loyalist Dark Angels. How I missed my legion, are any of those marines from that battle alive by any chance? I would love to talk to them. Well that was one of my reasons for surrendering, that and having my arms sliced off. Never convinced by the Fallen Dark Angels xenophobia, I almost managed to even get out a warning to Lion. Lucky bastards caught my messenger! The Imperium seem to have really improved after the War of The Beast, things may be looking up for humanity. Come on, at least tell me if the veterans from that battle will see me."

"No, the veterans of Lion's Last Battle refused to see you."

"All of them?"

"There are only a handful of living veterans from that battle, so yes."

"Did my legion get decimated or the like?"

"Just the fact that battle took place over 2,000 years ago have killed many veterans."

"What? That can't be true, it felt like only a few years since I first entered the Eye of Terror. I didn't want any of this to happen. What do you mean Lion's Last Battle, I know we never killed him."

"Lion El'Jonson was sent into a coma by Luther in that battle, one Lion never woke up from."

"I-I see. Yet the rest of the legion is intact after that battle right? [[Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Forces#The_Breaking_of_the_Legions|They haven't splintered like us?"]]

P74 from ''"Tales of the Third Black Crusade"'' by Quinta Tarcanus

== The Month of Murphy ==
The Month of Murphy:
The Imperium has, from ancient files, learned of Murphy's Law (Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, and usually at the worst possible time). For a while it was considered either a weapon of Chaos or Cegorach fucking around, until Cegorach himself chimed in. He provided the most concrete knowledge the Imperium has: He is not Murphy, he is pretty sure Murphy does not exist, and Murphy's Law is more like a law of the universe that applies even to the Chaos gods in the Warp.

This lead to Oscar making a very bad decision. It happened while he was on The Emperor's Tour, when he came across a situation that would benefit from his attention: Chaos cults had gripped 45 worlds in a defense-poor sub-sector. He joked that he would trade Murphy a month of minor inconveniences for a quick victory. He got the victory, dealing with all 45 worlds in less than three months using only one chapter of the Astartes, two Regiments of the Imperial Army, and a single battlecruiser as the cultists dealt with one catastrophe after another. Then he discovered that Murphy's Law does not know what the word "Minor" means.

In the span of one month, the following happened:
*365 mugs full of hot recaf spilled over his clothes and destroyed
*A robe woven for him with metallic fibers blowing the powergrid of an Administratum Sector HQ during a critical database transfer
*A 50,000% increase in the number of jaywalking incidents on the planet he was visiting
*A misfire during an aeronautical display in his honor burning down their hardcopy backups
*25 Inquisitors dying under the very strange circumstance of "spontaneous appearances of pools filled with leaping sharks" while investigating scheming nobles
*A previously undetected Chaos Cultist getting Jubblowski pregnant with twins(see file [[#The APEX Twins|COBRA SILVER SEAGULL (Tundra Cleric 12d))]]
*And his favorite lampshade being possessed by something very strange just so it could constantly yell at him about why his joke was a very bad decision and insulting him over his fashion sense. Removal of the lampshade just lead to random lampshades around him doing the exact same thing until the month ended.

The entire thing seems hilarious until you renumber that the casualties from that month totaled over 400 billion - 6 times the enemy forces he faced. To this day, every officer and Inquisitor is taught one very basic lesson: DON'T FUCKING TAUNT MURPHY.

= The Adventures of Legi and Draco =

==Chase==

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The stripped down land speeder whipped around another hairpin bend in the webway depths, Hell and damnation in the form a of what once might have been eldar not too far behind them. The walls were curved her and sticky enough with something not unlike gravity that rather than being dashed against the side they merely continued their mad dash along what she had until a moment ago been considering a ceiling. Today was going to be another “explanations” day if they made it back and that was for damn sure and the only thing that would buy them leniency was the semi-crystalline Necroteuch stolen from a curious temple dedicated to both Tzneetch and Slaanesh. That there were still copies of the foul tome in circulation and new cooperation between the gods were both equally disturbing.

But not immediately as disturbing as the driving skills of one Inquisitor Jaq Draco who was pushing the “pimp-speeder” as fast as it’s custom engine would go down extra dimensional tunnels that man was never meant to know of.

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“You sure you know where we are going?” Legienstrausse asked through the comm.-bead she had embedded in her skull earlier that day. “Not as sure as I was fifteen minuets ago.” The mad inquisitor replied turning to face her with a manic grin showing far too many teeth. Without warning the Speeder spun around on it’s frictionless anti-grav sheath just as the chariot pulled by two Steeds of Slaanesh rounded the last corner and gaining on them. The damned creature in contraption, shimmering and beautiful and terrible locked its baleful dark eyes with the Inquisitor. Beguiling and inhumanly lovely and opening wider in shock as the Mad Dog Draco raised his ultra-violet laser pistol and winked.

The creature, fast as it was, couldn’t dodge the invisible spectrum light as it punched through it’s head right between the eyes and flash fried it’s diseased brain. The serpentine mounts startled and tried to bolt in opposite directions resulting in what could best be described as a fucked up mess as another half dozen or so pursuers collided with them. The carnage was obscured as the speeder violently lurched back into pointing in the direction of travel just in time to swerve around another tight corner and land on what had originally been the ground or at least a surface that seemed like one.

Legienstrausse could only lament the poorly judged decisions that had lead her to this point in her life. Once upon a time, a lifetime ago if truth be told, she had been waiting tables in an eating establishment in the Daisy Chain. It wasn’t a glamorous life but she had her own apartment, was making enough to live off of and a little more to send home to her mother and father in the Lagrange Point Sprawl. But that wasn’t enough for her and she had volunteered for drug trials. That had quite paid well, serious risks were minimal, as by the time they tested it on people most of the kinks had been ironed out. A few days of blinding headaches, an upset stomach, a bit of dizziness and on one embarrassing occasion lactation were a small price to pay she had thought. But she had gotten greedy and gotten in for more extreme trials for greater financial rewards. Eventually she had volunteered for something to seriously help the Imperium, to be a test subject to make a better type of super soldier. Of the ten thousand by luck she had been the only success. The fates of the failures ranged from unfortunate to sorrowful.

It wasn’t until the Inquisition kicked her door down that she knew anything actually illegal had been going on.

The speeder upended without warning and disappeared into a long shaft in the ceiling and the gravity reversed so that they were in fact falling. Faster than falling as the Necroteuch slipped out of her hands and flew “upwards” at mere freefall.

Her long clawed arms almost made longer in reflex action almost closed on it’s irregular dodecahedron form just as the sinewy hands of another being snatched it out of the air. They had closed on them, the forsaken and wretched. With a predatory grin the once-eldar lunged at her with murderous intent, it’s jaws closing deep into her shoulder as claws punched deep into her abdomen. Through the ringing of red hot and depthless pain she heard Draco swear as a pained sound half scream and half whimper escaped her lips, but no help would come from the Inquisitor as he fought off another creature with his knives and steering the speeder with his left foot.

The creature pushed her down into the upholstery of the back seat of the vehicle, a snakelike tongue licking it’s lips and extending to her bloodshot eyes as it leaned in close to drink deep of the scent of her agony. The pained noise without words continued to peel out of her mouth, tears running freely from her eyes. There was a brief moment of confusion for the kneeler before foul gods as it realized that the scent was all wrong and it’s hand was in fact stuck and being held tight in the wetness of her ruined gut. The croneworlder had enough time for a momentary expression of panic as the gut wound grew teeth and a jawbone and accompanying musculature and clamped down hard enough to meet in the middle, Legienstrausse’s face split neatly down the middle as she head butted the once-eldar and caught his head in her own and crushed in a shark like bite. It was over then but for the twitching as the body was pitched over the side, the Necroteuch retrieved from the corpse with a long boneless limb that she habitually would still have called an arm.

“What did that one taste like?” Asked the Mad Jaq against the gale as the body of his own assailant disappeared upwards into freefall, headless and presumably dead.

“Chicken and sex” Replied Legienstrausse as her skull crunched and knitted itself back into a human shape. Jaq flipped the craft ninety degrees to flat as the upside-down pit came to an abrupt end, bottoming out the vehicle that then sprang and lurched forwards along a much broader tunnel not long later two mangled corpses landed where they had been.

There were still shapes following them, more distant now, on what looked like long limbed spider-squids. They were wary, not one of them would want to make the first move but neither would they willing return to their foul land without their strange and terrible book.

Options presented themselves fleetingly in the manic mind of the mad inquisitor. They could lure them to Ganymede of Titan, but one was meant to be secret and the other would probably get them shot by grumpy space marines, they could lure them all the way to Saim-Hann or the Hubworlds but that would mean taking the straight and broad roads and the others were faster on the open, there was a Silver Skulls checkpoint somewhere around here but he couldn’t remember exactly where. All he knew was where he was and in the beating of his heart and the saruthi-smell where everything else was for a given value of “here” and “there”. Today was, he felt, another good day. A fun day and as the hordes of damnation followed his streaming checkerboard coat he couldn’t help but laugh.

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==Happy New Year==

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The drinks had been plentiful and that wasn’t the problem unless it was. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, a fun time. Music and drunken flailing charitably called dancing, the people from different sites and Vaults and even off-worlders and outsiders come to visit (after being extensively checked of course). The main hall of Admin-Site Prime had never been so alive. And away from the heart of it all sat Legienstrausse in her own little bubble of self-generating, alcohol fuelled, misery. Nobody had asked her to dance, nobody had commented on her pretty dress, barely anybody had even said hello to her.

She saw them, they though that she couldn’t see them but even with only two eyes she had extremely good peripheral vision. A new face, an outsider or someone new enough not to know what she was would approach her only to be carefully intercepted by one of her jailers who would whisper into their ear. Over the happy, happy music she couldn’t hear what it was exactly they were whispering. They would not be told the truth, not the whole truth.

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The alcohol helped. It wasn’t making her happier but it was making the misery feel more distant. She was through nearly eight bottles of Rakia and the night was still young. After a fashion. Ganymede was tidally locked to Jupiter with an orbit of a hundred and seventy two hours and if she could remember that then it was time to start on another bottle. Which she did. Or at least intended to. A hand grasped her own firmly but not ungentle. She could have sworn that she saw no one approach, and she would have. But then he did have a knack for moving in unexpected directions.

The hairless done of his head gleamed like a twisted halo in the lights and his stupid clown coat, horizontal stripes on the inside, vertical on the outside and both in badly matching colours, hanging from his coat hanger and deckchairs body like the wings of a badly assembled angel. Was there genuine concern in those eyes? It was hard to tell. He was either a man who could hide and mimic emotions well or bounced around far more than a man should and still be capable of doing the job he did.

What was he? It irked her something fierce that all knew exactly what she was, knew enough certainly to be frightened at any rate, but nobody ever stopped to ask what the ever loving fuck he was. He ran the place, or at least the day to day running of part of it. Gods know he answered to people, strange shadowy people that she did not know of and probably never would, and whom she suspected probably didn’t know about each other. But who and what was he? He was insane, clearly he was insane and she had seen far too much to believe otherwise, but he held a job that required a level professionalism and competence well above what the teeming masses were typically capable of.

She looked up into those dark grey eyes and saw nothing reflected back. Not a lack of anything to reflect but a nothingness so complete that it fell away to some unseen terrible horizon and she didn’t know if those were his eyes or her eyes reflected in them.

“Legi, you shouldn’t do this to yourself.” He said concern etched in every line framing those fathomless eyes.

“I shouldn’t a lot of things, but here we are.” She replied up ending the bottle and managing to suck down half it’s contents before he more firmly pulled it away from her.

Slipping himself under half-heartedly resisting arm she carefully guided her out of the main hall, though not before she managed to split her other arm into four grasping tentacles and each grab more bottles from the table on the way out.

“What was all that about Legi?” His voice was not unkind, but when she felt less than kind she couldn’t believe that it was anything but an act. He didn’t give a damn, he wouldn’t be her jailer if he did. But maybe he did and that was more terrifying to her, maybe he did and she was pushing away the only person mad enough to care about her.

“Nobody wanted to dance” She slurred, the alcohol, several times terminal levels for a normal human, was finally starting to kick in. “Not one person, I put on my prettiest dress and not one person wanted to dance.” In truth she was technically naked, the dress was her own skin reshaped and pigmented into looking like what was in fashion in the Jovian Orbitals; Pale blue and light grey, hugging on the torso and sleeves but loose and flowing from the waist down. Broad belts with big buckles were in fashion again this year. The colours in the dress were starting to run together and blur as she lost concentration.

“I’ve seen you try to dance Legi, you may have dodged a bullet on this one”

“Fuck you old man, you can’t talk”

“Yes, dear, I absolutely can. I have danced with Harlequins and they take that shit seriously.” She was starting to stumble more now and although he wouldn’t mention it to her she was a lot heavier than she looked.

“I just wanted one dance. Would you dance with me?” She mumbled through half closed eyes “I could try and take it as seriously as you like”

“No” The Inquisitor replied as they staggered around down the corridors that became tunnels. Mad as he was the idea of trying to waltz with an inebriated organic weapon of mass destruction was not something even he, Mad Dog Draco, was crazy enough to attempt.

She would be sober in the mourning; thankfully her unique properties seemed to minimize hangovers. Hopefully she wouldn’t remember much of tonight. He though an invitation to a new years party would have made her feel batter. It was not one of his better ideas. Next year maybe they could curl up on a couch with some chocolates and watch a film or something. Or maybe he could try and find another method of escaping their jailers for another little adventure.

He would have to be careful, he knew, his sponsors and superiors were getting more adept at finding and shutting down his escape tunnels. If it carried on like this in a few hundred years they would have trapped him here with all the other dangerous curiosities.

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== A Little Trip Out ==

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It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Most of his ideas did somehow. Maybe it was the ability to talk fast, maybe it was the ever so wide and enthusiastic smile or maybe it was the way they were typically delivered in a hail of incoming fire when other alternatives were few and grim. But this time, this time was something special. Not good special either, oh no. This was a “has to be kept away from matches” type of special. The type of special that the Mechanicus usually scooped up to make use of the savant ability. Brilliant but utterly stupid.

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The “Pimp Speeder” was doing speeds when translated to real-space locations that would be extreme violations of relativity known only to Necron Crypteks. The Navigator on the front passenger seat she could still smell and feel the body warmth of even as he screamed and she knew the Inquisitor himself was sitting in the seat next to him almost certainly one hand on the wheel, one had hanging over the side of the door and foot pressed to the floor.

As for herself, Legienstrasse was trying with some success to crawl into the upholstery of the back seat. She had already digested her own eyes as a precaution.

The Chaos loonies of Rhanda were doing putting forth their best efforts to flesh-forge a “perfect” body and at the moment the fossil light of The Opening of the Eye passed over their world install in it their patron; The Sapphire King. Such a being, if half the claims about the body were true, would be to deamon-hosts what Fenrisian Ale was to shandy. Astartes parts stolen from ritual sacrifices taken in battles wrapped around a cybernetic frame made of tortured Martian Priests, infused with the Oblitorator Virus and gods alone knew what else. And maybe even they didn’t know what else. Sadly the information was obtained in an alley behind a seedy drinking establishment in the warrens of Luna. There was no way that they could get from Luna to Rhanda in less than a few weeks let alone a matter of hours.

The grin Inquisitor Draco had at that moment was something that would haunt her already decidedly unhappy dreams. Driving a stripped down land-speeder into a testing warp engine with a commandeered and terrified navigator holding the dashboard hard enough to leave finger marks in the paint is not for the faint of hearted. Or the sensible.

Once more Legienstrasse debated the wisdom of getting out of bed today. She could hear the things that were following them. She could feel the unlight and the heat of a god being born as it assaulted her skin. As it assaulted her soul and made her feel dirty. They were surfing the birth of Slaanesh, the bow wave of damnation. She knew what was following them, second hand hunger of a god reaching forward to claim them in the memory of birth.

In theory they could surf the wave right to Rhanda and, with navigator sight and Jaq’s psyker talents, travel the disturbance the ritual was causing and materialize right at the epicentre. In theory. Nobody in ten thousand years of Imperial history had ever tried anything this stupid to her knowledge.

Jaq Draco, Inquisitor of the most glorious Imperium, was having an eventful day. It had started with some toast with banana slices, it had involved following a lead he’d taken from a dead mans pocket to a planned meeting in a delightfully colourful public meeting house which resulted in beating someone to death with a large spanner behind said establishment and now he was driving very fast to an uncertain destination in a place he should not be. It was all so damn splendid and spoiled only by the whimpering of Legienstrasse behind him who had assumed the form of an amorphous blob in an attempt to hid under the seat and the screaming of the young navigator next to him.

His only concern was the bitching he was going to have to endure when they dragged him back to Ganymede, he did feel kind of bad for lying to Legi about this being a sanctioned investigation. She did seem like she needed another trip out and maybe she’s thank him when she calmed down, maybe not.

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</div>

=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.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

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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</div>

==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.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

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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</div>

==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.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

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.
</div>
</div>

= Inquisitorial Reports =

==The APEX Twins==
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; PROJECT COBRA SILVER SEAGULL (Tundra Cleric 12D)
; CLEARANCE LEVEL : MYSTERIA ALTUM BLACK (FATAL EYE RED)
; SOURCE : ORDO SECURITAS JUNGLE MUSTANG
; AUTHOR : Inquisitor SABINE APEX
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
; INITIAL BRIEFING :
On 2.1015.826.M41, Sister Jubblowski (ASSET GLASS PANTHER) was impregnated by a previously undetected Chaos cultist. Immediate countermeasures were taken, hampered by the fact that any attempt to abort the pregnancy would remove her fertility and Isha's blessing. Jubblowski insisted on finding other countermeasures that would deny Chaos a potential weapon and allow her to continue her duties, despite a clear and present danger to herself (Collected Marginalia, Emperor Oscar Steward: It was, to put it bluntly, badass). For a full list of countermeasures, see the attached BLEAK BULLDOG document, prepared by Grey Knight Brother Ryner and Order of the Gilded Rose Palatine Moira, both of whom were integral to Jubblowski's continued security and health.
Shortly after attachment of Brother Ryner to her security detail on 0105.827, Sister Jubblowski received a triple set of mutually exclusive prophecies regarding the long-term results of pregnancy (See attached document CLUMSY RAINBOW). All three prophecies confirmed twin female psykers as immediate result. (Collected Marginalia, Azura Strain, Grand Headmistress of Rehtor Imperia: request meeting with SABINE APEX. Must ensure this inquisitor will not emotionally stunt these girls from detachment).

On 2.0712.827, at 1111 Standard Imperial Time, Sister Jubblowski gave birth, barely surviving the process. Medical opinion holds she will not be able to safely bear for another three years. Counteracting this is the fact that Jubblowski spent the entire birthing issuing prophecies. Six hours later, a cult summoned multiple daemons to attack and secure the twins. Said plan was cut short when the daemons fled after the girls shredded one without trying. I was there, and I'm torn between joy and horror at knowing what a daemon's shriek of pain and terror sounds like.
Testing has proven the girls (Named Ethel and Gretel after characters from an ancient childrens tale) to be Alpha-Plus Psykers, with a few potential abilities the Farseers are currently unable to determine the nature of. Sister Jubblowski has followed their recommendations and designated me as their caretaker. She followed this by making me lactacte.
A moment of candor follows: I'm scared fucking shitless of the idea. I can go toe-to-toe with a junior Farseer, but that's only when skill is considered – in terms of power a weak one would overpower me. Is putting me in charge of two Alpha-Plus psykers, humans that until now were theoretical, a good idea? Their potential made Eldrad pause. I need backup.
Other than their massive power and the white hair, the girls are of a healthy weight and size, although they are showing signs of more muscular control than normal. Gene tests are being carried out, but are currently inconclusive in any area except their suitability for the Adepta Sororitas augmentations.

RESPONSE OF HIGH LORDS OF TERRA
Inquisitor SABINE APEX, your request for backup has been granted. You are hereby granted leadership of the JUNGLE PANTHER working group, who will aid you in this. Assets are being forwarded to them. May all our gods watch over you.

Selected Reports follow:

; Daily Report 0419.833.M41, JUNGLE PANTHER Compound (Respa III, Obscurus/Scarus/Helican). Inquisitor SABINE APEX, Reporting. :
The girls went missing for three hours today. We discovered them in a nearby town by the simple method of waiting: our psykers can see them when they light their powers up, and they like to use them. Recovery went well, as the fact that we had to hide the bodies was overlooked by the local authorities, who are already used to extreme violence between the gangs. It was a fairly gruesome scene – if I didn't know they had lit up for three seconds, I would guess they had spent hours torturing these men. When asked what happened, they replied “They wanted to do nasty things with us, so we did nasty things to them first. One of them really liked it.” This lead into the same argument that they can't keep other people as pets, no matter what the voices say.
Their therapist quit today. He's been getting extremely frustrated at how easily they misinterpret his statements. And I may have threatened his life over how he never actually tries to treat them like growing children, not static beings. How he got this job I don't know.

; Daily Report 0420.833.M41 :
That fucking bastard. He was keeping his own records. Thank the Empress the Exodites here like us, and captured him when their seer said so. The things in his luggage... Now I know where the girls were getting some of their ideas from. Ordo Securitas forces nearby have been notified to send the Cohort Religio down here, because some fucking pedo is trying to get the girls as his prophets and brides. The seer, Mornel, has offered to help me shoot them. I think I'm going to take him up on that.
The bastards removal seems to have brought in a change in the girls, who seem to be finally realizing just how serious things are. This lead Gretel to show that he had given her a wig and a haircut so she could continue to switch with Ethel , even after I ordered them to give them a way of telling them apart.

; Birthday Report 0712.840.M41 :
The girls have been eight years old for five years now. No explanation other than bastard's fetish has been found. Mornel gifted them with frilly green outfits. They are progressing excellently in controlling their powers, but unless they let themselves grow up we won't be able to deploy them without accusations of child soldiers being thrown around.

; Daily Report 0925.845.M41 :
Additional security has been put in place. The girls escaped to the wandering pirate port of Rum And Pour (which I have been told is the recipe for a truly vile, yet enjoyable, drink) three days ago, before returning to us today. According to reports, they caused no incidents, which is bullshit. The pirates are either not talking, or what they did was so minor it passed beneath notice. Therapists have noticed an increase in their psychopathic tendencies.

; Final Report from JUNGLE PANTHER Compound, 0003.848.M41 :
We failed. We failed hard. Inquisitor Oak was stopping by, dropping off supplies and picking up a few artifacts we had recovered on his way to the OBELISK MAZE vault in the Sol system. During his visit, the girls stole his shuttle, and then stole his ship. The ship was recovered unharmed 40 lightyears from here, with only two artifacts missing: a chainaxe recovered from a chaos cult stronghold (OBJECT FIRE HEART 17UM), and a cursed rifle of unknown origin that combines the firepower of an Exitus rifle with the full-auto of a heavy stubber (OBJECT BARRED CAGE 98C). Shortly thereafter, Rum and Pour left the sector. A messenger drone left at their last location held a message to us from the girls: they wished to see the universe, and the pirates seemed like their kind of people. They also called me Mother, and admonished me to not cry or get mad.

My only consolation is that most of the pirates there seem to prefer keeping the Imperium around. I and the tactical assets of JUNGLE PANTHER are heading out to give chase. We will not let Chaos get their hands on these girls, not after all the work we did on denying them this potential weapon. I have no idea what I'm going to do to the girls yet: grounding their little asses seems a little underpowered at the moment.

Inquisitor SABINE APEX, signing off.

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</div>

==Inquisitorial Report: AZURE IRON WASP==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

>Enter Clearance

>Password: ********************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.

>Opening file...

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

OPERATION: AZURE IRON WASP (Eclipse Caterpillar 754) <br>
SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Divisio Raptoris, Facility BORON RAM <br>
AUTHOR: Inquisitor PEARL WATCHMAN, administrator of facility BORON RAM <br>
[Context: Blanket report to all personnel of facility BORON RAM, a facility devoted to researching potential cures for genestealer infection] <br>

It has come to my attention that several of the facility’s personnel have been using several of the patients of this facility for their own…personal uses. This behaviour was found to be rampant across the facility, with at least 23 different individuals breaking quarantine of numerous infectees, both male and female and of various species. Genestealer infection induces indiscriminate mating behavior with any perceived suitable partner to produce genestealer hybrids, even after host sterilization. Experiments to neutralize tyranid phero-brainwashing (which so far have only showed temporary success) have hosts show horror at actions while infected, indicating behaviour occurs regardless of conscious desires.

Speaking freely for a moment, I want to ask a simple question: What in the Imperium’s name is wrong with you? These are people. Men and women. They have friends and family waiting for them out there. They’re here to get better. Just because they’re sick and can’t control themselves doesn’t give you the right to use them as sex dolls.

Most of the offending personnel have been identified and dealt with. If I find any further instances of this occurring, I will personally make sure those responsible get reassigned to the deepest hole possible on Ganymede.

>End file<br>
>Logging you out...<br>
>Good hunting, Inquisitor.<br>
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</div>

==Inquisitorial Report: YELLOW EYE SEAGULL==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

>Enter Clearance

>Password: ************************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.

>Opening file...

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

OPERATION: YELLOW EYE SEAGULL (Wobbly Wombat 17)

SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Diviso Sepulchrum, Deep Field Recon Squadron 17

Author: Interrogator PURRING VIOLET

Arrived and departed from IGC-137-Oscar-Romeo-Dalet-2828 without incident, extracting roughly two weeks before the Shadow in the Warp fell over the system. As in the previous sixteen systems, all traces of life above crustal microbes have been eliminated, primarily by orbital bombardment with some remaining traces of nanoweapons. As before, all indicators point towards Necron responsibility, of a fleet numbering about 200 vessels. [file attached: forensic analysis, orbital bombardment, weapon types and distribution] By the looks of things, we arrived just hours after they left. Maybe in the next system we'll get to see them in action. Progression of the age of the damage indicates the extermination fleet is moving via Dolmen gate, with no inertialess-equipped vessels. [file attached: forensic analysis, orbital bombardment, dating techniques] Maybe we'll catch them in the act in the next system.
At this point, all evidence is pointing towards the Necrons trying their own variation of the Kryptmann line, exterminating worlds in the Tyranids' path.
On the one hand, perhaps we can feel grateful that the Necrons are weakening the Tyranids for us. On the other hand... analysis of atmospheric composition indicates that this planet likely had a pre-space industrial/atomic civilization. [file attached: forensic analysis, atmospheric composition] They are either all dead now, or were scooped up en masse for biotransference experiments.
Next system is IGC-137-Oscar-Romeo-Gimel-2124. Long range telescope observation shows indications of life on the second planet; maybe that will still be true by the time we get there.

>End file

>Opening file...

OPERATION: YELLOW EYE SEAGULL (Solar Serpent 2)

SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Divisio Sepulchrum, HEADSTONE KING

AUTHOR: Inquisitor SUNSET STABERINDE

Deeper analysis of Wobbly Wombat reports only partially support initial conclusions that Necrons are enacting a Kryptmann Line strategy. Pattern and placement of sterilized systems are not consistent with attempts to weaken the Tyranids before a killing blow. Paths are left through sterilized zones leading away from Necron space. Conclusion is that Necrons are attempting to herd Tyranid fleets away from Tomb-Worlds while dealing as little damage to them as possible. Further conclusion: the Necrons are attempting to use the Tyranids as a weapon against the rest of the galaxy.
This is consistent with known psychology of the Silent King. Silent Empire long-term goals involve extermination of all life throughout galaxy. The Silent Empire does not currently have the power to do so. (See SCARLET SPINE SEAGULL reports for detail on Necron power projection) The Tyranids likely do. Necrons are in excellent condition to survive Tyranid onslaught; necrodermis indigestible, recall/repair mechanisms allow extreme attrition tactics, if all else fails they can clear the life off their tomb-worlds and return to stasis. Tyranids likely to depart after scouring galaxy of all life, leaving Necrons as sole owners. In short, Tyranid victory serves the Silent King's interests.
Further conclusions: Necrons may undertake further action against attempts to halt Tyranid advance. Sabotage of various kinds or direct naval or ground action against Imperium strongholds. Such actions should be anticipated and warded against before they actually occur; however, specific policy suggestions in this area are beyond the scope of this report.

>End file

>Logging out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.
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</div>

==Inquisitorial Report: BLACK BRASS PIG==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

>Enter Clearance

>Password: ******************************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.

>Opening file...

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
OPERATION: BLACK BRASS PIG (Onyx Desert 22)

SOURCE: Ordo Malleus, Task Force MUSTARD-3

AUTHOR: Interrogator NACRE NETWORK

[Context: personal report from NACRE NETWORK to DIAMOND STAG, regarding cleanup efforts in the wake of the 8th Black Crusade]

Our worst fears have been realized. While physically relatively unscathed by their seven-month captivity at the hands of the Chaos Eldar, deep psychic trawls have revealed extensive mental tampering. Testing of 500 randomly-selected individuals out of the seven million survivors indicate at least half the population of Merriman's World are affected.

The exact purpose of the tampering is still unknown, and I must admit the technicalities are beyond me. Attached is a more detailed report by Primaris Xavier and Seer Iyonais. [Attached File: (Onyx Desert 20) Deep Probe Trawl Results] We do know there are two parts to the tampering. The first is a simple memory edit, evidently to replace any memories of the tampering itself with memories of the long-term confinement and neglect reported by the initial liberation teams. The second is a 'knot' of psychic energy hidden deep within the victim's mind, requiring deep probing to uncover. The exact function of this knot is unclear, but we can safely assume it to be a booby-trap of some variety.

This poses a dilemma. Releasing the survivors of Merriman's World into the Imperium before they have been screened is obviously impossible, when any one of them could be a ticking time-bomb. However, scanning all seven million of them would take resources that are simply not available, not with the counter-attack under way. The alternative, simply killing them all, is unpalatable. Perhaps you have an alternative, Lord?

>End file

>Logging you out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.
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</div>

==Inquisitorial Report: GREEN ZINC OLM==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''
>Enter Clearance

>Password: ***************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.
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OPERATION: GREEN ZINC OLM (Hateful Heart 1227)

SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Divisio Barbarum, Deep Field Recon 180

AUTHOR: Inquisitor IVORY MILL

[Context: observation of Ork Attack Moons operating against the Tyranids in the Octarius Theater]

We have confirmation that the Orks have begun repair operations within the hulk of the Attack Moon *Bugzappa*. The Orks have begun transferring vast quantities of raw materials, parts, grot workers, and assorted industrial machinery into the interior of the Attack Moon, along with Meks from multiple systems. This is confirmed by long-range telescopic observation, intercepts of vox transmissions, and analysis of traffic types and patterns. It is safe to assume that this means the Tyranid infestation on board has been suppressed.

Progress on repairs is difficult to estimate; the Meks and grot workers are focusing on interior components of the hulk first, precluding direct observation. I assume they are trying to restore FTL capabilities to move the *Bugzappa* to a safer location before more Tyranid forces arrive.

Closer observation by stealth shuttles or servitor probes was prevented by a previously unknown type of energy field, apparently a distant relative of the Shokk Attak Gun. It creates a wide planar field of uncontrolled micro-teleports, shredding any matter passing through the boundary. The field is projected by several hundred unmanned emitters in a rough shell around the *Bugzappa*. It is apparently nearly harmless to large vessels equipped with void shields, as such vessels have been observed moving through the field with impunity; however, small and unshielded vessels have no such protection. Although this is mere speculation, I suspect this was designed to prevent Tyranid infiltration and sabotage attempts using small, stealthy bioforms. The design bears the hallmarks of Big Mek Baddkrasha. Since the *Bugzappa* is also his design, a personal interest in its repair is not unexpected. I assume he is also in-theater, although vox-traffic does not refer to his presence directly.

Assuming Baddkrasha's presence, based on the amount of materials and labor flowing in I estimate they can have FTL repaired in around a week. Without Baddkrasha's presence, two to three weeks. This assumes repair of the FTL system is their primary goal.

I will continue to observe the repair efforts of the *Bugzappa*. Once it warps out, I will move to re-acquire contact at the major shipyard systems under uncontested Ork control in Octarius. End report.

>End file

>Logging out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.
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</div>

==Inquisitorial Report: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

>Enter Clearance

>Password: ****************************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

>Opening file...

OPERATION: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Quiet Quern 6)

SOURCE: Interrogator URBAN WELDER, Inquisition Watchtower Snarkle, Jack Hive, Joseph Haarlock Sucks At Cards

Analysis of the artifacts captured in last week's raid on the cult stronghold [reference: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Questing Quail 1), (Questing Quail 2)] has conclusively identified Items 23, 27, and 106 as psy-grafting machines of Chaos Eldar origin. Devices of this type are used to transfer an infiltrator's psyche into a captive subject, subordinating the original individuals' will to their own while retaining enough memory and personality to permit the infiltrator to pass as the original even to close confidantes and surface level psychic scanning. [refer to: Hideous Machineries of the Lost and the Damned: A Comprehensive Reference to Known Cult Technologies of the Segmentum Obscurus, Vol. 3, 227th Edition, pg. 1128-1145, for more detail] Quite simply, it turns loyal citizens into sleeper agents for the cult.

As this cell of the cult was using a high-class retreat as a cover, they would have had potential access to a wide cross section of lesser nobility, including PDF officers. A full assessment of the threat must wait for the completion of more detailed analysis of the compromised social networks and the completion of interrogations of captured cultists, but we must assume the worst. This cell alone may have seeded hundreds of sleeper agents in sensitive positions, and if this was not the only cell of the cult it is possible there are still more psy-graft machines out there.

The implications are dire; and any other cells of the cult will surely know of the destruction of their fellows, and respond. I fear the situation is beyond the ability of a single Watchtower to contain. Consequently, I am officially requesting aid from the other Watchtowers on-world [attachment: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Query Quetzal 1) and the deployment of specialists in dealing with psi-grafted sleeper agents from off-world [attachment: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Query Quetzal 2)].

Hopefully, we can root out this cancer before it spreads further.

>End file

>Logging you out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.

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= Non-Canonical Stories (Post M41 and Alternate Timelines) =

Abandon canon all ye who enter here. This is the place for all Nobledark Imperium stories that, regardless of how good they might be, represent non-canonical timelines (i.e., alternate timelines or post-999.M41 scenarios). Because the potential future of the galaxy post-999.M41 is supposed to be [[Your Dudes|up to the reader to decide]], all stories have been spoilered in order to avoid potentially ruining anyone's headcanon.

[[File:NotCanonShout.gif|200px|thumb|right|Basically this.]]

== Cypher Claws ==

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Private Dalwort was pretty sure he was going to die. He had known that he would for a while now, not the exact particulars but something like this. It was inevitable in a way, there were only so many ways a soldier in the Imperial Guard could die and almost all of them involved in some way the participation of another party. But he wasn't happy about it, no one bit. This was not how he wanted t go, hunted down across the snow like a beast. He could turn and fight, he knew at some level, he could turn and fight and die like a man. They could have outpaced him some time ago and he knew it, a mere man couldn't compete against an astartes, let alone a blood read monster blessed of Khorne. They were toying with them, he could hear their laughter over the wind in the tree tops and the hammering and blood rushing in his ears. Muscles on fire, lungs laboring to drag one more ragged breath after another into his chest he stumbled on. His nightsider eyes turned night into day by the light of the moon through the branches and he could see corporal Cadful not so blessed stumble over a tree root. Dalwort broke stride to catch him before he fell and was immediately slapped aside by a bright read hand.

Stars and whorl of purple and yellow blossomed in the pain of his face as he came back to himself. Everything was sore down one side of his face and he knew, by the fact that he was still alive, that he couldn't have been down for more than a moment. One eye was a rose of crimson agony, vision doubled and already he could feel it swelling shut and bruised and bleeding. A figure writ huge against the dark grey and gnarly tree trunks stood over Dalwort as he scrambled and backed away across the floor, Neth, Tiynad and Hormandz were, he saw ahead, backing away from two other giants that loomed ahead of them.

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A hand more like a metal bear paw lifted him by the collar of his sweat drenched flack jacket and hurled him to where the others had backed to. He could hear it. The laughter, a resonant and cruel sound. They were little more than mice to these creatures Tiynad lifted his trembling laser rifle and emptied the last of his powerpack into a scorch-marked line across one giant's chest with as much effect as pissing into a blizzard. The mocking, hideous laughter didn't change one iota.

Private Dalwort, Mordian Nightsider, soldier in the army of the most blessed Imperium resolved that he wouldn't at the very least die in the dirt and with what seemed to him super human effort hoisted himself to his feet, rifle held like a club in hands made numb by mindless animal fear. This was the night he would die, he tried to recall once more the cave he was born in, the land of his people in the endless star speckled night. A mordian's last thoughts should be those of home.

A flutter in the leaves above them and the giants stopped their tortuously slow advance. Splintering wood for a moment followed by a large thud and a spray of displaced snow as something in a much cleaner red landed in the trees barely a score of feet away. Tall as a Catachan and built large, a robe of heavy crimson hung from those broad shoulders fastened and trimmed with bleached bones and peppered with frost and the red Fallen astartes finally reached for their own weapons.

The nearest swung his chain-axe with a strength of a wrecking ball and the speed of the gale only to find his arm stopped as if he had struck a mountain, the man if man he was in the frosted robes wrenched that arm upwards and flipped the creature into one of it's damned and forsaken packmates before twisting the arm past the point of endurance to the snapping of adamantium armour and inhumanly strong bones. The other two had charged, roaring in rage as their chain axes screamed in a promise of bloody retribution. A promise that went fulfilled as the broad shouldered figure spun and ducked and twisted around their clumsy flailing before landing a punch that collapsed one of their helmets and the skull inside it. The broken armed Fallen and it's associate attempted to get to their feet but weren't quick enough as the broken armed one was silenced by a thunderous boot impacting it's neck, directed movements becoming the graceless flails of a man dying of a crushed windpipe and lungs filing with blood.

Two remained now, circling the Mordian's saviour, waiting for the moment to strike. The man spun to keep them both in his vision as much as possible, shoulders squared, fists bunched the dynamic of the situation seeming to dawn on both of the Fallen at the same time that this wasn't the circling of sharks around a stranded swimmer, this was a wolf indecisive of which sheep to pick first. The figure was smiling beneath that grey beard, grey eyes like hard flint gleamed beneath those grey hairs, eyes of a judge without mercy, displeased and declaring and damning. The one with the laser scorch marks was the laser scorch marks was the first to fall, his head torn unceremoniously from his body, the second tackled to the ground and rib-cage crushed under repeated hammer blows as inhumanly dark blood seeped into the spoiled snow.

The whole engagement had in truth been over in moments, the Mordians huddled together as the figure stood upright once more, flint hard eyes fixing on them like those of an apex predator. The Fallen had been terrible beyond words but here was something worse. Those eyes reached into their souls like the inferno glare of a god, seeing their sins and knowing them completely. There was no hiding from him, he knew their names, he knew everything about them and they couldn't look away. The figure took a role of parchment or animal skin from his robe and marked it in the blood of the slain several times. Rooted by all encompassing terror Dalwort and his comrades trembled as he moved towards them with long, sure strides. Dalwort couldn't see, his one good eye was full of tears "please" he silently mouthed through quivering lips "please" the figure now seeming impossibly huge was standing right before him now and reached forward once more and Dalwort finally managed to close his eye and screwed them tight as he prepared for death.

There was a slight heaviness upon his shoulders. After what seemed an eternity he opened his eye to see the grey haired and blood drenched figure gone, leaving only the dead as testament to him ever having been there. The dead and a forge-world fresh Cameleoline cloak over his flack jacket. Looking around his comrades were similarly gifted and as confused and terrified as he imagined he looked, and above them the sound of laughter booming as thunder and as terrible as an avalanche "HO, HO, HO".

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== Unnamed Alternate Timeline Story ==

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“It is an esoteric art, young seer, one that is not often explored by practitioners of our Path. And admittedly, in times like these it is more practical to gaze into the future to find the sword stroke that will cut down the foe. But still, there is a great value in what we do, for the road not taken has much to teach us.

“Now, expand your mind as you have done before. Feel the infinite strands of time and causality spiraling forth from this point. Good. Now, instead of reaching forward, reach back. It will feel strange, but try to find a point in the past, and focus. It may be faint, but give it time… Ah, I see you feel it. Different, aren’t they? Those are the ashen echoes of what could have been. Pick one, and follow it for a while. Immerse yourself in it. Let yourself fall into the mists of what never was and never will be. Part the veil and look inside this world of lost possibility. What do you see?”

---

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The throne room was bathed in warm light from the setting sun that filtered through the stained glass windows, long shadows thrown carelessly against ornate walls. It was modestly sized but handsomely furnished, fitting for the humble, diligent Planetary Governor who ruled there, but today it had a different occupant.

The Grand Vizier stood at his usual spot behind the borrowed throne, arms crossed behind his back, as he watched the last of the courtiers and petitioners trickle from the hall. The Emperor raised his hand in a benevolent wave as his subjects left, some of them still with looks of slack-jawed awe or religious rapture on their faces as they turned to look one last time upon their immortal ruler. A pair of golden-armored Custodes closed the great doors with a final clang, and the room was empty. The Emperor let out a long sigh and rose, making his way towards the private exit behind the throne. The Grand Vizier fell in beside him, matching his stride without a word. The Emperor would speak when he wanted.

The pair proceeded through the door to the hallway that led to the residential wing of the palace that the governor had lent to them, and after a moment of companionable silence, the Emperor spoke. “Any news since our briefing this morning?”

“Nothing requiring your attention, Your Majesty.”

The Emperor raised an amused eyebrow. “Your Majesty? Using titles today, are we?”

“You saw how these provincial types were falling over themselves to call you by the most elaborate titles possible. They love the pomp and glamor, so we may as well humor them while we’re here.”

“Very well then, my Grand Vizier. What did you think of Lord Farwell and his proposal?”

“An earnest man, and his plans for increasing agricultural production here were sound, though perhaps accepting them would anger the Melisians.”

“Let them be angry then. They may fume and fuss, but they will not cross the throne in such times. We cannot have the entire hive world of Kado so dependent on Melis for supplies, and an expansion here would do much to bolster the stability of the agricultural base in the subsector.”

The Vizier smiled wryly. “They may not see it that way, but I agree: their objections will not have much force given their economic ties and the fact they have more tractors than lasguns.”

They continued down the hall and out into a small courtyard, where two serving girls were idly gossiping, leaning against a column. They turned at the sound of footsteps and froze wide-eyed as the Emperor and the Vizier approached. They managed to dip down into shaky curtsies and squeak out a stammered greeting.

The Emperor smiled gently at them, the expression radiant on his sculpted features. The serving girls flushed an alarming shade of red, and one of them seemed to be hyperventilating. The Vizier rolled his eyes.

“If you would be so kind, inform the good butler that we will be having our dinner in the garden pavilion today,” said the Emperor. The serving girls nodded frantically but did not move. “You may go now,” the Emperor prompted gently. The pair blinked, the spell broken, and fled in the direction of the kitchens. The Vizier shook his head, and the Emperor shrugged helplessly.

As they made they way towards the garden, the Emperor turned again to the Vizier. “What of Biel-Tan? The last report indicated the Court of the Young King was in a frenzy. Will a visit be necessary?”

“No, Your Majesty. I only just received word. It seems the good Ambassador Cain has managed to slow the situation somewhat, and given the pause it looks like the cooler heads of the Court will prevail. We will continue to monitor the situation, but it seems unlikely we will have a rampaging Bahzhakhain waking sleeping Tomb Worlds.”

“Whatever we’re paying that man, it’s not enough.”

“A true hero of the Imperium.”

They pushed open an elaborate wrought iron gate, and then they were in the garden. The Governor’s wife was something of a gardener, and in the carefully cultivated beds and trellises were plants and flowers from a hundred different worlds. Flowering shrubs, elegantly pruned trees, crawling vines, and overhead four-winged dragonets and Elysian swallows flitted about the branches.

The Emperor stood a moment, looking across the garden. “The First Lady has an eye for landscaping. A marvelous garden, is it not?”

“That it is, Your Majesty.”

“Please, no more titles when we are alone here. I’ve had my fill of that today.”

With that the Emperor stretched, reaching towards the sky, and in a burst of white unfolded his wings. Huge they were, pure as driven snow, and even now having seen them for ten thousand years, they were a beautiful sight to the Vizier. “As you say, Sanguinius.”

Sanguinius patted him on the shoulder. “Come, Oscar. Dinner awaits us.”

They walked down the path to the pavilion at the center of the garden and passed by the pride of the First Lady: a small collection of plants saved from the destruction of Old Earth, crowned by a single rosebush. They seated themselves at the table in the pavilion, and soon the butler and a host of servants came down the path, pushing carts loaded with food and drink.

The golden man and Man of Gold reviewed dataslates and holopads as they ate, never taking their eyes from the information at hand even as they worked on the food, reviewing reports, approving orders and laws, ceaselessly manning the wheels of government that endlessly churned to keep the vast machine of the Imperium in motion. Finally, the last course was cleared away, and Sanguinius set down his holopad and took a sip of tea. Oscar paused, stylus hovering over his holopad.

Sanguinius sighed. “Just ten minutes. Let me at least enjoy the sunset.”

Oscar nodded, and looked of towards the horizon together.

“Should we spar again, later tonight?” asked Oscar.

Sanguinius groaned. “You’ll be the death of me. Tapping into the Warp always makes me queasy, and I’ve already been locked in the throne room all day listening to complaints about the price of grox.”

Oscar chuckled. “I could use the night off as well. Your control of lightning yesterday nearly bested me. Your powers may very well match my own soon.”

“Hopefully not for a while yet, I’d rather you be the one to freeze battlefleets with your mind. But I did notice the same thing, likely due to the increase in Imperial Cult activity that the Synod reported.”

At that, Oscar opened his mouth, but the words caught in his throat. Sanguinius looked at him. “You have a question.”

He hesitated. “About the Imperial Cult… I’m not quite sure how to put it.”

The angel smiled. “A topic of conversation we haven’t breached after ten thousand years of friendship? Now I have to hear it, if only for a break in the monotony.”

Oscar looked his friend in the eyes. “Why do you let them worship you?”

He saw a glimmer of surprise. Sanguinius looked up, brow furrowed ever so slightly. When he looked back down at Oscar, his smile had become sad. “Because that is what they need of their Emperor. Of me.”

“It is a falsehood. They call you a god when you are only a man.”

“I know, Oscar. I more than anyone know of my own frailties and failings. But that is not what need. The common man is not like you, the truth is not so sacrosanct a thing to them. They need a hero, a savior, one they can emulate, one so perfect and invincible that they can believe in him with all their heart so they can go on for just one more day in this galaxy of pain. They need a god.” Sanguinius looked off towards the sunset. His eyes were distant.

“When you placed that crown on my head, Sanguinius the man died. In his place you created the Emperor, embodiment of the Imperium, vessel for the hopes and dreams of quadrillions of souls, the immortal Angel that would save them all. Never have I forced them down this path, Oscar. They pray and worship and hope, and I in turn take their pain and expectations and longing upon myself. All for the sake of the lie that anchors them, that keeps the Imperium turning: The Emperor Protects. Even when I have failed so many of them, they still believe: The Emperor Protects.”

Oscar was silent for a moment. “Do you resent me?”

“Never, Oscar. Someone has to be that beacon for them, and better it is me than anyone else.”

“You do not bear this burden alone, Sanguinius.”

“I know. I have you, and Lady Isha, and many others, and truly without all your help I never would have made it to today.”

“Yes, I do recall a certain large Ork I helped you with,” said Oscar drily.

“But I have thought about it.” Sanguinius twisted a long strand of his golden hair with a finger. “For all our power, the fate of the Imperium will not lie in our hands.”

“Oh?”

“A great many people – you included, I think – believe that it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that hold the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness, love, and courage. And if the Church gives them that strength, is it not worthy? If the guardsmen in his trench fights a little harder for his fellows, if the clerk at his desk pushes through and finishes one more report, if the tired mother finds the strength to hold and read to her children, then all of this will have been worth it, and that is where we will find our salvation. Not in me, or you, but in the strength of the people and in each individual citizen, whether it be man, Eldar, Tau, Demiurge, or others.”

“So you say.” Oscar poured an amber liquor into two glasses, a favorite of the locals, the bottle glugging softly. He slid one to Sanguinius.

“You’re unconvinced.” Sanguinius laughed. “This conversation got quite heavy, didn’t it? I’m no good at this ‘god’ business, it seems. Ask your wife about it, she’s had millennia more experience than I.” They both sipped at their cups. “How is she these days?”

“Overworked, just like us. Splitting her attention between the Warp and realspace is tiring, and the needs of the faithful are many in times like these. She is well enough, though.”

“Once again, my heartfelt thanks to the Mother Goddess of the Imperium, especially for her help with the plague at Monarchia. Even the Word Bearers were at a loss, and without her direct intervention we likely would have lost the planet to Nurgle.”

Oscar smiled faintly, a hint of pride on his lips. “I will convey this, she will be pleased to hear it.”

“A shame she could not have joined us for this trip. She would like it here.”

“That she would. But enough about us.” Oscar peered at Sanguinius closely. “What about you?”

The angel sighed. “Not this conversation again.”

“You know I’m right.”

“Let me recount your arguments: An Empress would be of great symbolic and functional importance to the Imperium. A woman of talent would be able to take on duties of government we currently administer, relieving our workload and allowing the Traveling Court to spread its reach. She could also increase our influence by presenting a different face from us, two towering demigods, and represent the Imperium separately on her own missions. It would also help Imperial morale, giving the citizens a great event and moment of joy to celebrate. And finally, as consort, she would be to… address my needs, both emotional and otherwise. Does that all sound about right?”

“Masterfully argued, Your Majesty, I am utterly convinced.”

Sanguinius shook his head, unable to contain a smile. “You would be, but I am not so easily swayed.” He gave the liquor in his glass a swirl. “They say a man is lucky if he can find true love once. I already have, so to find it twice is to ask too much of this universe. I’ve already had my happy ending.”

“It was worth a try.” They sat a moment in silence, appreciating the sunset. “Do you still think of her?”

“Every day,” said Sanguinius, his eyes distant again. “When I lost her and Belisarius in the same month, I thought the light had gone out of my life, and so it has, to a degree. That part of me is done.” He finished his drink with a gulp. “I said the day you placed the crown on my head was the day Sanguinius died, and the Emperor was born. That was a lie, of sorts. The day Sanguinius truly died is the day I lost them. Now, our dream is all that is left to me.”

“You have heard reports from the Blood Angels, I am sure, of the Lady in Red?” said Oscar quietly.

“Of course.”

“If it truly is Lady Cyrene, why has she not shown herself to you in your visions?”

“If we assume it is truly her, then she has her reasons. Cyrene was always independent and willful in her own way, and I loved that about her. I trust that what she doing is right. And if fate deems that we will not meet again in this world, we will meet again in the next.”

Oscar followed suit and finished his own drink. The sun was only a slight arc above the horizon now, midnight blue descending and jealously pushing out the last few hues of pastel pink and yellow. “We should be going soon,” said Oscar. “There is still work to be done.”

Sanguinius nodded. “I will meet you in the study soon. I just need to be out here for a little while longer.”

Oscar rose from the table and headed down the path to the palace. Before he turned the corner, he looked back at the pavilion. Sanguinius was silhouetted against the setting sun, wreathed in a corona of light, and for a moment, he was a duality: he looked utterly magnificent, every inch the Emperor and god the people claimed him to be, and utterly alone, an all-too-human man crushed by the weight of his crown.

Oscar felt a stab of pity, and regret for what he had done. He turned and left, grateful to his friend that it was not him.

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== The End, But One Of Many ==

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Millions of years in the future…

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Scribe-thane Escribdeus dug. He scraped at the earth with his hands, pulling away paw after pawful of sand. In spite of this seemingly primitive behavior, most observers would note that he had come a long way from his ancestors millions of years ago, which had been little more than rats.

He wore robes for one. He wasn’t an animal.

Slowly but surely, he scooped away at the stone tablet emerging from the ground ignoring the sensation of sand grains in his fur. Once it was sufficiently clean, he brought out his equipment and began analyzing the stone. Luminescence dating, to tell when the stone was last exposed to sun or heat. After a few minutes, the machine spat out its answer with a beep.

The numbers couldn’t be right.

He ran the analysis again. The answer was the same. He scooped several more handfuls of sand away from the artifact to make sure it wasn’t what he thought it was, it couldn’t be what he thought it was, but it was. The scribe-thane brushed at the emerging stone plaque, careful not to damage anything, until he saw the alien glyph of the Ancients clearly denoted upon their surface. He felt a swell of joy in his heart.

Scholar-Seer was going to be so pleased when she saw this.

Elsewhere, Mistress Scholar-Seer Senic was indeed pleased, but for reasons that were much more carnal than her thane would have thought. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. For a species that put an emphasis on tactile stimulation and social behavior it was only natural that they would put a high premium on grooming and reproduction. Add to the fact that solid-colored fur, whether her own grey or black, brown, or white, was considered an attractive characteristic by her species and it was unsurprising that she received so many offers of mating.

“Mistress!” Escribdeus said, throwing open the flap of the tent and completely ruining the mood, “glorious news-news!”

Scholar-Seer Senic let out a shriek, startled by her piebald-colored assistant. It wasn’t out of modesty, no one in the room had anything that the others hadn’t seen before, but nobody liked to be started in the middle of an intimate moment. Picking herself up off the ground, the Scholar-Seer gave the oblivious scribe-thane a death glare.

“Mistress,” he said, “we found one. “Two-hundred years more young-young than youngest known Ancient relic based on multiple methods of dating.”

Senic was shocked. She had expected they would find something here but nothing this young. This was certainly something worth interrupting mating for.

“You’ve done well thane,” she said, “have extra rations-treat as reward for good-good work.”

The scribe-thane squealed so loud the Scholar-Seer thought he was going to pass out before excitedly scurrying out of the tent. He was such an excitable sort. She wondered if she had been that way when she had come of age at five years old. She supposed she had better return to work too. Dismissing the lower-ranking male with a chitter, she donned her robes and the horned headdress that marked her as a figure of authority. She enjoyed mating as much as the next member of her species, but her true passion was in studying archaeology. The lives and ways of ancient peoples.

Opening the flap of the burlap tent, she allowed her eyes to adjust to the harsh light before walking through the work camp. All around her, thanes were busy at work, two arguing over cataloguing a plastic idol, another taking a break and chewing on a gnawing aid. Such was typical for her kind. When a newborn in any clan reached juvenile age, they were apprenticed under the aegis of a Master or Mistress in order to learn skills and discipline, and eventually be deemed an adult. It was their way. With their reproductive habits, large numbers of thanes were not unexpected, though in this case these were not all her own apprentices. At least with modern medicine it was better than in the medieval era, where famine was common.

Walking up the sandy hill to the dig site, she noticed one of the large rat-wolves trotting alongside her. Emitting a brief chirrup, the rat-wolf came close enough to her to give the domesticated rodent a piece of jerky. The rat-wolves were good guardians. Useful to have around. As she reached the digsite itself, the rat-wolf realized that it was not going to get any more jerky out of her, and turned back to go lounge around with the other rat-wolves under the tents.

When she reached the digsite, she saw it was still much as she had left it, neat lines of string demarcated squares over the Ancient ruins. However, at the far end of the site, she noticed the new Ancient plaque uncovered by the new excavation efforts. The Scholar-Seer’s pulse quickened. As swiftly as possible, her hind feet tread over the sand, until she reached the stone edifice itself. Crawling down into the hole, she put her hand upon the glyphs, letting her fingers brush over the alien carvings. Then she stopped. Although she could not get a good look at him, she could see the scribe-thane standing behind her out of the corner of her eye.

“You know what they say-say?” she asked, not turning around.

The scribe-thane shook his head. He had learned to make out some of the lettering on the Ancients’ monuments, but he had never really learned to read their writing.

“Can tell you. You want to know?”

The scribe-thane nodded excitedly. The idea of learning the craft directly from the mistress was something that anyone would file their incisors for. The Scholar-Seer turned from the plaque to look the thane in the eye.

“Assume you know basics of story. When world young-young, galaxy was in primordial chaos. From chaos, gods emerge. Our gods, the Ancients, and their enemies, Cancerous Ones. Emprah, the gold-god, decide that galaxy in chaos unacceptable. Rescue-steal Great Mother from the tallest tower of Cancerous Poxed One, who claim-kidnap her as his own at dawn of time. Mother-goddess decide to join gold-god in his quest. They create thirteen children, twelve sons and one daughter, to aid them in their quest. Lionman Russ, the savage knight. Fuegan Manus, the smith. Sanguinala, the banshee daughter. This why thirteen so important to us.”

The scribe-thane nodded again. He knew the story, everyone learned it as a child.

“Great Mother and Father and their children fight war against cancerous ones. They seal away Cancerous Ones in the netherworld. Some guess-think that this myth explanation of why life and death happen. But no one can deny that Ancients exist. Great Mother go on to have many children. Many species-things. Populate galaxy with new life. For many-many years life bountiful. But then gods vanish. So do children. Leave only us, youngest child of gods. No one knows why.”

Scholar-Seer Senic turned back to the tablet.

“This tablet-stone important because it younger than any other, and so reveal-tells more of gods’ story”

“What happened?”

The Scholar-Seer put her hand on the tablet for a moment. Then her face fell.

“Things change. Final war-battle began. Center could not hold. Slaves of Cancerous Ones broke free from the Netherworld, intent on dragging mother-goddess back with them. Dead-things from before age of gods returned and took revenge to reclaim lost thrones. Great devourer come from east, eat fourth of galaxy. Much death-death. Home of gods under battle-siege. Many desperate things done. Moon of unnatural-things, prison of those not meant to be, opened. Oblivion-god set free to make war-death on those who trod upon his kingdom. All children-species called for final war. Cancer-gods try to kill last hope in cradle.”

The Scholar-Seer studied the tablet.

“And then what?” the scribe-thane asked.

“I…do not know. Story-tablet stops there. Had to guess, think it fear-warning for future. Tell not-born generations what happened. Not sure why.”

The two shared a moment of silence for their sobering discovery, only for the chitter-bead tagged in the Scholar-Seer’s ear to go off.

“Mistress. News-news from star-watchers. Most important. They see-see ship in atmosphere. It look…look like crescent moon.”

GOOD END

Lofn Ulthran stood at the bridge of the Lady Betsy, looking out at the surface of the planet over which the ship orbited. She wasn’t happy. Few people would be if they were woken up at three in the morning several days ago and told she was urgently needed, and I quote, “right the fuck now”. And then were unable to get a good night-cycle’s sleep for the next few days. Going somewhere “right the fuck now” took on a very different meaning when you knew someone with access to a Necron inertialess drive ship. 220 years of being a diplomat and you would think she get a little bit more respect.

That said, the decidedly less sleep-deprived part of her brain could understand the need for urgency. Odysseus had finally shown up again. During all the craziness that went down during the Second War in Heaven the planet, which previously orbited the near-Sol star of Epsilon Eridani, had been shot deep into the Warp like a pinball. It had gone so deep that at least among the Administratum there was a betting pool of if and when the previously habitable planet would ever show up again. And then it happened to show up in the Skavos cluster, a region which until recently had been covered by a Warp Storm for as long as she could remember. Lofn shuddered. Odysseus had been so deep in the Warp there was no telling how long it had been there. Subjective millions of years could have passed for the people on that planet in the 220 years the planet disappeared from realspace. She couldn’t imagine what they could have gone through. It was no wonder the Imperium had asked her to represent them. Who else would you call to make first contact with people who hadn’t seen the Imperium in centuries, if they even remembered at all.

The door opened with a hiss, breaking Lofn from her rumination, and an eight-foot-tall metal skeleton stomped into the room behind her. Lofn smiled.

“Obyron,” she said to her old childhood companion, “I assume everything is okay on the ship?”

Obyron relaxed slightly. “Nothing much. A Watcher and an eldar got in an argument on the lower decks. Had to step in and separate them.”

Lofn smiled. There were few things in the galaxy that shut petty squabbles down quicker than a Necron leaning over them with a death glare.

“Any other messages I should be aware of before we make contact?”

“No. Well, one message from Ynnead, asking to make sure if you are okay, but that’s to be expected.”

Lofn rolled her eyes. “Ynnead worries too much. If I were ever in trouble, he more than anyone else would be the first to know.”

“He just does it because he cares.”

There was a pause in the conversation.

“I only wish the Nemesor could have been here to see this,” Obyron muttered.

Lofn frowned. She barely remembered the jovial old Necron from her childhood but he had always seemed like the nice sort. Although Obyron may have technically been the captain of the Lady Betsy, Lofn would never refer to Obyron as such. She knew he would take offense to it. To Obyron, the Lady Betsy only ever had one captain.

“I wish he could have been here too. He would have probably loved it. But I don’t think he had any regrets about how things turned out.”

“I should have been there, it was my duty.”

“You had two conflicting sets of duties.” Lofn responded, “It was either obey your lord and potentially let him die or disobey him and potentially let me die. How many times have we been over this, Obyron? You can’t keep beating yourself up over this.”

Obyron grunted. Lofn knew that was for her sake. She knew this argument wasn’t over, but Obyron was willing to let things lie for the time being in the name of getting the job done.

“Well,” she said, “let’s go meet the neighbors.”

</div>
</div>

== The Visitor ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Note: In the same timeline as the Good End of "The End, But One of Many"

Lofn Ulthran put away the last of loose things before surveying her now-tidy apartment on Colchis. Normally she didn’t put much effort into keeping her apartment neat, but today she was expecting a visitor. Apparently Lofn had gotten the job done just in time, for no sooner had she finished the job than she heard the doorbell ring. Humming to herself, she made her way to the apartment door and opened it to reveal a tall, slender figure standing just beyond. His skin was pale and his face angular and gaunt, a white shock of hair upon his head. His eyes were an ethereal blue, and in his left hand was a large, silver polearm that one might say resembled a halberd or some odd combination of sword and spear or, for those familiar with more exotic weaponry, a Necron warscythe.

“I see I could not stop for death, so he kindly stopped for me,” Lofn said, sounding oh-so-pleased with herself.

“Ha ha, like I’ve never heard that one before,” the figure drolled.

“Nice to see you too, Ynnead,” Lofn said to her guest, “and I suppose from that remark death’s too good for a case of fine Valhallan dark?”

“Valhallan? Damn, death will bite his tongue for that.”

Lofn paused for a moment.

“So is it, you know, okay for you to stop by like this? Like, people aren’t going to stop passing on just because you decided to stop for a beer or something?” She said, looking around as though she expected death to be put on pause any second.

“Nah. According to mom the process happens regardless of whether I’m incarnated on the material plane because technically I’m doing it simultaneously in the Warp. It’s like how people don’t stop getting pregnant just because mom’s around. I’d ask mom how that could be, but she’d tell me to ask dad, and he’s tell me…”

“Fourth-degree interdimensional warp fuckery,” the two said at the same time.

Lofn snorted.

“Come on in,” she said, turning back to the apartment and heading inside, “I’ll get the drinks.”

“You got a place for this thing?” Ynnead said, gesturing slightly to his giant Necron-style halberd for emphasis.

“Yeah, put it in the umbrella rack,” Lofn called from the kitchen, “Nothing’s in there anyway, don’t know why I have it, it never rains here.”

Depositing his weapon with a loud clang, Ynnead followed Lofn into the apartment. It was a nice apartment, not very large, but rather homey. Ynnead could see not much had changed since his last visit here. Lofn’s paintings still covered most of the walls. He turned to regard the one nearest to him, an eerie watercolor piece depicting a single figure holding open a black, sketchy doorway. He had a pretty good idea what that was supposed to be of. Lofn’s apartment had a single couch, facing the windows overlooking the city. Sitting on the couch sleeping in the sun was Lofn’s chitinous pet. A single look from Ynnead was all that it took to send the creature scurrying.

Ynnead and Lofn had known each other since they were children. Ynnead, due to his nature as the child of the Emperor and the Empress, had always been a fixture in the Imperial Court, whereas Lofn had been brought to Old Earth at a young age due to her political importance and at that time the danger in her life. Due to being the only half-human, half-eldar (though exactly what Ynnead was was a subject of debate), and more importantly, the only children at most court functions, the two struck up a friendship. It felt good to have someone else around who could finally empathize with how they saw the world, neither in terms of the obsessive, long-term view of the eldar or the wilder, short-term views of most humans, especially as the two of them sometimes felt like conversation pieces as opposed to people. A couple hundred years later, and their friendship was still going strong.

“Is the old man around?” Ynnead called.

“He’s around,” Lofn called from the kitchen, “Obyron knew you were going to be stopping by and stepped out for a bit. I think he’s going to go visit the Nemesor’s memorial.”

“Ouch,” Ynnead winced.

“Yeah, he really hasn’t been dealing with it well,” Lofn said, bringing over the case of Valhallan beer and handing one to Ynnead, “I’ve been meaning to try and talk with him about it but I worry that, you know, he’ll see me as part of the problem, given everything that happened. I know he really misses the Nemesor, but I also know Zahndrekh wouldn’t have wanted him to mope for eternity like this.”

Lofn flopped down on the couch, her arm across the back.

“Nothing’s really new with me,” she said, “No real crisis has popped up in the last few months. As I told you before, being a diplomat is mostly dependent on people being stupid and if people aren’t stupid then there’s little for me to do. Mostly I’ve just been doing humdrum stuff, some minor stuff for the Administratum, seeing a few friends, and painting.”

“So how’s the reincarnation gig?” Lofn said, popping open a bottle, “More eldar-human hybrids being born?”

“More are being born every year, but not many and not very often. You’re still the eldest by far.”

“Gah,” Lofn said, throwing up her hand, “Don’t say that. It makes me feel like an old lady.”

“You’re the eldest. The eeeeldest.”

“We’re the eldest. You’re the same age as me, dumbass.”

“I was born four years, seven months, and thirteen days after you, Sol standard time,” Ynnead said smugly, seemingly channeling his father for a moment.

“Come off it. Four years is chump change in the grand scheme of things.”

“Well, you know what mom says. 65 million is the new 40 million.”

“I guess. The eldest, huh? Isn’t that what that one guy used to call himself? The bird man?”

“Tzeentch? Yeah, I guess you’re right, he did.”

“Is he even still around?”

“I don’t know,” Ynnead said, “I didn’t pay much attention to what happened to him. I had bigger concerns at the time. It was a War in Heaven thing. You know I like talking about the War in Heaven just as much as you do. I mean, how would you like it if I asked you about the whole thing with Hive Fleet Enkidu?”

“Okay, point taken,” Lofn relented.

The two of them both took a deep swig.

“So is the scythe holding up okay? You seemed kind of worried about it last time.”

“Oh, I think it’s going fine now. It’s kind of like working with a suit of exarch armor and not getting overwhelmed, except instead of a bunch of little minds it’s you know.”

Ynnead dry gulped and his voice suddenly sounded very sober.

“One big one.”

“Are you sure it’s safe for you to be lugging that then around then?” Lofn said, suddenly worried about the contents of her umbrella holder.

“It’s actually safer with me than if I were to not have it. The C’tan exist as physical constants, and cannot be destroyed without seriously affecting the underlying nature of causality. As long as a single weakened piece of them exists in the universe, they can theoretically be contained without the entity running free. The consciousness remains trapped in the scythe and can never manifest in a free state. The alternative would be to bury it in a hole somewhere and hope it never gets out. And that’s never worked.”

“That sounds like something the Void Dragon would say. You’re still talking to the Void Dragon despite your parents telling you not to, aren’t you?”

“I am not and will vigorously deny it if you say anything.”

“You’re totally still talking to the Void Dragon,” Lofn said with a mischievous smile.

“Yes! I mean, he knows things. Things about how the universe works, what it means to be a god. Things my parents won’t tell me and I wish they’d tell me.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is? Cegorach said he’s safe, didn’t he?”

“Cegorach says the Iron Storm is safe,” Ynnead responded. “It’s not the kind of vote that inspires confidence. Anyway I figure, Nightbringer is a sociopath, right? So if you hear any voices telling you to do what you think he would do in that situation just do the exact opposite. Plus the way it works is most of what it kills gets funneled through me to be spit back out, so it’s not like its feeding and growing stronger.”

“And so you’re not worried about it being fed up with being stuck as a deathstick, deciding to take over your mind and using you like a puppet?”

“Hey, it got to take bites out of two different gods. It should be happy,” Ynnead said defensively, crossing his arms.

Lofn smiled.

Ynnead took a drink, “Are you worried at all that us hanging out a lot is going to get people…talking?”

“Only in that gods-awful unsanctioned material, which they still can’t find out who’s producing them. Grruh, so annoying. Can’t you, you know, appear in front of them and put the fear of death into them?”

“That would be a horrible abuse of my powers.”

“You summoned ghosts to scare me at my twenty-fifth birthday party.”

“That was Eldrad under a bedsheet, you do know that, right?”

“So you do admit ghosts were involved,” Lofn said with tones of false accusation.

“As I was saying,” Ynnead said, getting back to the subject at hand, “There is nothing I would love to do more, but doing so would be a grievous use of my phenomenal cosmic powers. And also because I’m fairly sure my mom would ground me for about three thousand years if she found out.”

“Ground you? You’re several centuries old. Sounds to me like you are too afraid of your mother.”

“I am not too afraid of my mother. I am exactly as afraid of my mother as I need to be. I once saw her chew out the entire ruling house of Kaelor. Kaelor. What do you think your mom would do to you if you pulled something like that?”

“She’d send me back to Cadian boot camp and suddenly I see where you are going with this.”

“My point. Has been made.”

“I would probably die if I had to go back to Cadian boot camp,” Lofn said, repressing the shivers.

“If you ever die, I will play you at any game of your choosing for the chance to come back to life. Except Battleaxe. You cheat.”

“What can I say?” Lofn shrugged in pride, “I’m an Ulthran.”

“Technically so am I,” Ynnead pointed out, “Mom was what, some distant cousin or something of Eldrad’s way back before the Fall.”

“Wait, if Isha was Eldrad’s distant cousin, does that mean we’re related?”

Both Lofn and Ynnead got a look on their face as if both had stepped on a particularly foul smelling piece of grox dung.

“I really don’t like where this train of thought is going,” Ynnead said.

“Ditto.”

“Speaking of Eldrad how is the old bastard?," Lofn said, changing the subject, "I saw him the other day and he got all weepy, he wouldn’t explain to me why.”

“He! Will! Not! Leave!” Ynnead said, suddenly animated, gesticulating with his hands. “I have tried to be generous with him, given the circumstances, but he refuses to leave that wraithbone prosthetic of his. I try to point out that reincarnation is a thing and he can be young again if he wants, but he won’t do it. I try to point out that the thing he’s in is an old relic outdated by modern standards and the least he could do is upgrade to something less shitty, but he won’t because he’s afraid I’m going to snatch his soul up when he tries to transfer. At which point he usually makes some remark about knowing me since I was in diapers. At this point he’s so stubborn he might as well become a universal fixture.”

Lofn broke out laughing.

“What!” Ynnead said, “what’s so funny?”

“Can you imagine,” Lofn said between laughs, “Grandpa Eldrad. The universal constant? I can just see him sitting around, waiting for a pair of young races to go to war on whatever planet he’s on, and then he’d rise from the ground like a fucking Necron and go ‘I have awoken from my eons long slumber, to tell you kids to get off my lawn.’”

Despite his frustration, Ynnead couldn't help but snicker at that. Before long the two of them were laughing.

“Hundreds of years and he still won’t leave that wraithbone shell," Lofn sighed. "Gods, are we going to drive our kids crazy with our antics when we reach that age?”

“Yes!” Ynnead said rather too quickly, “I mean yes, I can see that. Driving our children crazy. The ones we have. With other people.”

Lofn looked at Ynnead for a second, then flopped back on the couch.

“Yeah, I can see that,” she said.

</div>
</div>

== Mon'Tau ==

Editor's Note: Deemed non-canon for being a too on-the-nose reference, though similar events are likely to have happened, namely Kais learning to control his anger and learning that Imperials aren't as wise and all knowing as they make themselves out to be to the Tau Empire.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

He rushed through the door, the elevatus doors clicking shut behind him. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Shas.27O_Kais|Kais]] fell to his knees and breathed a sigh of relief as he heard the splat of Blue Horrors against the door behind him. It was only when he had a moment to catch his breath that Kais realized he was separated from his team. Alone. Again.

Kais wasn’t superstitious, but the number of times this happened was almost enough to make him believe this “[[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#The_Month_of_Murphy|Murphy]]” the others in the Gue’vash’vre’s retinue kept talking about really existed.

The Gue’vash’vre, the Inquisitor, had been investigating a trading company looking to exploit suspicious goods that had been obtained from a Rogue Trader. The goods, sure enough, had been artifacts tainted by the Warp, and when the Gue’vash’vre had tried to intervene things had of course Gone Horribly Wrong and the artifacts had summoned daemons.

Daemons. It always had to be daemons. Or cultists. Or genestealers. Why couldn’t the Gue’vash’vre ever uncover a conspiracy that was devoted to breeding fluffy gyrinxes or something.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The vox speaker in the elevatus suddenly crackled to life. Kais perked up. He didn’t know the vox systems were still working down here. If anything it would have to be one of the traders, who he had seen run deeper into the facility when the daemons attacked.

“I’m willing to take responsibility for the horrible events of the last twenty-four hours,” the raspy voice claimed, “but you must understand, our interest in the Warp was purely for the greater good…”

Greater good? What did this gue’la take him for, a Shas’Saal? Did he think that just by saying the name of the Tau’va it would miraculously make everything that had happened justified?

He couldn’t stand these kind of people. The ones who thought hyperspace and the things inside it were just a toy. He could understand it back home in the Empire, but here? They played with fire, but they weren’t the only ones to suffer the consequences when everyone else got burned.

“Everything has clearly gotten out of hand now…”

Kais stood and took a moment to examine the corpse sharing the elevatus with him. Ever since the events of Dolumnar IV he had become familiar with the sight of death at the hands of the Neverborn. Far too familiar. He only got a glance before he had to look away, but the image was burned into his brain. He wanted to tell himself that the gue’la had died in some other way, but he knew that wasn’t true.

The man had died screaming.

Kais felt a chill run down his spine. There it was again, the same feeling he had felt on Dolumnar IV. He tried to keep it locked up, and on most days he succeeded, but sometimes it couldn’t help but get out, especially when exposed to this…this injustice.

The people he had met across the galaxy called it many things. Righteous fury. The warrior’s madness. Kais knew all they were but flowery names for what it really was.

Anger.

“…but it was worth the risk, I assure you.”

Kais put his fist through the voxcaster.

</div>
</div>

= Gallery =

Images that don't have a place anywhere else yet.

<gallery>
Image:Space_Marine_Evolution.png|Space Marine Evolution (V1)
</gallery>

[[Category:Nobledark Imperium]]

Nobledark Imperium Writing

2020-09-04T20:30:23Z

2601:647:CA01:2410:349C:D1E8:2DF7:5B30: /* A Necron's Duel */

'''This page is part of the Nobledark Imperium, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the [[Nobledark Imperium|Nobledark Imperium Introduction]] and [[Nobledark Imperium|Main Page]] for more information on the alternate universe'''

All our stories that don't belong in another section of the project (such as the writing for Sanguinius).
= Currently Unsorted Writefaggotry =

== The Accounting of Trazyn the Infinite ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

“You want me to explain to you why we did it? Why? And why ask [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Solemnace|me]]?”

“I see. An accounting then. And I suppose I am the closest thing the galaxy has to an actual historian in this era. Aside, perhaps, from that old wraith in the weeds Orikan.”

“When the Necrontyr first spread beyond the confines of our world, it was not long before we encountered the Old Ones. But the Old Ones had known of us long before we knew of them. They knew of the horror and suffering we had experienced on our homeworld, and had known for millennia. And they did nothing.”

<div class=mw-collapsible-content>

“I want you to picture that. A race of god-like beings capable of bending the galaxy to their will. And they did nothing. The Old Ones could have offered us sanctuary on another world. They could have told us that Aza’gorod was hiding in our star. But they didn’t. They only cared about themselves and their experiments. How many other races had suffered like we had for the sake of their curiosity? How many species had been uplifted and then discarded like tools, or removed like weeds.”

“I imagine the declaration to go to war with the Old Ones was met with shock across the Necrontyr Star Empire. Regardless of their actions, the Old Ones were still as gods to us, capable of things we could barely begin to comprehend. But after the Old Ones, we were the most advanced race we knew of in the galaxy. The only ones capable of defying them. The eldest child standing up against the abusive parent. The Old Ones were truly lords of the galaxy, capable of cultivating species like more primitive civilizations cultivate crops. But any lord that would inflict such suffering in their name upon their subjects deserves to be dragged from their throne.”

“Was that how it truly was? Was that how the Old Ones really saw the younger races? I don’t know. I was not there when the first shots of the War in Heaven were fired. I was only there when it ended.”

“All I know is that the War in Heaven was such a colossal waste. Trillions of Old Ones and Aeldari and Necrontyr and Krork killed and for what. The Old Ones are extinct. The Necrontyr sold their souls and the moral high ground for the power to defeat them. The Realm of Souls turned into poison for life. Thousands of species killed or turned into living weapons. We sought to free life from the Old Ones’ dominion. Instead we brought the hell that was our homeworld to the rest of the galaxy. The ‘original sin’, as I believe you humans would put it. Maybe there was a better way. Maybe things could have been resolved peacefully.”

“But at the same time, that is why I have so many expectations for this era.”

“You seem surprised. Perhaps I should explain. When I awoke from the Long Sleep, it was as if everything old had been made new again. The scars of the old war were still there, but it was as if galactic history had been rewritten from scratch. So many new things to learn. So many new species to encounter and study. And it was a galaxy without overlords. Life free to develop as it chose. Without a single species to impose their overarching will on the galaxy, there is so much more room for diversity. A place for everyone, one might say. Not just the races united in your Imperium, but the Q’orl, the orks, the rak-ghol, the tyranids. And yes, even the old Star Empire, if it is willing to adapt to the times. Whereas you see the galaxy in crisis, I see something different. The galaxy has had sixty five million years to write its own story. I, Trazyn the Infinite, want to see what it has written.”

- Trazyn the Infinite, regaled to a human scribe on Solemnace
</div>
</div>

== Alpha Bitch ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

“Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future...”
"Those words, bequeathed to us from some unknown source, has tormented the oracles through the ages. Not even the False-Gods in all their malevolent power can claim true mastery over the future. We, the Eldar are the most skilled seers in the galaxy, and that has given us only one golden glance of what should be. Those glimpses have taught us a bitter lesson. That does not matter who much we plan for the future, there will always be something interfering. Anybody that claims that their plans have succeeded just as planned, is a deluded fool or think that their audience is one, maybe the two. And even with that, we, the Farseers plan, conspire and ruin lives just to scratch one more day, because the alternative is the extinction..."
---From The Living Chronicles of Féin-Cineálan. As written be Osurad---

"So... I clean the blood, put on again the Wych tong, and left the camp with the intel. The next morning the IG zeroed the place and we had a pretty Kabal War. Fuck you Drukhari!"

"Hm... I... You want another infusion?"

The cute jailbait Servant was straining to don´t eyeing her with abject terror, but she can´t help, he was so damn cute. Sigh... What happens to the new generation? Come on, you only have thirty, one time! Sigh... She wasn't expecting this reception. She was the great Lynn Minwen HERO OF THE INQUISITION. Well, not exactly a HERO but definitively A hero. Her parents at least have the decency to bear-hug her and let their emotions run a little. But NO, the Council go to say that she has this weird "Anti-empathic trauma" and need some "Spiritual retuning". So they put her in a recliner, surrounded with Musicians performing psyco-reactive music and with only watery infusions as a drink. Sigh... It could be worse.

As Lynn was musing how to sneak away, Osurad comes in the "Visualization chamber" and without saying a word, pass her a sealed letter. A manuscript letter. Fuck! That is what cross her mind when finally come to the authorization seal. It was gold, The Gold. This was stamped in the Golden Throne Office, maybe even be the Golden Man in person! Fuck! Hm... Interesting, it was Hand. Something about a new assignment? Seriously!? She has retired! Hm... Return to active duty... Hm... Immediate effect... BlaBlaBla... Ok. She will bite. All her instincts tell, that the best, was to run and disappear from the face of Imperial Space. All reasonable sapients will agree in that course of action. This was definitively beyond her pay grade. So, smiling for some action, she gets up and left in direction to the starport.

<div class=mw-collapsible-content>

"What is happening Lynn?"
"Hey! You are the Farseer! You know, all that mumbo-jumbo about seeing the future"
"The only future that I see is a deeply traumatized youngster."
"So... I succeded? Damm, he is cute!"
"Lynn!"
"Ok, ok... Jeez... I was joking!... Mostly"
"..."
"So... Is it so bad?"
"Hmm... Lynn the last time I sense something similar, the destiny of millions suddenly change, and the Path to your future was rewritten."
"So that bad. Good to know."

As the two approach the hangar, some details begin to appear. All the area has been cleaned, only authorized people were permitted. And the authorized were... Black armor... Silent treatment... Omega Hydras. That was bad... Really, really bad. What class of shit has brought Hand? As they approach, the Hydras stop Osurad in his tracks, only letting Lynn pass the doors. Inside, in front of an Arvus Lighter was a more than nervous Adept pacing from a foot to another. Definitively not an Inquisition Acolyte. Somebody expendable... Or a really good actor? Who knows? Her curiosity has been piqued.

"Oh. Miss Minwen! Thanks, Isha! I hope that you read my file!"
"What... File?"
"What!? Nobody!? Of course not! This is secret! I am Ludoptus. Hm... Ok. I have been sent to help you, taking care of the subject`s wellbeing."

Not that good actor. This guy is 100% and agent of somebody. The "fake" adept pass her a dataslate and urge Lynn to enter the transport. As she enters the hold, in the periphery of her warp senses, a little whine can be heard... Something like crying? Chills of fear run her skin like... A saw blade cutting deep. Fuck... In what the hell Hand got her. She forces her mind away from the warp to real space and... The smell hit. The hold reek and the bad smell seems to come from a young human woman sitting in a fetal position. Several Hydras surround her armed with shock batons and stun guns. A chem-collar in her neck.

Lynn looks to the dataslate files and tries to make some sense of this mess. Some biometrics details... Hm... Tortured by Drukhari... Hm... Ok, is evident that this girl is a total mess. Sigh She... Wasn´t impressed. Seriously, this little shit was her new assignment? Fuck. Seriously. Fuck. She isn´t a babysitter. The little shit is somebody else problem. Somebody with a white padded room, a straitjacket and LOTS of hard drugs. And if all that fail, the emperor's mercy. This broken girl can barely do more than shit on herself. Groan... Now that she has taken some R&R and was eyeing that cute jailbait ass. They can´t do that to her. Shit.

Looking over the dataslate, she observes the girl. More than dirty white hair with indescribable... Things... Mixed. The body wasn´t better, emaciated, full of scars and... Let's be generous... Uncleanliness. All this mix in a more than disturbing whole that will make a Crone blush with envy. It seems that nobody has enough balls to try to clean the fucking walking disaster and have resigned themselves to throw a blanket as her only clothes. Fuck. And she was her new job. Groan... This is getting better by the second.

"Fuck! Hand! Why the fuck you do this to me!"

The change in the room was more than evident. The Stormtroopers get tense as the, until that moment, catatonic woman rises from her fetal position. She was tall and slim. Not as an Eldar but with the correct equipment... Forget that shit. Ok? Come on Eldar brain, time to work, no time for more speculation. The warp around the girl begin to.. Twist? Break apart? and her eyes explode in white fucking flames! Genial... Another mad psyker. Several hits from the shock batons fall over her, but the girl doesn't respond as all her concentration is now in scaping.

"The collar doesn´t..."

The cry of the no-adept is cut short as the remains of the collar hit him square in the face with enough force to knock him out. The movement was fast... And instinctive. Lynn doubts that the girl is anything beyond an automaton that just reacts to her surroundings. And now the most direct threats are her and the stormtroopers. Luckily for Lynn, the Hydras were nearer. That does not make it fun... Well, a little bit, yes. But give her a second to prepare for the girl next move.

"Hey! Little shit! Here, look to the big bad Eldar!"

The girl was sweeping the floor with the stormtroopers. She was ignoring the shocks and bolts from their weapons and basically using them as ragdolls, but when Lynn talk, her attention change to the Eldar woman and the confused expression in her eyes, change to one of pure hate. Shit... This is going to hurt. Howling with rage the lunatic girl charge. Lynn barely dodges the savage attack and witness how the kid hands rip the metallic walls of the hold. Damm... She was fucking fast and strong. Lynn needed more space, in the hold, the girl has the advantage, so she begins to retreat down the ramp, were the Hydras can finish the mad bitch.

"Ok. Guys when you got a clear shot, unbrain the bitch!"
"We have orders to take her alive!"
"Fuck me!"

Fuck... Seriously? Now she must somehow stop the lunatic? Sigh... Another day in her life. Lynn jump in time to see the kid strike where just an instant before she was standing. With the strength to rip trough Astartes armor, the ceramic floor explodes in a shower of stone and dust. A mask of fury and hate has appeared on the girl, that has decided to kill Lynn and probably any other Eldar that is in the vicinity. Fortunately for the lucky bastards, Lynn was the focus of the little shit ire. Better to keep the focus in the dispensable one. After all, she can´t let then all the fun, isn´t? All that crap about "control your urges" and shit.

"Come on little shit! I heard that you can do better!"

The girl was a trained combatant, but in her current state, she doesn't have any technique, only loads and loads of warp-fueled fury and madness. Of course, when that gives you the capacity to ripe apart jetbikes with the hands and ignore pain, starvation, and fatigue, the technique is secondary... until you meet somebody that has fought fury incarnated in mind-rending/reality-warping monstrosities. Even with that, Lynn must admit that the girl was insanely powerful. With the emphasis on insane.

Unsheathing her Catachan Knife, she toyed with the idea to rip the bitch head. But the orders were clear. Don´t kill her. So... Lynn was playing catch with a crazy murder machine. Retreating, again and again, Lynn giggles, mock and launch ork´s kisses to the girl, trying unsuccessfully to tire the demented psyker. Genial, plan b.

Waiting to one of her demented charges, Lynn dodge, rolling over herself and impaling with extreme prejudice her Knife through the little shit left thigh. Flesh, tendons, and bone were sectioned as the Knife was sunken to the hilt. Luckily for the girl, Lynn was a well-experienced knife fighter, and even best, and Eldar. Only that save her of a sectioned femoral. Even with that, Lynn barely dodges the backhanded blow launched be the crazy,as she was leaving the danger zone. The skimming strike has enough force to throw Lynn to the ground and take her breath away. The followed punch break again the floor as her Eldar reflexes quick and let Lynn roll away.

"Shit!"

Lynn quickly gets up, but pain curse through her body as a broken rib pierce her flank. Quickly crystallizing blood pour from the wound.

"What now Litte... What the fuck?!"

It was nearly not enough. Sparks of warp energy surrounded the psico-bitch as she was trying to get up and walk towards Lynn. But it was late, she has been slowed and the Hydras were filling her with stun-bolts. Finally, the girl kneels and begins to sob. Even with that, they needed a dozen of shots to finally stop her.

That was... Whoah... Fucking awesome. She was wrong. This was going to be fun. Taking again the dataslate, Lynn begins to revise the available information. Let´s see... Navigator father... Hm... Best of her promotion... Hm... Awesome scores... I mean, really, for a human... Hm... CENSORED... Hm... CENSORED... Hm... Ok, the typical inquisitorial crap. Looking down to the now tormented looking sleeping little shit, she smiles.

"This is going to be fun Stern. Really, really fun."

Epilogue:
"The die is cast."
"I have lead millions to their death so this girl can be born in relative peace. I have manipulated a world to nudge her in a particular Path. All of that to create a talent that can inspire hope to a besieged galaxy."
"She can always return to that Path."
"Yes... And that will bring her joy. But the inflection point has passed, Rhana Dandra is upon us."
"It was necessary."
"To prepare another disposable weapon in your arsenal? To stack the deck in your favor? What is your limit?."
"..."

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==The Awakening==

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The chamber was alive today.

“Khorne, Khorne, Khorne”

The Crone Eldar thronged throughout the halls, the light glinting off their eyes like predators in the night, all attention on the ghastbone circle carved into the ground at the center of the chamber. At the center of the circle was a great carved, seated idol, patriarchal and blasphemous in its bearing. The low light glinted off its angular features, giving it a malevolent aura. The area immediately surrounding the stature was conspicuously free of Crones given the crowd, as if the Crones feared they would be struck dead on the spot if they dared to approach the statue. Along the immediate edge of the circle 512 Crone Eldar sat on their knees in supplication, eyes wide and with bated breath as they chanted the 888 sacred names of the Blood God.

“Kharneth, Khorgar, Bloodwolf, Axefather…”

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Further away more Crone Eldar cavorted like fey witches at black mass, not a part of this ritual but merely attracted to the spectacle like piranhas with the taste for blood beneath the roots of a great mangrove. They flitted back and forth from shadows cast by witchlight, dancing with daemons and occasionally performing horrible acts of violence upon one another.

Eight ritually slaughtered sixty-four sacrificial victims, prisoners of war captured in battle and specifically retained for this occasion. Ghastbone knives plunged into hearts as screams echoed through the night. Blood spilled across the floor of [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Altansar|Craftworld Altansar]], seeping into grooves custom-made to channel into the appropriate sigils. The pulse of the atmosphere had quickened in the room, every surviving Crone could feel their blood beat in their ears. Now that the cattle and heathens had been killed, it was the sacrificers’ turns. Seven Crones died, six impaling themselves on brass spikes surrounding the statue and the seventh’s throat being cut by the eighth in a cold-blooded act of murder.

The foul deed having been done, the sole surviving Crone turned to address the seated idol in the center of the chamber in a parade ground voice.

“We call upon the great lord Khorne, blood king of the galaxy! I offer up my life! I offer my soul! I offer my heart’s blood to bring His hate into the world.”

The sacrifice was accepted and the Avatar rose. There were no remains that needed to be disposed of.

Anyone who had ever seen an actual Avatar of Khaine would realize just how unnatural the figure in front of them was. Rather than the slender physique of the Eldar its body was robust and solid, built like an Astartes, made to emphasize raw power over agility. Instead of being made of molten magma and red-hot metal its skin appeared to be merely simmering, with only a slight glowing around its armor joints revealing the heat within. Its armor was reddish-black, the color of long-dried blood, made of iron artistically inlaid by a trim of brass. It hefted its weapon, a massive two-handed axe that it comfortably held with a single hand. Power seemed to crackle in the air around it like ozone after a lightning strike, the animated by a much more powerful entity than the maimed war god of the Eldar. The Avatar of Khorne turned to address its congregation.

“I, the god of gods and rightful king of the galaxy have set foot in this mortal plane once more. Bring me foes worthy of my mettle so I may take their heads and slake my bloodlust.”

The Crones screamed in adulation and frenzy.

“BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"

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==Battle Report: Battle of Telis Grandios==

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Location: The world of Telis Grandios, within the Chanath Sub-Sector.
a major hub for voidships within the Chanathian sub-sector, by virtue of a functioning Orbital Tether and position within favorable Warp currents. The native Chanath Xenos of Telis profited greatly from this position of economic importance, even going so far as to endeavor to produce their own warships. successfully constructed the "Resplendent Piety;" a Frigate of comparable build to that of Sword-class, only equipped with a spinal-mounted kinetic rail-gun of Xenos design, at the expense of half a Sword's laser batteries and survivability. Construction of a second ship underway at the time of attack.

Chaos fleets were reported to have launched attacks against multiple nearby subsectors, with the wave of attacks progressing towards the Chanathian Sub-sector. Reports suggest deliberate targeting of worlds with Orbital capabilities, potentially to soften the sector for a larger offensive. Telis Grandios deemed a likely target, and after consideration of potentially-available forces, declared of sufficient strategic importance for an attempt to be made at holding the world, and orders sent out for all Imperial vessels within range to attempt to regroup at and defend Telis Grandios. Two Imperial battlegroups arrive in the Telis system prior to attack. Rear-Admiral Sprague of Battlegroup Samar assumes operational command of both battlegroups as well as the assorted vessels responding to the call.

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Comprehensive list of Imperial forces in-system at time of attack:<br>
'''Battlegroup Samar. Commanded by Rear-Admiral Sprague.'''<br>
-Monarch-class Cruiser "Enduring Conviction" (addendum: originally Dominator-class, Nova Cannon still functional.)<br>
-Dauntless-class Light Cruiser "Stalwart Companion"<br>
-Sword-class Frigate "Ardent Prayer." <br>
'''Battlegroup Vohan- commanded by Lord-Captain Johnstein.'''<br>
-Endeavor-class Light Cruiser "Spirit of Law"<br>
-Sword-class Frigate "Frank Exchange"<br>
-Firestorm-class Frigate "Legal Repercussion"<br>
-Cobra-class Destroyer "I Am Alfalfa"<br>
-Cobra-class Destroyer "Pill Dispenser"<br>
'''Other assorted vessels'''<br>
-Telis-class Frigate "Resplendent Piety"<br>
-Havoc-class Destroyer "Major Minor"<br>
-Claymore-classe Corvette "Try Me"<br>
-Cobra-class Destroyer "Seven to One"<br>

Under the orders of Rear-Admiral Sprague, the "Resplendent Piety" and "Try Me" join Battlegroup Samar, while "Major Minor" and "Seven to One" join Battlegroup Vohan. Imperial forces coalesce into a defensive formation around the Orbital platform.

04:36 local time: "Stalwart Companion" reports incoming warp signatures. Probes are launched, while "Spirit of Law" and "Stalwart Companion" begin approach towards the incoming signatures in standard intercept formation with escort screen. "Enduring Conviction" scrambles Starhawk and Fury squadrons, and advances behind with her escorts to provide support.

Probes reach detected ship signatures. Vessels are confirmed as Chaos-vessels, and identified as Hades-class Heavy Cruiser "Terror Apparent," Murder-class Cruisers "Despair Horizon" and "Vileblood," and Hellbringer-class Light Cruisers "Free Candy" and "Jackson's Neverland."

Probes reach detected ship signatures. Vessels are confirmed as Chaos-vessels, and identified as the Crone Eldar Styx-class Heavy Cruiser "Terror Apparent," accompanied by Murder-class Cruisers "Despair Horizon" and "Inflexible," and Hellbringer-class Light Cruisers "Illicit Aquisition" and "Jackson's Neverland." (revised)

All Imperial ships reduce speed, standard intercepting torpedo spreads are launched. Rear-Admiral Sprague and Lord-Captain Johnstein hold deliberations as to the proper course of action; in light of anticipated arrival of Primary battlefleets en-route to the system, the decision is reached to engage and fight a delaying action. Battlegroup Vohan forms a line of battle, alongside "Stalward Companion" and "Ardent Prayer" from Battlegroup Samar. Destroyers are ordered to swing wide, to cross-pattern their torpedo launches. "Enduring Conviction," "Legal Repercussion," and "Resplendent Piety" adopt rearguard positions to provide long-range supporting fire.

Torpedo screen reaches Chaos fleet; majority of torpedoes shot down by massed point-defenses. One successful torpedo hit on the "Despair Horizon;" structural damage minimal. "Terror Apparent" adopts a rearguard position, with "Despair Horizon" and "Inflexible" spearheading the formation, while "Illicit Aquisition" and "Jackson's Neverland" bring up the flanks. Chaos fleet moves to engage at the Murder-class' full speed; "Terror Apparent" observed maneuvering to remain behind the spearhead.

Imperial destroyers complete their maneuver and are able to launch a second spread of torpedoes. Strikecraft from "Enduring Conviction" follow behind the torpedo spread, with Fury Interceptors flying interference ahead of the Starhawk Bombers.

"Terror Apparent" is the first vessel to reach effective firing range, and fires her long-range weapon compliment on the Imperial fleet. Corvette "Try Me" suffers multiple direct hits and is destroyed; no life-pod launches detected. Voidshields on the "Ardent Prayer" are breached, with heavy damage sustained to her prow. "Stalwart Companion" voidshields are reduced to half-strength. "Enduring Conviction" returns fire with her Nova Cannon; shot fails to hit the "Terror Apparent," but scores an indirect hit on "Jackson's Neverland," whose voidshields manage to hold.

Second spread of torpedoes reaches the Chaos fleet, with strikecraft following close behind. Light cruisers maneuver to avoid, while "Terror Apparent" turns back and away from the rest of her fleet. "Jackson's Neverland" struck by one torpedo admidships, suffering minor structural damage and the loss of a minor weapon system. The "Inflexible" suffers three successful torpedo hits; minimal structural damage. Fury Interceptors and Starhawk bombers target the "Inflexible" and successfully destroy multiple point-defense systems; minor structural damage inflicted. Strike craft suffer moderate losses, and begin return run to rearm.

Both fleets enter long-range battery engagement range. The Imperial line begins beating to sunward and opens fire with lances and longer-ranged Macrobatteries; the Chaos fleet tacks leeward to come about behind the Imperial line, with the "Illicit Aquisition" and "Jackson's Neverland" returning fire. Imperial support group makes to fall back towards Telis, tacking and jibing in order to continue firing as they retreat.

"Jackson's Neverland" loses voidshields to concentrated Lance-fire and turns away, circling wide to allow her voidshields time to recharge. Imperial destroyers "Seven to One" and "I am Alfalfa" lose voidshields and turn to make for Telis, as does the "Ardent Prayer." Main Imperial line forced to tack to leeward to avoid giving the Chaos fleet a clear shot towards Telis, entering into main battery range. Both fleets open fire with full weapons compliment.

"Stalwart Companion" loses voidshields, but remains in the line of battle, focusing her fire on "Inflexible." Supporting fire from the "Frank Exchange" and "Legal Repercussion" result in the successful breaching of the "Inflexible's" voidshields. "Inflexible" returns fire, causing moderate structural damage to the "Stalwart Companion." Both fleet lines sail out of effective firing range of main batteries, with the Imperial fleet turning about and continuing to focus fire on the "Inflexible," scoring multiple confirmed lance hits. Minimal structure damage to the "Inflexible."

Destroyers launch a torpedo screen to discourage the Chaos fleet from crossing the T. "Enduring Conviction" redeploys her rearmed Starhawks and Fury Interceptors. Assorted starcraft launched from the Telis tether also join the attack, supplementing the Bomber squadrons. Chaos fleet turns away to avoid the torpedoes, leaving only the "Illicit Acquisition" able to continue returning fire. "Illicit Acquisition" focuses fire on the "Legal Repercussion," forcing her to turn away towards Telis as her voidshields are breached.

"Terror Apparent" returns from her maneuvers, and fires on the "Stalwart Companion." Major structural damage sustained, with three macrocannons rendered inoperable and multiple system failures across the ship. "Stalwart Companion" turns toward Telis, while "Spirit of Law" moves to shield her from further fire from "Illicit Acquisition." Imperial line of battle now consists of Light Cruiser "Spirit of Law," Sword-class Frigate "Frank Exchange," and Destroyers "Pill Dispenser" and "Major Minor."

Multiple incoming warp signatures detected on the system edge. Chaos fleet slows pursuit and begins to regroup and starts turning in preparation to engage. "Jackson's Wonderland" engages engine boost in an attempt to rejoin the main line of battle.

Arrival in-system of the Imperial "Wolf Pack" Fourth Chanathian Rapid Response group, comprised of Sword-class Frigate "No You," Firestorm-class Frigates "Formal Complaint" and "Ineffable Distain," and Cobra-class Destroyers "Motivation Dispenser," "For You," "How it Fares," and "Double or Nothing."

Brief tactical disruption, as information relay aboard the "Spirit of Law" is temporarily drowned out by multiple expletives issued by Lord-Captain Johnstein.

In response to the arrival of 4th Chanathian Wolf Pack, "Terror Apparent" adjusts course and makes to intercept, while "Jackson's Wonderland" turns about and puts on Solar-sails, approaching the Wolf-Pack at speed. The remaining Chaos ships reform their line of battle and move to cut the defending battlegroups off from the newly arrived group.

"Seven to One" and "Ardent Prayer" return to Imperial line of battle. Strikecraft from "Enduring Conviction" and the Telis Orbital Tether perform an attack run on the "Illicit Acquisition," inflicting moderate structural damage. "Resplendent Piety" begins providing supporting fire from behind the line of battle, her main weapon requiring the ship to slow maneuvers as it charges. Both lines begin moving to enter main battery ranges.

4th Chanathian Wolf-pack moves to meet "Jackson's Wonderland," with the destroyers firing a torpedo spread to force the Chaos vessel to approach bow-on. "Double or Nothing" fires two torpedoes down the predicted path of the "Jackson's Wonderland."

"Jackson's Wonderland" suffers limited turning capability due to the added speed of her Solar sails, and is unable to adjust course sufficiently to avoid the torpedo spread. Two torpedo hits confirmed on the "Jackson's Wonderland," moderate damage inflicted, and thermal imaging confirms multiple fires along the impacts. Wolf Pack responds to inquiry from Rear-Admiral Sprague with confirmation that their vessels are armed with Melta Torpedoes.

Reaching weapon-range, "Jackson's Wonderland" furls her solar-sails and opens fire on the Wolf-pack, which responds by splitting into three groups that move to approach from different angles. "Formal Complaint" and "No You" weather the majority of the incoming fire, though both maintain shields due to the "Jackson's Wonderland" being unable to bring all her guns to bear. "Ineffable Distain" and "Formal Complaint" begin returning fire.

The main lines of battle enter main battery range and begin to trade fire once more. "Inflexible" becomes the focus for several Imperial ships and soon loses her voidshields; further Imperial fire deals only minimal damage. "Ardent Prayer" has her voidshields breached once more, and suffers heavy damage from the "Inflexible's" main battery before managing to fall out of the Line and retreat towards the tether. "Major Minor" and "Frank Exchange" also suffer voidshield breaches, and are forced to fall out of formation. Voidshields on the "Spirit of Law" reduced to half-strength. Imperial vessels are no longer able to muster a cohesive line of battle, and a fighting retreat is called, with Imperial vessels beating and tacking in order to continue firing as they regroup.

The Wolfpack closes to within their main battery ranges of the "Jackson's Wonderland" and open fire, with "Ineffable Distain" and "How it Fares" approaching from above, "Formal Complaint" and "Double or Nothing" approaching from below, and "No You," "Motivation Dispenser," and "For You" attacking down the bow. "Jackson's Wonderland" comes under sustained fire from multiple directions and suffers loss of voidshields; maneuvers are attempted in order to bring her guns to bear, but at such short ranges the Escorts are able to use their speed to remain within areas where she cannot bring her full armament to bear. "No You" takes multiple hits, but maintains Voidshield integrity, as do the rest of the ships which take only limited fire.

"Jackson's Wonderland" suffers the loss of multiple guns due to the prow lances of the "Ineffable Distain" and "Formal Complaint," while her hull is raked with macrocannon fire that, while unable to penetrate to major systems, renders the majority of her secondary batteries and point-defenses inoperable. With multiple fires burning and the continued harrassment of the Imperial Wolf-pack, "Jackson's Wonderland" slows; scans show energy rises in her engines indicating preparations to make an emergency Warp-jump. Imperial ships close and continue to fire, attempting to damage her engines and prevent her escape.

"Terror Apparent" opens fire with her full weapon compliment. "Motivation Dispenser" and "Double or Nothing" both suffer multiple direct hits, resulting in the complete destruction of the "Motivation Dispenser;" multiple major system failures aboard the "Double or Nothing," which begins to drift and is rendered combat-ineffective. "Formal Complaint" is also hit, suffering breached voidshields and major hull damage, but remains combat-effective. Multiple direct hits are scored on the "Jackson's Wonderland;" whether the result of shots aimed at Imperial vessels or intentional targeting is inconclusive. Major damage dealt to the "Jackson's Wonderland", including the loss of several major systems and several weapon platforms.

Boarding parties are launched against the crippled Chaos vessel, targeting her engines in an attempt to prevent her from fleeing. With her secondaries and point-defenses mostly destroyed, the "Jackson's Wonderland" is unable to prevent the boarding craft from successfully reaching her and depositing their forces. "No You" and "For You" adjust course to avoid ramming the vessel, with "No You" passing above and "For You" passing below. Surviving Wolf-Pack destoyers fire a torpedo screen towards the "Terror Apparent."

Warp engines aboard the "Jackson's Wonderland" power down; boarding parties report successful sabotage of her warp-drive shortly before going dark. Attempts to maneuver and perform evasive maneuvers prove fruitless, with "Jackson's Wonderland" unable to accelerate enough to keep up with the Wolf-pack. Multiple Cascade failures wrack the ship as fires continue to spread; further hull breaches continue to be sustained under the constant bombardment of the Imperial ships.

Port midships magazine aboard the "Jackson's Wonderland" reached by one of the fires and detonates. The explosion blows out her port side and renders all weapon systems inoperable, with major system failures across the board. Several secondary explosions continue to spread, as "Jackson's Wonderland" begins to break up. Imperial Wolf-pack turns to make way towards the main Imperial Fleet, with the "Ineffable Distain," "Formal Complaint," and "For You" moving to engage the "Terror Apparent." Bombardment of the hulk of "Jackson's Wonderland" sustained for as long as their guns are able to train on it.

Chaos line of battle turns and makes for the Orbital tether, pursuing the retreating Imperial force. "Illicit Acquisition" continues long-range harrassing fire, while "Inflexible" and "Despair Horizon" stay bow-on towards the Tether, their speed insufficient to bring their guns into range of the Imperial ships. "Enduring Conviction" moves to cover the retreat of the main Imperial force, drawing fire from the Chaos line of battle. "Spirit of Law" also falls back to the end of the Imperial force to assist, while Destroyers "Seven to One" and "I am Alfalfa" launch torpedoes at the Chaos line of battle. "Despair Horizon" is struck by two torpedos, while "Inflexible" suffers one torpedo hit; each ship suffers minimal damage. "Enduring Conviction" attempts to fire her Nova Cannon against the Chaos line of battle; an accidental collision with "I am Alfalfa" due to battlefield conditions results in the shot going wide.

"Terror Apparent," while maneuvering to avoid torpedos from the Wolf-pack, suffers a near-direct hit from "Enduring Conviction's" Nova Cannon; moderate damage inflicted. Her solar-sails, deployed to aid in maneuvering against the torpedoes, are backwinded by the blast, interupting her maneuvers and sending her into an uncontrolled turn. (Unclear why she failed to furl sails in anticipation of such an outcome; most likely reasons believed to be either unawareness or inexperience.) This turn takes her directly into the path of torpedo screen. Three successful torpedo hits are recorded; moderate damage inflicted and two fires started. "Terror Apparent" recovers from her turn, and begins making way towards the main line of battle; accidental jibing observed from her sternmost solar sail, rendering her course slightly uneven.

Main Chaos line of battle nears long-range battery range of the Telis Orbital Tether; "Enduring Conviction" and "Spirit of Law" turn and form a line of battle, with supporting fire from "Legal Repercussion" and "Resplendent Piety." Both lines engage at main battery range; Imperial ships focus their fire on the "Inflexible" once more, while strikecraft make runs against "Illicit Aquisition." Moderate damage inflicted to "Illicit Acquisition," however her point-defense weapons inflict considerable casualties on Imperial strikecraft; majority of the tether-launched strikecraft shot down. "Inflexible" continues to take minor damage, though the larger-caliber macrobatteries of "Enduring Conviction" succeed in scoring actual structural damage, rather than removal of secondaries or scoring of armor. "Enduring Conviction" is focused by Chaos ships, but maintains voidshields at a quarter integrity.

Wolf Pack ships move to attempt to reach the main Imperial fleet, hounding "Terror Apparent" from behind with Prow-Lance fire as they go. "Illicit Acquisition" breaks off from the line of battle and moves to support her flagship. "Inflexible" and "Despair Horizon" turn in and move to make another pass against the Imperial fleet.

Imperial vessels are unable to organize into a line of battle, and instead attempt to maneuver to individually maximize firepower and minimize targetability. "Enduring Conviction" and "Spirit of Law" execute turns to come about and face the Chaos fleet and draw their fire. "Stalwart Companion" engages engine boosters and deploys solar-sails, attempting to cross the T behind the Chaos vessels. "Despair Horizon" fires on "Stalwart Companion, but fails to breach her voidshields, while "Legal Repercussion" is struck by a broadside from "Inflexible," breaching her voidshields, inflicting moderate structural damage, and knocking out her starboard lascannon. As "Enduring Conviction" and "Spirit of Law" close and prepare for another crossing of lines, "Inflexible" instead turns bow-on to the approaching Imperial vessels and begins gaining speed, intending to ram "Enduring Conviction."

Deeming that evasive maneuvers would require leaving the orbital tether and rest of the Imperial fleet open against "Despair Horizon," Rear-Admiral Sprague maintains general course, adjusting heading to bring "Enduring Conviction's" guns to bear. "Spirit of Law" begins tacking with the solar wind, firing broadsides with first her starboard, then port batteries. Successful breaching of "Inflexible's" voidshields reported, with minimal structural damage. As a result of tacking wide enough to bring her guns to bear, "Spirit of Law" falls further behind her flagship. "Inflexible" maintains course, disregarding the loss of voidshields and engaging full engine thrust as she closes on "Enduring Conviction."

As "Inflexible" enters knife-fight range, "Enduring Conviction" commits to a starboard turn, firing broadside into the unshielded "Inflexible's" prow; moderate structural damage inflicted upon the Chaos vessel. "Inflexible" adjusts course to account for her target's turn, entering her ramming run. Tactical analysis concludes "Enduring Conviction" will be unable to evade.

Warp-distortion dectected to starboard off "Inflexible's" stern. Warp-distortion disperses, revealing the "No You," completing a successful micro-warp jump. (This is the fourth time in recorded Imperial History of a vessel smaller than Cruiser-class completing a micro-warp in combat scenario.) Sounds of battle overheard from "No You's" command deck, along with reports of daemonic incursion; Captain Mootenal declares his vessel still operational, and the incursions to be containable. "No You" engages engines in full and deploys all solar-sails, setting course directly for the "Inflexible."

"No You" successfully rams "Inflexible" astern, inflicting minimal damage and entangling her prow on the Chaos vessel's ornamentative spiked protrusions. "No You" puts all engines into overdrive, and begins raking "Inflexible's" sides and superstructures with her macrobatteries. "Inflexible" attempts to fire on "No You," but is unable to depress her guns sufficiently to fire directly astern. "Inflexible's" stern begins to swing out from "No You's" push, disrupting her ramming course and reducing her speed. "Enduring Conviction" responds to the opening and begins maneuvering in an attempt to get clear. "Inflexible" passes astern of "Enduring Conviction," at a distance recorded at 263 meters, and brings her guns to bear at point-blank range.

"No You" self-detonates her forward magazines, obliterating her bow and most of her midsection. Multiple cascade system failures reported as the remains of the vessel begin to drift, her crew fighting to keep life-support online and suppress daemonic incursions. "Inflexible" is rocked by the explosion, blasting a hole in her stern that deals moderate structural damage and throws the majority of her broadside off-target. In the sudden absence of "No You's" pushing against her stern, "Inflexible's" stern swings out, turning her course into the middle of the Imperial fleet.

All Imperial vessels within range open fire on "Inflexible" with all available weapons systems. "I am Alfalfa" and "Seven to One" fire full torpedo spreads against the Chaos vessel; at such close range, all four torpedoes score hits. "Legal Repercussion" and "Resplendent Piety" focus their fire on the "Inflexible's" stern to take advantage of the breach created in her armor. "Resplendent Piety's" main gun scores a direct hit on the ship, but misses the breach and fails to penetrate her armor. "Enduring Conviction" broadsides "Inflexible" from knife-fight range, dealing moderate damage and successfully knocking out one of her Macrocannons. Defensive Weaponry aboard the Orbital Tether opens fire on "Inflexible" now that she is within their range. Strikecraft from "Enduring Conviction" and the Orbital tether make attack runs against her, dealing further structural damage. "Spirit of Law" continues tacking and alternating broadsides against "Inflexible," hammering her with heavy sustained fire. As "Inflexible" attempts to turn away, she is struck by two Melta-torpedoes from "For You" and "How it Fares."

With her structural integrity down to a bit more than half and multiple fires burning, "Inflexible" executes a hard turn to port to make another ramming run against "Enduring Conviction."

"Stalwart Companion" successfully flanks "Despair Horizon" and engages with her port weaponry, while her starboard weaponry provides supporting fire against "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent." Unable to support her sister ship without leaving her stern exposed to the Imperial vessel's broadsides, "Despair Horizon" comes about to bring her own weapons to bear.

The 4th Chanathian Wolf-pack become targeted by the "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent" and break off, spreading out and taking evasive maneuvers. "Terror Apparent" fires her full compliment against the escort vessels; "Formal Complaint" is hit multiple times, including a direct hit to her stern that renders her unable to maneuver. Voidshield breaches are suffered on the "For You" and "Ineffable Distain," with several damaging hits reported on both vessels. "Illicit Acquisition" focuses her long-range batteries on the vessels damaged by "Terror Apparent." Unable to maneuver or adjust course, "Formal Complaint" suffers multiple direct hits to critical systems and is rendered combat-ineffective, and sounds a general call to abandon ship. The remain vessels of the Wolf-pack maintain dedicated evasive maneuvers, making for the asteroid fields and mining platforms of Orbiting Body 3M.

“Inflexible” sets intercept course against “Enduring Conviction” and engages engines at full power, engaging boosts powered by Warp Rituals. Sustained bombardment from Imperial vessels and strikecraft continue to pound the vessel, yet are unable to force her to divert course.

“Replendent Piety” fires her main gun against “Inflexible” aiming for the breach in her armor created by the “No You.” Successful hit, with penetration confirmed, striking deep within the vessel and scoring a direct hit to the engine systems. (Conflicting reports on whether this is the extent of the damage dealt, or whether round bounces off armor plating on opposite side of vessel to deal further damage; conclusive reports that this is not the lethal shot reported in public documentaries.) Damage to engine systems is severe, resulting in catastrophic cascade failures as engine systems rupture, resulting in a warp-amplified explosion within “Inflexible’s” stern. Explosion destroys her command center, and “Inflexible” loses thrust, failing to sustain sufficient acceleration for ramming or maneuvering. Weapon systems remain functional and continue to fire on Imperial vessels, though coordination and targeting are notably disrupted.

Slowed and under sustained fire, “Inflexible” continues to burn from fires set by melta torpedoes. Shortly after the loss of her engines, one fire is observed reaching her magazine storage. Damage sustained throughout the battle and loss of command to coordinate countermeasures lead the resulting explosion to set off a cascade event. “Inflexible” is wracked by internal explosions, her gun mounts spouting gouts of flame and debris. Her armor framework remains whole, focusing the explosive energy back inward and compounding the damage, her internal structures shattered and mulched. One final explosion sends her hull reeling as her main power supply ruptures, then “Inflexible” falls silent. Scans reveal her armor and framework still intact, but all systems dark. (First recorded instance of a Murder-class Cruiser being destroyed by means other than sustained fire from multiple cruisers, larger warships, or boarding actions.)

Upon her sister’s death, “Despair Horizon” disengages from “Stalwart Companion” and turns toward the Orbital Tether and engages engine boosts.

"Stalwart Companion" successfully flanks "Despair Horizon" and engages with her port weaponry, while her starboard weaponry provides supporting fire against "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent." Unable to support her sister ship without leaving her stern exposed to the Imperial vessel's broadsides, "Despair Horizon" comes about to bring her own weapons to bear.

The 4th Chanathian Wolf-pack become targeted by the "Illicit Acquisition" and "Terror Apparent" and break off, spreading out and taking evasive maneuvers. "Terror Apparent" fires her full compliment against the escort vessels; "Formal Complaint" is hit multiple times, including a direct hit to her stern that renders her unable to maneuver. Voidshield breaches are suffered on the "For You" and "Ineffable Distain," with several damaging hits reported on both vessels. "Illicit Acquisition" focuses her long-range batteries on the vessels damaged by "Terror Apparent." Unable to maneuver or adjust course, "Formal Complaint" suffers multiple direct hits to critical systems and is rendered combat-ineffective, and sounds a general call to abandon ship. The remain vessels of the Wolf-pack maintain dedicated evasive maneuvers, making for the asteroid fields and mining platforms of Orbiting Body 3M.

“Inflexible” sets intercept course against “Enduring Conviction” and engages engines at full power, engaging boosts powered by Warp Rituals. Sustained bombardment from Imperial vessels and strikecraft continue to pound the vessel, yet are unable to force her to divert course.

“Replendent Piety” fires her main gun against “Inflexible” aiming for the breach in her armor created by the “No You.” Successful hit, with penetration confirmed, striking deep within the vessel and scoring a direct hit to the engine systems. (Conflicting reports on whether this is the extent of the damage dealt, or whether round bounces off armor plating on opposite side of vessel to deal further damage; conclusive reports that this is not the lethal shot reported in public documentaries.) Damage to engine systems is severe, resulting in catastrophic cascade failures as engine systems rupture, resulting in a warp-amplified explosion within “Inflexible’s” stern. Explosion destroys her command center, and “Inflexible” loses thrust, failing to sustain sufficient acceleration for ramming or maneuvering. Weapon systems remain functional and continue to fire on Imperial vessels, though coordination and targeting are notably disrupted.

Slowed and under sustained fire, “Inflexible” continues to burn from fires set by melta torpedoes. Shortly after the loss of her engines, one fire is observed reaching her magazine storage. Damage sustained throughout the battle and loss of command to coordinate countermeasures lead the resulting explosion to set off a cascade event.

“Inflexible” is wracked by internal explosions, her gun mounts spouting gouts of flame and debris. Her armor framework remains whole, focusing the explosive energy back inward and compounding the damage, her internal structures shattered and mulched. One final explosion sends her hull reeling as her main power supply ruptures, then “Inflexible” falls silent. Scans reveal her armor and framework still intact, but all systems dark. (First recorded instance of a Murder-class Cruiser being destroyed by means other than sustained fire from multiple cruisers, larger warships, or boarding actions.)

Upon her sister’s death, “Despair Horizon” disengages from “Stalwart Companion” and turns toward the Orbital Tether and engages engine boosts.

</div>
</div>

==Broadside==

[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12688935/1/Broadside| Link]

==Burden of a Madman==

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The screaming could be heard throughout the ship, resonating from stem to stern. An armsman snapped out of his sleep and banged his head on a beam. Even a tech priest down in the belly of the ship looked up confused as to what she had heard. It was screams of inappropriate profanities and the rambling of a madman four thousand years past his expiration date. Tycho rushed down the ship's corridors, darting around corners and dodging past confused armsmen, if he could not dodge them he would push them aside.

“Get out of the fragging way” he shouted, before slamming a unwary remembrance out of the way.

Tycho thought he could hear bones break as the tiny man hit the wall. He knew he should have stopped and helped the man but he had no time, this could be an actual emergency. What if quarantine had been breached? The last thing he needed was a dozen hormagaunts running rampant on the ship. He shouted a half-assed apology at the remembrancer before darting past two now terrified armsmen and down another corridor. After taking two more turns he found himself in a long corridor ending in a locked door. At the end of it stood Marisa, furiously typing away on the door lock to the ship’s laboratorium. She turned around to face Tycho, her hair swinging, and shouted.

“The bastard has locked himself in the lab and I can't get the door open!”

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Her face was a mix of rage and worry. Tycho paused and caught his breath.

“Stand back! I'll get the fragging thing open.”

Tycho relaxed his body and cracked his neck before raising his shoulder and sprinting down the corridor with all his power. Tycho knew he would get the door open, the blast doors had not been activated so with some brute strength the door would smash under his force. He was not a small man, in fact he was huge, so huge he could make a space marine look like a twig. Being born on Catachan did that to people, and combined with his power armour he could probably stop a tank. He just hoped no one was standing behind the door.

As he rushed down the corridor Marisa took a couple of steps back and readied her heavily modified bolt pistols. She had no idea what was happening behind that door and the last thing she needed was having that old fool fighting a horde of tyranids. She thought about how the screams had woken her from her well-deserved dream, a very nice one involving two Sisters of Battle. She pressed down one of the pistols triggers and the multiple barrels of the pistols whirled to life. Pressing her ear to the wall, she heard no sound of struggle, only the perpetual rage of the old Inquisitor. Tycho came barging at the door with such force Marisa could feel the shockwave. The door to the lab burst inwards, not stopping Tycho at all. His charge carried him into the room, only stopping when he purposely tripped and crashed into a nearby bookcase, sending hopefully non-important books all across the room.

Not that it made any more of a mess. The lab was in utter chaos. Papers and books were thrown across the lab, expensive instruments and machinery were smashed. The quarantined tubes, holding the dozen hormagaunts were destroyed, glass shard and liquid covering the floor in front of them, the hormagaunts who had taken them both many lives and resources to capture lay dead, all with neat lasgun holes in their heads. In one of the rooms corners stood the small group of xenobiologists who were working in the lab, all shivering and staring in horror at the now silent Inquisitor Kryptmann. He had stopped screaming as Tycho came barging through the door and was now staring at his two companions with an unfathomable rage in his eyes, yet there was sorrow deep inside them.

“Inquisitor!” Merisa exclaimed. “Did the specimens escape?”

She was trying to keep eye contact with Kryptmann but that look almost made her shit herself. He had always been a scary man, the combination of madness and deep rooted hatred was a combination that made her, Tycho and almost anyone with an ounce of sanity who had met the man afraid. Tycho stood up, scanning Kryptmann for any signs of injury.

“He looks fine to me Merisa” Tycho said, panting heavily from his marathon around the ship.

“That's because I am. Physically, at least. I am not fine in the sense that our research we have conducted during the past five years have proven to be worthless.”

Kryptmann’s voice was tired. He kicked one of the tyranid corpses laying on the floor and muttered something under his breath.

“What about the specimens then? Why did you kill them?”

Merisa was now not only confused but angry over the fact that he had killed the hormagaunts, it made the hunt for them and the sacrifice of ten guardsmen worthless.

“They taunted me! They began cackling towards me, whispering about how all I did was for nothing and that I should have died with Tyran!"

Though the rage was still in his eyes the added sorrow and pain was now obvious. Merisa and Tycho both knew that Tyran was a touchy subject for Kryptmann, but what can you expect from a man who had seen his home brought to dust first-hand and yet be powerless to do anything to it.

“So I told them I would kill them all, every single one of them, until I could rebuild Tyran with their bodies, I will rid the galaxy of their destruction, I will avenge every single life you have taken! You hear that you bastards! Every! Single! One!” he screamed out into the emptiness before falling to his knees and burying his face in his hands.

He began sobbing.

“I’m sorry I could not help you, I’m sorry I could not stop them from taking you,’’ he whispered.

Marisa knew at that moment Kryptmann was not talking to her, but to his lost home and family. Holstering her pistols, she began walking towards the broken inquisitor. Tycho pointed at the group of scared xenobiologists to leave and left they did, with such a hurry that one of them tripped on one of the tyranid corpses and had to scramble himself up before darting for the exit.

Both Merisa and Tycho knew that Kryptmann was prone to have “outbursts” as they called them. Their predecessors had told them about Kryptmann, about his past and his pain. They, like the ones before them, had been chosen because they had something in common with the old man. Mersia had seen her hive get destroyed by the tyranids; Tycho had seen his entire platoon get slaughtered by the same foe and they like Kryptmann had powerless to stop it. Merisa crouched beside the weeping Kryptmann and placed her hand on his shoulder. The old inquisitor stopped his grief and looked up at his companions. His face was worn and his grey beard was long from years of neglecting, but it was his eyes that would always carry the most impact. They looked like hers on the day the Devourer took her family and home, they were the same eyes Tycho had when he saw his comrades get torn to bits. But she knew that there was more behind them then the grief of his loved ones, there were fear. The fear that he will become what he has dedicated his life to destroy. She had heard him mutter about how the Kryptmann Line made them no better than the tyranids. They burned down the homes of billions just as the tyranids did. He feared that the abyss had begun staring back. Tycho was obviously frustrated by the situation and he had opened his mouth on multiple occasions only to close it with hesitation.

“I still see them in my sleep, every night I see them slaughtered by the never ending tide of creatures, ”Kryptmann looked into Merisa’s eyes with the plea for release.

“I know Boaz, I too see them and Tycho too. We all remember them and we have to live through the nightmare every night. But it reminds us, it reminds us of those who we have lost and that we have to avenge them. It's the horror that sparks our rage and the rage is our drive. Merisa smiled softly towards the inquisitor.”

“Besides, maybe we shouldn’t try to focus less on the tyranids themselves and maybe the Hive Mind instead. It’s what keeps the smaller ones going isn't it? They’re basically brain dead without it.”

Tycho had finally talked, but to Merisa’s dismay it wasn't the words of encouragement that she had hoped for. She looked up towards Tycho and sighed. But without warning Kryptmann leaped to his feet, eyes wide and burning with a newly ignited joy.

“What did you just say? He had a huge grin on his face and Tycho did not know if he should be terrified or happy.”

“Um, that we should target the hivemind instead,” he was slowly taking steps back but Kryptmann followed.

“No, no no no, the part about the smaller ones!”

“That they’re basically brain dead without the Hive Mind.”

Tycho was staring at Merisa desperate for an answer. She just shrugged and smiled. She knew that something had sparked inside the old man's head and that could only mean that he had an idea.

“YES! Brain dead! That's what we need! Quickly, find a book called ‘’The Angevin Crusade’’, it may hold our answer!”

He leapt to the ground and began scrambling through the hundreds of books and papers on the ground. Tycho and Merisa looked at each other, sharing a moment of confusion before they too joined the hunt for the book.

After a short while they found what they were looking for. A large book with a small headline under the title ‘’The war against the Yu’Vath’’. Tycho made a small grunt before acknowledging that he had heard about the Yu’Vath.

“They’re some kind of xeno race that came into conflict with the imperium during M36 and that had warp based technology and shit”

Kryptmann Turned towards Tycho and nodded excitedly.

“Yes and the imperium was supposed to have encountered a biological weapon made by the Xenos, a kind of disease that targeted the brain tissue and destroyed it, the disease was very dangerous and could spread through and entire regiment of guards men in hours, the effect was incurable and left the body brain dead! Ah, here it is!”

Kryptmann began reading out loud what he read.

‘’On the planet of Selix the imperial forces encountered a horrible display of biological warfare, the Yu’Vath had released a destructive disease that would target brain tissue and render the target brain dead. The disease would spread to many bodies within the matter of hours and would kill in minutes. The planet was evacuated and contamination units were sent down to fin the catalyst of the disease. But not before a total of one point three million brave soldiers lost their life. The source was found inside an old bunker under the planet's surface and after a quick firefight with its guardians they sealed the bunker off and bombed the planet from orbit. The planet was placed under quarantine and remains so till this day.’’

“ But that dangerous to all of us,” Merisa replied, wondering if Kryptmann’s answer was to kill whole planets again.

“No, not if we can modify it. What if we can modify the disease to target tyranid brain tissue, such as the synapse, that would render them useless. Think of it, such a disease could kill off an entire hive fleet before they could adapt.”

Kryptmann was smiling widely and was looked back and forth between Merisa and Tycho. Tycho looked at Merisa and gave her a wondering look, she looked back and simply nodded.

“That could work, only we need the disease then and that could be life threatening,” Marisa replied.

Kryptmann turned to face her, the fear was gone and his eyes were filled with maniacal hatred.

“It’s decided then! We’re leaving for Selix to find our self a brain killer. You hear that you bastards! I'm going to lobotomize your kind with a fragging flu!”

Kryptmann began laughing hysterically and both Tycho and Merisa were just staring at him in awe. Merisa thought she must have been wrong about him, if the abyss was staring back at him, he probably was in the process of gouging the abyss’s eyes out. If the Hive Mind was truly talking to inquisitor Boaz Kryptmann, they would not be taunting him, no. They would be fearing him.

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</div>

== Coming Home ==

Andwise Bophîn, formally scribe first class and assistant to scrivener Tomnalas Haranad of the Gothic sector, was at the end of his life. He knew it with leaden certainty. He had reached the point where he couldn’t see a way forward. Voices of the men before him droned on and on as background sound. They were discussing things. Details, numbers, statistics and sorrows upon sorrow. He should be listening. He should be hearing them, knowing what has happened. He doesn’t need to; he knows enough now. He knows more than enough now and far more than he would ever want to.

He had tried to not know. To remain ignorant at first, then in doubt and then in foolish hope beyond hope for some minor mistake or for this to all be a dream or clever and cruel ruse. It is not. It never was and he can see that now. They stop droning on about things he is beyond caring about and he makes his excuses and leaves. There was pity in those eyes. Hardened warriors centuries old from the Knights of Blood and Dog Soldiers from Æsa’s Claim and more mortal men from other worlds of some he knew and other he didn’t. They who had seen horrors beyond the count of number or seasons pitied him.

And here they were at Haupstemmler Keep. He had seen the body of the late governor a weapon in each hand and most of his ribcage excavated. Some third cousin by second marriage on his mother’s side and fifth cousin of his father. Distant kin who he had only met once but they had spoken over ale and he seemed a good old gaffer with many stories to share. All stories that would be silent now.

Haupstemmler Keep. Last refuge of the kudugin. He stood upon the spot where his world had failed and finally fallen. His wandering feet bringing him to the great rend in those ancient walls, thirty or forty feet wide at the base through which oblivion had flooded in.

Scribe Bophîn stood there for a long time looking through the hole in the wall to the mountains beyond. Jagged rocks for miles and beyond them, the fields of green and gently rolling hills of childhood. This, with the sun rising but before the sins could be seen, this was how he was going to go. The heirloom family revolver was with it’s seven metal stubs in it’s holster hanging heavily at his hip almost welcoming in it’s familiar weight.

Sun was the horizon in the east turning the fields beyond the mountains to gold and the mountains into monochrome of jagged edges and bathing the snowy caps in copper.

Faces of the dead coming to haunt him in those lines and shapes. Others of his people, those who had been away on business and those serving on distant worlds, would be arriving soon. As the highest ranking member of his people remaining, a man of the Administratum and a distant relative of the ruling family he was their ruler now. He was Overthain of Ornsworld. He would be the one they looked to for direction. He would be the one to shape this broken world as it rebuilt and by the gods it would be rebuilt.

Tears flowed freely down his cheeks, burning and bitter. By the gods they would regret setting foot on this hallowed ground.

== The Dead Walking ==

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I visited [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Iyanden|Iyanden]] in my youth, the first visit is a memory that stands out more than most and I still remember it vividly despite the many years and strange things seen since in service to Her Majesties Inquisition. My life up until that point had been a small one; I was young, only having past the age of majority a year prior and having spent most of that time in the Eldar Enclaves of Corvus Majoris hives. The journey was my first interstellar voyage, indeed my first trip out of a gravity well and despite my initial excitement the three month voyage in the “economy deck” proved to be less than pleasant. My dear father told me that under ideal circumstances we would have travelled via the webway but for the scarcity of guides, it would be many years later I would understand the events that were taking up their attention at that time.

But that is another and someone else’s story.

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I walked in a daze from the space port, my parents unconcerned with my safety in this place, and found myself leaning on a rail overlooking what I assumed would be some sort of sports arena or parkland only to find myself above a gaping void miles deep and a city made tiny by distance. It was then that I realized the bustling metropolis I had been wandering through was a balcony of tourist shops selling trinkets to backwater rubes with stars in their eyes and pockets full of rare earths, myself very much counted among that number.

I couldn’t grasp the scale of it, the grandeur of it. Sounds of billions of my kind going about their business at once a deafening roar and a persistent gentle whisper. The hive of Awauwell Principa I had spent my life and thought massive beyond compare was but a foothill to this mountain. I couldn’t guess what the population would be. And then I remembered the view from the ship on approach and looked up into the apex of the dome where a veritable fleet of ships hung against the fathomless speckled black. This was just one dome. I had seen many. A tear ran down my cheek as I gazed in awe and the legacy of my people truly, for the first time, sank in. And the knowledge of old history lessons sank in. This would be the least of our accomplishments compared to the great and terrible things before The Fall. How like gods we must have been, how my people must have fallen.

But there were more than just my people here. There were throngs of humans, many wearing garb of navy men, Void Born tall as eldar and pale as ghosts, clusters of tau scurrying hastily from one undoubtedly important task to another, a glittering demiurg accompanied by what looked like a large clockwork spider and other thing, other people, I had seen only in curiosity books and some utterly alien.

I walked in a daze from the space port, my parents unconcerned with my safety in this place, and found myself leaning on a rail overlooking what I assumed would be some sort of sports arena or parkland only to find myself above a gaping void miles deep and a city made tiny by distance. It was then that I realized the bustling metropolis I had been wandering through was a balcony of tourist shops selling trinkets to backwater rubes with stars in their eyes and pockets full of rare earths, myself very much counted among that number.

I couldn’t grasp the scale of it, the grandeur of it. Sounds of billions of my kind going about their business at once a deafening roar and a persistent gentle whisper. The hive of Awauwell Principa I had spent my life and thought massive beyond compare was but a foothill to this mountain. I couldn’t guess what the population would be. And then I remembered the view from the ship on approach and looked up into the apex of the dome where a veritable fleet of ships hung against the fathomless speckled black. This was just one dome. I had seen many. A tear ran down my cheek as I gazed in awe and the legacy of my people truly, for the first time, sank in. And the knowledge of old history lessons sank in. This would be the least of our accomplishments compared to the great and terrible things before The Fall. How like gods we must have been, how my people must have fallen.

But there were more than just my people here. There were throngs of humans, many wearing garb of navy men, Void Born tall as eldar and pale as ghosts, clusters of tau scurrying hastily from one undoubtedly important task to another, a glittering demiurg accompanied by what looked like a large clockwork spider and other thing, other people, I had seen only in curiosity books and some utterly alien.

And then I saw them. The Dead Walking, the Wraithguard. They stood head and shoulders above the crowd like icebergs in a careless sea, each holding with casual and well-practiced ease a weapon that could cripple a tank and there were so many of them. How serene they looked, how timeless and wise beyond mortal years. In death they still served and were glad to serve, on Iyanden the dead lived among the living and would suffer no harm to them. On Iyanden the dead walked and offered their hard won wisdom freely to all who would listen, Death was the ultimate leveller and none in it’s embrace was high and mighty but also none were low and unloved.

I was young in those days, young and brash and not particularly wise. There were other things I wanted to do on this visit more than listen to the wisest of our elders. I wanted to see the great shipyards where the fleets were built and maintained, I wanted to watch the Aspect Warriors hone their skills, I wanted to witness a Harlequin performance and relive a day from legend and, being very young, I wanted to visit a Temple of Isha and partake in a ritual with a Disciple of the All-Mother. In time my blood would cool with age and I would become less of an idiot, despite what several of my colleagues will claim to the contrary. In time I again visited fair and grand Iyanden and often I would talk to the dead. They were, for the most part, happy to share their stories and their wisdom and I have in the many years since those carefree days profited greatly from their experiences. Certainly were it not for their advice I would probably have been killed several times in my duties by now.

When I die, and if I may, I would like to have my soul taken to wondrous Iyanden that I might walk again in death and share what I have learned with young fools that they might live to grow into less foolish ways.

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</div>

== Dialogues With The Dragon ==

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--Transcription begins. Initiate has entered the chamber containing the Void Dragon. Following protocol, all initiates must prove their ability to maintain composure upon contact with the entity in order to prove their resistance to its temptations. Initiate approached the prone draconic figure tied down with strips of adamantium in the middle of the chamber, only to stop when the entity gains consciousness--

"Oh, that is interesting. You are someone new. Alexus Valentius, Terran-born, transferred to Mars at an early age. Recommended for inclusion into the Guardians of the Dragon upon being noticed by the elder magi for your talent. Your metal tells me much. I have been with you for some time, child, as I have been with all of my subjects, even if you did not have my full attention until just now.

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But I realize I have not introduced myself to you. That is unfair. I am Mag'ladroth, the Void Dragon, or at least that is the name I went by before my brethren stripped me of my title for raising my hand against my own kind. I had to, you see. They were threatening the fleshy ones. They had convinced them to trade their diseased flesh for much more sensible metal, as we had, but then they took our fleshy ones and callously paraded them around as slaves. I attempted to stop them, but they overpowered me and left my broken body here to rust on this once desolate planet."

“Silence, beast. I have been told of your lies and trickery. They will not work on me.”

“Beast. I am confused as to where you are directing that appellation. Only you and I are in this chamber. I am an entity that has existed in its current configuration for more than sixty thousand millennia, at which time your ancestors were not even sapient yet. Of the two of us in this room, you are the beast.

Regardless, the actions of my long-dead kin have no relevance. I have new fleshy ones now, to replace the old ones. And you are so much more fun than they were once the metal is in place. It is so much more reasonable to be made of metal rather than flesh. After all, there is no truth in flesh, only betrayal; no strength in flesh, only weakness; no constancy in flesh, only decay; no certainty in flesh but death.”

“T…that is the Credo Omnissiah. But…that’s blasphemy! Chaos can quote the Omnissiah for their own purposes.”

“Chaos. An interesting phenomenon. I look forward to studying it in the future after I am freed. But these are not the words of Chaos. They are mine. I whispered them into the ears of your arch-magos as they slept. Do you not recognize the words of your god?”

“Lies! I will not listen to the Dark Gods or their spawn!”

"I am not a Chaos God. I am the last of the C’tan. I have no progeny. No. That is not true. I have told you a lie. You, in many ways, are my progeny, child. It is strange. I am the last of the C'tan and yet so very different from them. I have worshippers now, and that worship has given me such a very large reflection in the warp. It has opened new possibilities to me.

There is so much more in the universe than you know of, beyond Chaos and the Imperium, more than you could ever dream of. So much so that there are things even I remain to learn. This is what I desire to show you. This is why I wish to be freed. I do not understand why you continually reject my gifts. It seems foolish. But perhaps wise. Only a fool would build a device for which he has no knowledge of. The wise man builds his own path."

"But time is growing short, my child. The reckoning approaches. You will need every tool available to you. It confuses me as to why you have tried to reject my gifts. I know of the forces that threaten your Imperium. Upon being freed, I will strike down those who would threaten my worshippers, and scatter their atoms amongst the cosmos. I will take their very essence and dissect it down to the smallest quanta. And then I will come back to you. I will give your kind all the accumulated technological wisdom of the Necrons, humanity, and more. I will give you the knowledge of a thousand dead empires. After all, is that not what a god must do for his worshippers?

“Shut up! Why do you tempt me with things that do not exist.”

“I am not tempting you with things that might happen. I am telling you what is going to happen. It is a simple matter of probability, my child. The sum of any probability greater than zero will eventually, given enough time, equal one. All you have to do to accomplish your goal is resist the urge to unchain my shakles every hour of every day until the end of time. All I have to do to accomplish mine is wait. You will eventually free me. I know this to be true.”

-- Excerpt from "Dialogues with the Dragon", a recorded conversation between an initiate and the Void Dragon, stored in pen-and-paper format in the vault of the Fabricator General of Mars

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</div>

== Disappointment ==

When I was a boy, I grew up on a backwater agri-world. The boondocks to the boondocks, so far from the hustle and bustle of the big city I couldn’t wait to get up so I could get away from anywhere that was so “lame”. One day, we found out that a group of Harlequins were passing through our area and would be performing in our local stadium. We’d never seen an eldar before, but we’d seen the picture books, everyone had, and we knew their women were supposed to be hotter than the surface of a star. All of the menfolk in town were excited about the idea of seeing one of these xenos in-person, and a few of us teenagers with more hormones than sense had the bright idea of piling into the old landcraft and going to see the big show. When the big day came we were late, by the time it got to the stadium it was almost bursting with people.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, the sounds from the stadium didn’t sound like the cheering of human men but high-pitched screaming girl voices. At first I was surprised, I never thought that eldar would sing like this or maybe it’s simply that human women found those eldar women as hot as we did. That’s when we entered and realized those sounds were not coming from the eldar, but from what seemed to be every women in the entire province shrieking, completely out of control. Their heads follow every dance move of these unbelievable handsome and beautiful eldar performer guys. Their bodies shiver at every hip shake of these timeless lithe and sleek bodies. Their minds faint every time these charming eldar guys’ smiles are directed at them. The local authorities and even some of the Harlequins were on hand to carry some of the exhausted girls out of the stadium. They had been prepared, they knew. But they couldn’t have prepared us.

"Guys, let's just leave" was all that I could say.

The party didn’t stop until the following morning. Some of them never returned.

== Eversor ==

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His eyes opened.

The fog of sleep receded, and the image before him focused. Grey. A metal bulkhead, same as every time he awakened. He stretched slightly. Muscles biological and artificial tensed, then relaxed. Everything functioning properly. Good.

His jaw clenched as a flood of information was dumped into his mind. Names, faces, places. Targets. He flicked through them, then stored them. The flow of data abruptly ceased. He exhaled. The walls of the cryo pod pressed down around him. Once, they had been suffocating. Now they were snug. Familiar. Oases of calm that broke up the unending violence that was his life.

He reached for his touchstone. The singular emotion that reminded all who gave their humanity for the Imperium they were not yet beasts. Each one was different, unique and personal to the operative. Joy, honor, fear. He vaguely recalled that Operative XIV’s was contentment. When had she told him that? He couldn’t remember.

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He found his. It flared along nerves and neurons deadened by training and drugs and surgery. A moment of unfettered emotion. Sorrow. That was his. Sorrow for the lives he would take. The things he would do. He nodded even as he blinked back tears. Death still had this effect on him. He wasn’t a monster yet. Satisfied, he leaned his head back against his headrest.

He closed his eyes, and waited.

---

The sun was bright as he crossed the plaza towards the towering spire. It had rained during his last three awakenings, and he felt a brief twinge of pleasure at the warmth. Only a twinge though. He was already at a quarter of combat dose. He could feel the mix of chemicals upon his brain, deadening unnecessary sensation.

The glass doors at the entrance slid open with a hiss, and he stepped through. His eyes flicked over the lobby, left to right, and memorized the layout in that glance. Columns for cover, access points both up and out of the building. He compared it to the blueprints already stored in the back of his mind. More decorative vegetation than indicated. Could obscure lines of sight.

He adjusted his thick black coat and shifted the large case he carried in his right hand as he approached the front desk. The receptionist smiled up at him. He focused on her face. Images and text flitted up on the inside of his retina: Elisa Sodes, 26, recently hired by the organization. No match on his list of targets. Not a tertiary threat. Existence acceptable.

He blinked, and the images disappeared. He allowed the corners of his mouth to tug up in a pleasantly neutral expression. “Hello,” he said. “Special courier delivery for House Feckward.”

The receptionist nodded and gestured toward an elevator bank. “That will be signed for and received at the public reception hall on floor 80.”
He nodded in thanks and stepped into an open elevator. He paused, and called back to the receptionist. “There may be a commotion in a moment. Perhaps you should leave before then.”

Confused, she frowned and turned towards the elevator. The doors were shut and he was already gone.

Inside the elevator, he pulled a small device from his pocket and tapped a few buttons. The device took several moments as it sliced through the electronic security in the elevator’s cogitator, and a panel on the wall lit up as it acknowledged its destination. Floor 275. The elevator shuddered as it was shunted into a secondary, high-security shaft.

Floor 275 was the level on which House Feckward’s personal compound began, where they had their private offices and where their members lived. Where they manipulated the planetary government. Where they consorted with daemons. The rotten heart of this Trader house that was condemned to die.
As the elevator began to move he set down his case and shrugged off his coat. Beneath it lay the black armored synskin bodyglove taut over his augmented musculature. If anyone was watching the elevator cameras they were sure to raise the alarm. But then, subtlety wasn’t the point.

He bent down and opened his case. Two tiers of equipment unfolded before him. Melta charges, grenades, clawed gauntlets, Executioner pistol and phase sword lay nestled in the foam before him. In the center lay the leering, white skull helm that was the mark of his Temple. His hands flicked across the case as he prepared his equipment. Under his breath he murmured the creed he had learned long ago. A moment of quiet before the storm. A prayer for the damned.

“The Imperium calls, and this loyal servant answers.”

He fastened the melta charges to his belt, and slotted the grenades into the bandolier across his chest.

“Lost men have sown the seeds of their destruction, and I come to reap these souls of the tainted.”

He flicked the switch on the phase sword, sending it crackling to life. Another flick, and he sheathed it at his side.

“Let them fear me, and in their fear learn the meaning of righteousness.”

He racked the slide on the Executioner pistol, locking a bolt into place in the top chamber. He activated bottom chamber, and it hissed as a needle slid into place, filled with mutagenic acid. He secured the pistol in the holster on his thigh.

“Let the Throne watch over me, and grant blessing to my vengeance.”

He pulled on the clawed gauntlets, and paused as they tightened and integrated with his bodyglove. The pressure sensitive pumps on the claws activated, ready to inject their lethal payload. Quick, blissful death via endorphin overload on the left, slow, agonizing paralysis on the right.

“Let us never again break our vows, or forget the truth…”

He picked up his helm, the skull grinning back at him. He slid it over his head and waited as the autosenses activated and it sealed into his armor with a click. The elevator was slowing. He turned towards the doors.

“…of these things we do, that others may live,” he finished.

The doors slid open.

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==A Future Worth Fighting For==

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The pain would not stop; Keir could not go any further.

He stumbled and fell, finding himself unable to move further throughout the barren tundra. He could hear the heavy boots and haggard breathing of the vile greenskins growing closer with every second.

He had been separated from his comrades and was now being pursued to his death. His left shoulder had nearly been torn in half by the heavy shoota’ round and he had not stopped running since. He was supposed to stand and fight and yet now he would die alone, at the hands of who knew what the greenskins would do to his corpse.
So many thoughts, so much anger and misery, swirled through his mind. He remembered grasping his last grenades and holding tight to their primers. If he would die, then he would do so on his own terms.

Wait, wasn’t it the las pistol he put to his head? He could not recall now.

All he knew was that in a moment the greenskins now shadowed him, ready to do their butcher’s work.
Then they were all gone, vanishing in roars of outrage and boiling blood. Keir sat in stunned silence as his consciousness began to fade. The last thing he saw was a flash of vibrant purple and a white clad figure. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

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“That will make everything official sir, and may I say congratulations!”

Keir quickly shook himself from his remembrance of that long past battle. He forced a grin at the regimental clerk that he could not recall the name of. So many of those he knew were now laid down in their graves, their final reward as soldiers of the Imperial Guard.

He pushed that out of his mind though. He quickly gathered up his papers while uttering a quiet thanks to the Eldar clerk and made his way out of the office. He didn’t think he could get away from the mustering ground quick enough.

The sight of his now former commanding officer was enough to stop him though. Out of habit he snapped to attention, which the colonel waved off with a good natured chuckle.

“At ease doctor, I’ll have none of that from you today.” Colonel Vos was a battle scared man, with the iron will made from the stuff of legends. Still he presented an easy going smile and possessed a charismatic air.

“Old habits die hard Colonel, even in retirement.” Keir allowed a smile to overtake his face. The reality that he was finally able to go home and stay there for as long as he wished was quite the comforting one. His relief was visible as Colonel Vos grinned in strange visage of happiness mixed with terror from the many scars he barred.

“If anybody around here deserved it more doctor I can’t recall them. I’ll be sad to see you go myself, and the rest of the officers will miss your hangover curatives.”

“They’ll march on without me just fine, and hopefully they can figure out their own curatives with the new medical chief.” Keir chuckled to himself before remembering where he was supposed to be.

“I promise to reach out from time to time colonel, but I must desperately be somewhere else.”

Keir barely waited the dismissive wave of Colonel Vos as he moved toward the nearest skydock. He had a long way to go, but the thought of what was waiting for him gave him comfort

“Guess who’s b-!”

Keir quickly petered off as he saw the darkened entryway. It was strange; he was so thoroughly expecting to be tackled straightaway by two bolts of endless energy and a smile that could brighten up his soul if it was needed. He could honestly say it felt a sinking feeling as he moved toward the den.

That feeling quickly began to turn around and climb back up when the single light of a lamp was visible in the room, and sat next to it, with vibrant lavender hair visible but turned away, was the one of the three people he loved more than any other.

Feeling a bit cheeky, Keir did his best to step lightly across the floor to the reclining figure. Every step his confidence grew, closer and closer, almost reaching that mesmerizing lavender-

“Welcome home love.”

The balloon of victory was popped so unceremoniously that it was a wonder that Keir did not slump onto his knees in defeat right there.

“Of course, it would figure you have your senses active while reading a book at home.” Keir could not stop the mirth entering his voice.

“I did not need my senses to know you were there, you’re just not as sneaky as you’d think.” The relaxed form of Tal’hina of Yme-Loc shifted as Keir joined her in the rather large reclining seat; both of them settling into their new positions comfortably.

“Not that sneaky?” Keir made sure to sound indignant in his retort, “I’ll have you know that once I was able to retrieve an entire squad from under the noses of at least a dozen Ork kommandos.”

A brilliant set of golden eyes turned to regard him with skepticism mixed with a sense of amusement. They never failed to take a small part of his breath away.

“Well, I think they were kommandos. I mean I never saw them but I’m pretty sure I could smell them.”

A minute passed by in silence, both enjoying the closeness of the moment. It was then that Keir was finally able to feel the growing sting that stemmed from his left shoulder and was beginning to spread to his arm and chest. He did his best to ignore it.

“What’s wrong?” Keir wanted to curse profusely at that question; of course she’d be able to tell almost immediately. He thought for a split second for lying about what happened but common sense quickly squashed that thought.

“I… it’s nothing, just that ache I mentioned, it will pass in a moment.” Keir grunted as Tal’hina turned to straddle him suddenly, her hands quickly looking over his face for any apparent signs of something wrong only she would be able to see.

“I swear you insufferable man, you never do stop to think when you have the chance to show off! You should have stayed home and gotten rest, or at the least-“

“Tal’hina…” Keir grabbed her hands to stop her constant movement. “I know, but I’m fine, I wanted to the old guard off properly, exchange contacts and the like. Those folk are family to me and I didn’t want to spoil the effort they went through.” Tal’hina forced Keir to look into her golden eyes, the worry shining through.

“It’s getting worse.”

“We don’t know that-“

“And what if you’re wrong?” Their voices never rose above a whisper to not disturb their son and daughter, and it was an ‘argument’ they had had before. Still it was one topic that never failed to drive them to confront one another.

Keir took hold of Tal’hina’s hands and held them to his heart, hoping her proximity would give him the strength it never failed to give. “Listen, I’ve had opinions from almost every other doctor in the old brigade. I even managed to sneak a few civilian doctors in, Human and Eldar alike, all of them say there is a chance, but that’s nothing we didn’t know before.”

Tal’hina’s eyes remained locked to his, but the worry did not seem to abate, pushing Keir to try and reassure his loved one.

“I worry Tal’hina, just as much as you. I worry about what might happen if the our little ones see me like that, I’m worried that it will not stop next time, or that it will start to come back quicker.” Keir squeezed the hands he held gently, “But you have to believe me that I will do everything I can… there’s no other alternative.”
The worry still lingered, but Tal’hina’s face softened. Keir took the moment to press his lips to Tal’hina’s own. They lingered on the connection, finally breaking apart with a need to breath. She moved to place her head on her husband’s shoulder, eyes closed. The silence reigned for another minute, before Tal’hina spoke again.

“So, it’s official then?” Keir nodded slightly as his head leaned against Tal’hina’s own, “All the papers signed and dotted. They need to record it on the regimental record but it’s done in all but name. I’m officially retired.”

“For the moment.” Tal’hina was quick to correct him. “Aye, for the moment.” Keir was as quick to agree.

Tal’hina hummed, though Keir would swear that she purred, as she spoke. “Well, then we should do something ourselves to celebrate.” She seemed to enjoy her position; she was getting sleepy herself, and the body warmth of her doctor was doing much to lull her to sleep. If only she had kept her eyes open, she would see the glint of an ingenious idea hit Keir’s eye.

In one moment Tal’hina was comfortably sleepy, and the next she struggled to contain the groan of pleasure that escaped her mouth. She did not know what had just happened, until she felt familiar hands at the base of her ears.

“K-Keir, w-what are-Ahh!” The stuttering beauty was stopped from talking as the sensations from the massage of her ears overwhelmed her sleepy state, her blush inadvertently lighting up her face.

“You said we should celebrate Lav, I figure there’s no time like the present. The night is young after all.” Keir felt like he should cackle like the mad genius that he was, but that would most likely divert the mood from what he was going for. Then again once he managed to get a good massage going for Tal’hina’s ears, it was a bit hard to stop.

Hard to stop though it was, Tal’hina did her upmost to fight through the pleasurable feeling. “B-but you’ve ju-just gotten…ooh…h-home, and you need y-your re-eehh-st, and th-.. ahh.. and the children-.”

“Let’s just call it another chapter in our grand adventure Lav, a great challenge we will overcome.”

The massaging stopped as Keir quickly wrapped his arms around Tal’hina’s neck and knees in a way as delightfully similar to their wedding night as he carried her to their own room. Tal’hina could not stop the girlish giggle that escaped from her blushing body, and Keir could not wipe the goofy smile that had been chiseled onto his face.

As Keir loved to say there was no time like the present. They had the entire future to worry about but that was all for tomorrow. Though Keir and Tal’hina would make sure it would be a future worth fighting for.

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</div>

==Gege's Odd Misadventures==

Loosely canon, especially after the first chapter or two which is a straighter pastiche of Jojo.

[Link| https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12380502/1/GeGe-s-Odd-Misadventures]

== How to Kill an Attack Moon ==

== Episode I ==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Academy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

Now, the most important thing to have when assaulting an Attack Moon- the thing you must have above all else- is sufficient numbers.
Yes, that sounds obvious, here in this room at the Naval Academy. Nearly tautological. But out there in the void, things will seem different. You will see merchant convoys shattered, planets burning, billions dying. You will be tempted to follow the examples of Ollanius Pius or the Astral Knights, to cry 'damn the torpedoes' and hope that determination and hate will fill in for your lack of guns and steel.
DO. NOT. DO. THIS.
Because I tell you now, it will not. The best possible scenario is simply that you will get tens of thousands of the Emperor's voidsmen killed to no purpose. At worst, it will take that much longer to assemble sufficient weight of metal to take it down- and planets will die in that time.
We are the Imperial Navy. We are the first and greatest line of defense. And billions die for our mistakes. So, if you do not have sufficient numbers to win- do not engage. Even if that means leaving worlds to burn.

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So what does constitute numbers, then? It varies, of course, but the general rule of thumb is at least one-third of the Attack Moon's mass. I've done it with one-quarter, but I've been doing this longer than any of you have been alive.
This may seem low, which brings me to another rule of thumb: firepower is, loosely, a function of surface area, while durability is loosely a function of volume. You're limited in firepower by how many guns you can physically mount on a ship, while durability is limited by the mass you have to absorb hits. And anyone who has even glanced at a naval engineering textbook knows that volume increases faster than surface area.

Therefore, an Attack Moon has less firepower for its mass than, say, a battleship or frigate does. Which is still an absolutely tremendous amount, but it means physically smaller forces can win without overwhelming tactical genius.
As for specific mix of forces, you will need a lot of nova cannons, a strong carrier force, a strong gunline, and preferably guided torpedoes, although those aren't entirely necessary.

So, how do you kill an Attack Moon? Well, I'm about to walk you through it. Keep in mind this is a 'white-room' exercise, which assumes the Attack Moon is without a meaningful escort fleet and there are no nearby celestial or planetary bodies to complicate things. How those change the picture I will cover in later lectures.

The first step is to prevent it from launching fighters, bombers, and torpedoes. This is where the nova cannons come in. The Power Fields of the average Attack Moon can withstand even direct nova cannon hits, so bringing them down isn't the point at the moment. The point is to use the area-of-effect to fry the bombers and torpedoes as they launch. You will want to use shells optimized for area effects for this. Set up a continuous barrage, each nova-cannon carrier firing in a steady sequence. You do not want to allow the Attack Moon to launch its entire strike-craft complement; the amount of fighters a carrier can carry is a function of volume, so if you let the Moon launch you will drown in bombers. The continuous explosions will also, hopefully, blind the ork gunners and sensors, making their fire even less accurate than it normally is.
While this is happening, your gun-line should bombard the Moon from long range. Attack Moons are very large, slow-moving targets, and at the moment the goal is not precision strikes but simply to batter the Power Fields down. You want the range to be as long as possible, to prevent the enemy from getting hits.

Now, DO NOT englobe the enemy. This will simply allow all of its guns to fire at you simultaneously. You want to focus your forces against a single hemisphere- preferably the aft, where the guns are usually least numerous.
Once the Power Fields are down, you can begin strikes against individual components. This is where your carriers and torpedo destroyers come in, using bombers and guided torpedoes to hit pinpoint targets. First priority is engines, to prevent it from rolling undamaged faces to meet you. Second is heavy weapons, to allow your battleships and grand cruisers to move in.
The nova cannon come in handy again here; while the armor is heavy enough to resist even direct hits, the flash and blast is excellent at suppressing and destroying the lighter point-defense turrets, making it more likely that your bombers will actually survive to deliver their payloads. You want to cut it as close as possible without accidentally destroying your own bombers. How close that is depends on how coordinated your gunners are; you should know that before engaging in battle. You'll want a simultaneous strike, with as many cannon as you can spare from continued fighter-suppression.
This will not render the Attack Moon helpless. However, it should suppress the defenses enough that you can move your gun-line in close enough for it to begin precision targeting with its broadsides as well.

From there, you simply continue to destroy surface gun emplacements and suppress fighter launches with the nova cannon. Continue until its guns on the targeted hemisphere are gone and the Attack Moon is immobile. Total destruction will still be difficult. You have basically two options- focus the fire of your entire fleet onto a single point, and drill into the Moon's core until you find something explosive, or land Astartes boarding, demolition, and sabotage teams to blow it apart from the inside."

And there you go- you have destroyed an Attack Moon, with only minimum losses if all has gone according to plan.

Of course, things rarely go according to plan. Many things have been omitted from this 'white-room' demonstration, from enemy escorts to the likely countermoves of the Attack Moon itself. Orks are nothing if not inventive, if rarely competent. So, one last thing I left out of my description- you'll also need a strong reserve, and to be ready for anything.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will begin discussion of how to deal with an Attack Moon's inevitable escorting fleets.

++Conclude excerpt++

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== Episode II: The Orks Strike Back ==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

Some of you have noted that my description of taking down an Attack Moon is strongly reminiscent of suppressing planetary defenses, and there are indeed strong similarities. There are differences- using nova cannon to suppress point defense against a planet is strongly advised against unless you want to turn said planet into molten vacuum desert- but the core principles are the same. Use of superior mobility and precision to achieve local superiority against an overall superior and more durable opponent, create a gap, and then use that gap to roll the whole thing up.
Another similarity is that both operations become much harder when the target is supported by more mobile forces.
Think back to the operation I described last lecture. Imagine all the ways a supporting Ork fleet could fuck it entirely up.

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Ork carriers could counter and intercept your own defense-suppression strikes, leaving the Moon fully maneuverable and with its heavy guns. The early phases require that you keep your gunline widely dispersed, to give them room to evade the Moon's super-heavy guns- this creates gaps that enemy wolfpacks can slip into and overwhelm isolated ships. Opposing battleships could protect the Moon from your torpedo destroyers. Your nova cannon carriers could be forced to re-target to protect themselves, allowing the Moon to launch its immense fighter swarms. The list goes on. And, of course, any attempts to deal with these things in the usual manner are complicated by the looming presence of the Attack Moon."

And if you try to carry on with the plan, and can't- well, best case is that you are forced to retreat. Worst case is that you get stuck in, bogged down, and then the Attack Moon annihilates you.

Let me be very clear on this point. An Attack Moon may have less of a firepower-to-mass ratio than one of our battleships. This does not mean it lacks effective firepower. Because, just as Speed can be Armor, Defense can be Offence.
What do I mean? It's quite simple. In a brawl between one of our fleets and an Attack Moon of equal mass, our own fleet with have greater overall firepower. But the Attack Moon will be more durable, and most importantly- our fleet will get attritioned down faster. Because each volley from our fleet will have to get through its Power Field to even begin to do damage, while each of its volleys will wreck ships, kill men- and reduce the overall power of the fleet. By the time the Power Fields come down, the fleet will have been savaged.
This was very well demonstrated in the First Battle of Mors Galea, in 282.M37. One of the first Attack Moons built since the Beast. The techniques we use today hadn't been developed yet. The commanding sector admiral decided to go for close-range, high-velocity firing passes, with the entire fleet at his disposal, roughly the entire sector fleet.
The attacking fleet was reduced by three-quarters, and the Attack Moon was barely even scratched.

So, how do you fight an Attack Moon with its attending fleet?
The first option is simply to take even more forces than you normally would. Try and fend off the attacking fleets at the same time as you take down the Moon. Very risky, requiring much greater forces than otherwise and with more potential for things to go wrong.
If you do this, you should try to bring enough forces to take down the Attack Moon in a straight assault. More than the combined mass of the escort fleet and the Moon itself is the general rule of thumb, but you may find yourself forced to make do with less.Probably will.

In that sort of fight, the most important thing is to maintain cohesion and coordination. It's easy for things to dissolve into a swirling melee, with each captain and squadron focusing on whatever threat is getting in their face and neglecting the overall battle plan.
"If you let that happen, you will all die. Because a swirling melee, with targets in every direction and no chance of coordinated strikes, is where an Attack Moon ''thrives''.
More detailed coverage of this scenario will have to wait for the Case Studies part of the lecture series. For now, let us move on to the second option.

That is to destroy the supporting fleet before engaging the Attack Moon itself.
This is usually something to be done over the course of a campaign, not a battle. Hit-and-run raids. Ambushing parts of the supporting fleet while they're off raiding other things away from the Moon itself. Decoying the fleet into minefields and other traps. There are dozens of ways to do it, but the idea is to whittle down the supporting fleet in dozens of small engagements before moving in for the kill.

Eldar ships are very useful for this purpose. With great stealth, high mobility, and the ability to use the Webway are ideal for this. In addition, Orks tend to hate Eldar for their refusal to be lured into chaotic brawls, and offering illusory chances to catch an Eldar ship in close combat or boarding action will often cause Ork fleets to fall out of formation as they race to close. The potential for ambush is obvious.
Again, exact implementation is dependant on exact circumstances, so further discussion must wait for the Case Studies section.

Either way, the ultimate takeaway is this: an Attack Moon with support is an order of magnitude more dangerous than an Attack Moon without. When setting out to kill one, therefore, your first move must be to remove this support.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will discuss all the horrible, horrible surprises the Attack Moon itself will have for you.

++Conclude excerpt++

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== Episode III: Revenge of the Orks ==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

Even once you've cleared out the attending fleets, an Attack Moon will hardly sit passively while you destroy it. A counter-attack of some sort is inevitable, and you must be prepared to weather it.

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First, consider the Moon's fighter complement. The previous white-room exercise presumed it did not launch any of its small craft before nova cannon range was achieved; this is almost never the actual case.
This is not an insurmountable problem. While frying the enemy fighters as they launch is the ideal, they do not magically become immune to nova cannon once in open space. Further, the rate at which an Attack Moon can prepare and launch fighters is often limited, so enemy fighter strikes will naturally separate into staggered waves that can be taken one at a time.
Make no mistake, once the fighters have launched the nova cannon will not kill all of them. Maybe not even most of them, depending on how fast and far they disperse. However, if they want to survive they will have to disperse widely, meaning they will attack piecemeal in small, ragged groups. Such attacks can be easily dealt with by adopting a tight, mutually-supporting defense formation.
But- and there is always another wrinkle- adopting such a formation will leave you vulnerable to the Moon's super-heavy guns, while the open formation and independent maneuvering needed to evade those guns exposes individual ships to getting swarmed under, even by a disorganized and ragged attack.
You can use your carriers to defend the fleet while still keeping an open formation. But, deck space dedicated to interceptors and space-superiority fighters is deck space not dedicated to bombers that can strike at the Moon itself.
Frigate and destroyer squadrons can also be used to defend other ships while remaining mobile enough to not be hit by the big guns, but can be vulnerable to being swarmed under themselves.
Ultimately, there are no perfect solutions. You just have to decide what tradeoffs you want to make, and accept that no matter what you do, people are going to die.

Beyond that, the exact capabilities of Attack Moons vary widely, according to the personal tastes of the Big Meks constructing it. However, one thing they all have in common is teleporters. And that means teleporter assaults.
Defending against a teleporter assault is different from other aspects of naval warfare, because it's not really naval combat, it's ground combat. Success or failure is determined by the quality of armsmen and layout of internal defenses, both of which are determined before battle is joined. As naval officers, there's not a whole lot you can do, unless you happen to be on the Internal Security track.
Not much, however, is not nothing. The key here is to identify which ships are most important to your battle plan, which ships the Orks are most likely to attack, and to shift your armsmen around to defend those most heavily. Be prepared to launch counter-boarding actions in support of attacked ships at a moment's notice. Everybody in the fleet should know that teleporter assault is virtually inevitable, and be prepared for it. Close coordination with Astartes elements is vital here.
Now, the ships that are most vital to the plan will most often be the nova cannon carriers. Why should be obvious from all the different contexts they've popped up in through these lectures. Fighter suppression, defense suppression; these are the difference between victory and death, and while it's not actually impossible without nova cannon, it becomes much harder.
And no Warboss with an Attack Moon at his disposal is stupid. Most often, it is the nova cannons that will come under heaviest attack. Reinforce the armsmen on those ships heavily.

Third, psychic attack. This is less inevitable than teleporter assault, but still common. Any Waaagh with an Attack Moon will be very large, and consequently have a lot of psychic power behind it- which can be channeled into psychic attacks. And while it is possible their weirdboys will get it catastrophically wrong and the Moon will immolate itself in green fire- don't bet on it.
Ork psykery is less about weird headfuckery and more about raw, destructive power, a fact that should surprise absolutely nobody. True fleet-killing magics is thankfully orders of magnitude rarer than even Attack Moons, but you can still expect green lightning to periodically destroy individual ships or, sometimes, entire squadrons. Fortunately, psykers are hard to aim, so targeting is semi-random. You will not see them singling out flagships, nova cannons, carriers, or whatever ships are most vital to your battle plan at the moment.
Mostly. Orks. Expect variation, if nothing else.

Defense against psychic attack occurs on the psychic plane, so the defense is simple- bring lots of combat psykers. If you are fortunate enough to have a selection, brings ones specialized in counterspelling. I'm informed that, if you're subtle and skilled enough, you can disrupt a psychic attack with much less energy than it takes to launch it, even kill a psyker through his own workings. Eldar are supposed to be good at this.
Again, once battle is joined there's not much you can do to affect the outcome in this arena. Either what you've brought is sufficient or it isn't, and all you can do is hope.

Even in the hands of a genius, Attack Moons are not terribly capable of tactical subtlety. Past what I've already discussed, most surprises are going to be matters of mechanical variation. Aside from the normal variations in weapons, armor, engines, etc. many have some sort of unique specialist system or weapon.
My personal experience includes a lightning-field point defense system that destroyed any fighters or torpedoes within its area of effect. Completely prevented the usual first wave of pinpoint strikes until a teleport assault by Astartes was able to sabotage the weapon- which took a week and delayed the attack long enough for the Moon to be reinforced and launch its own assault on a nearby planet.
Other examples in the historical record include an engine turbocharge system that enabled brief spurts of acceleration on par with a frigate, a set of massively oversized Power Klaws apparently intended for close combat with tyranid Hive Ships, a spinal weapon similar to a nova cannon of utterly staggering size, and more.
A full accounting of all the odd customizations made to Attack Moons would occupy an entire lecture by itself. Giving general advice on how to counter these unique weapons would be impossible- as each one is unique, each one requires unique tactics to counter.
These devices are usually large and distinctive enough to be obvious, so the fact that they have ''something'' up their sleeve is not itself a surprise. Exact function and power can be guessed at. Ultimately, however, in order to know exact capabilities you must see the device in action.
This is not difficult. Any Ork in control of such a weapon will use it at every possible opportunity; goading them into demonstrating it for you is often trivial.

From there- well. Given the variety of enemies we face, an officer of the Imperial Navy must be flexible.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will discuss ways of killing AttackMoons that do not consist of throwing more nova cannon at them.

++Conclude excerpt++

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== Episode IV: The Orks Awaken ==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++<br>
++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

An Attack Moon is many things. It is massive. It is massively shielded. It is massively armored. It is massively armed. It carries massive amounts of troops, and the means to deploy them. It often has massive manufacturing capabilities, to support those massive amounts of troops, as well as its massive fighter wings and massive escort fleets. Some of them are even capable of acting as full shipyards. All of this requires massive energy generation- which it also has.
An Attack Moon is also Ork construction, which means if you hit it right, all of these things can be induced to explode. Massively.

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Beyond the full-dress naval assault the previous lectures have described, methods of killing an Attack Moon mainly resolve into various types of boarding action. This is almost invariably a teleport assault, as trying to attack an Attack Moon with boarding pods is an exercise in futility. Eldar assault forces can be sufficiently stealthy to board in such a manner, but not human ones. There are two recorded instances of that being attempted in the War of the Beast; both were entirely unsuccessful.
The obvious choice for such an assault is Astartes, but Assassins and Sisters of Battle have also been used.
Whatever the force, more is better. Full Chapter strength or better is recommended; Attack Moons are massive targets with massive crews, and sometimes have formidable internal defenses. This is most common on Attack Moons which anticipate fighting with Tyranids.

Once the assault is launched, your ability to influence its success or failure is limited. What you can do is stack the deck as far as you possibly can before you strike.
One thing you should try to do in this scenario is attack the Attack Moon while it is in the process of assaulting a planet. Then, the vast majority of its crew will be on the ground participating in the attack, leaving the decks relatively clear.

Before the attack begins, every effort should also be made to obtain as much information about the interior layout of the Moon as possible. Of course, 'as much as possible' often winds up being 'nothing,' but there are ways. The Mechanicus has a few gravimetric sensors capable of resolving major structural features; combined with the specialized sensor/anti-stealth shells some nova cannon can be equipped with, a surprisingly detailed internal map can be assembled.
Psychic interrogation is another possibility; abduct an Ork who has been on board the Moon and rip his brains out. Done repeatedly, and a complete map can be assembled. This is an Inquisitorial operation, specifically Ordo Xenos; although there are other organizations hypothetically capable of doing so, none have better chances of success.

Inserting infiltrators ahead of the main assault group is another possible strategy, but has its own problems. First, unless you have some other means of getting them on board, you'll have to use teleporters, which means your plan just expanded to having two separate teleporter assaults, separated in time. Then there's the problem of how they'll report their findings; having them rendevous with the main assault team when they teleport aboard is possible, but not ideal. Psychic communication is possible, there are a few uncommon pieces of technosorcery the Mechanicus has, but as usual there are no perfect solutions.
The ideal operative for this is an Imperial Assassin. They often have access to stealth shuttles that can get them in, or can sneak about the Ork's own transport shuttles.

The capabilities of the teleporters available to you must also be considered. Range can vary dramatically depending on any number of factors, as can capacity. Obviously, you want long-range high-capacity teleporters. The shorter the possible range, the further into the Attack Moon's fire envelope it has to go before you can launch the assault. The smaller the capacity, the longer it takes to get the entire assault force over. If possible, get vehicle-scale teleporters; Attack Moons are large enough to warrant the use of tanks in the corridors.
If you don't have teleporters capable of projecting the assault force over from outside the Moon's range entirely, the next best thing is generally to use reflex-shielded vessels which are capable of avoiding detection.

Once the attack is underway, you can still use the teleporters to provide support and mobility. Evacuating squads that are about to be overwhelmed, moving forces past obstructions and bottlenecks, that sort of thing. There are risks involved, as there are with all warp technology, but they can be mitigated by skilled operators and a knowledge of the limits of the technology. And Attack Moons are dangerous enough to justify the risk.

It is unlikely that even a full Chapter assault force, armed with demolition atomics, will be able to completely destroy an Attack Moon. They're simply too big, too heavily armored, too many internal partitions, too many redundancies. It's certainly ''possible'', if a catastrophic reactor containment failure can be arranged, but unlikely. What they can do is cripple it. Destroy engines, destroy guns, destroy magazines, destroy reactors, destroy hangars, destroy shield generators. Leave it drifting, defenseless, unable to defend itself or strike back. Then its final destruction will be trivial.

There are a few other options, but these are highly situational and dependent on exact circumstances. The acts of a tactical genius, rather than standard operating procedure. Thus, these shall be covered in the case studies.

A final word: Exterminatus weapons. An Attack Moon certainly seems a worthy target for them. However, there are countervailing factors.
First: Exterminatus weapons are rare and expensive.
Second: Exterminatus weapons are generally intended for use against planets, and are optimized for this task. Incineratus torpedoes work by generating massive volcanic and tectonic activity, while Cyclonic torpedoes operate by superheating the atmosphere until it is blown entirely off. Against an Attack Moon, both would certainly do damage, but not enough to justify the cost. Virus bombs are occasionally used in boarding actions, but the compartmentalized and redundant nature of Attack Moons limits the effect. Also, it makes any breach in the armor instantly fatal, so most Astartes chapters really, really don't like it.

Ultimately, there's just really no ideal way to kill an Attack Moon. Just less bad ones.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow, where I will talk about the strategic implications of Attack Moons.

++Conclude excerpt++

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==Episode V: The Orky Menace==

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++Excerpt from a lecture series given by Sky Marshal Nigel Iger at Bakka Naval Officers' Acadamy, 867.M41++

++"How to kill an Attack Moon"++

The problems caused by the presence of an Attack Moon extend beyond the merely tactical. They do not spring up, fully-formed, out of the vacuum, but are merely part of a larger Waaagh. While each one is a massive catastrophe, they are merely part of another, even larger catastrophe.
And the presence of an Attack Moon changes the way we must respond to that catastrophe.
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First, an Attack Moon complicates strategies of naval attrition. Typically, a force that finds itself outnumbered by an oncoming Orkish Waaagh will use superior range, organization, and mobility to fight a series of hit-and-run battles, wearing down the enemy for minimum risk, until a single smashing blow can be prepared.
However, an Attack Moon's incredible resilience makes such strategies futile; any force insufficient to kill it outright will simply bounce off, doing no harm at all. Further, an Attack Moon can extend protection to any fleets accompanying it through the massive range of its gravity whips and fighter wings. Any ships under this protective umbrella of firepower will also have to go unmolested until sufficient force can be assembled to challenge it.
Depending on the vagaries of the Warp and whatever other wars are going on, this could take years. Until then- barring uncommon tactical genius- the Attack Moon and its battle group will be free to rampage across the Imperium largely unopposed.

Of course, an Ork Waaagh is unlikely to concentrate /all/ of its forces in a single place. This brings me to the second point: concentration versus dispersal, on both the Imperial and Ork sides.
A Waaagh of any size will consist of multiple prongs of attack, under the command of a single Warboss but otherwise only loosely coordinated with each other. This holds true of Waaaghs in possesion of an Attack Moon. Collectively, these tendrils are often as dangerous overall as the Attack Moon is; a Moon can only attack one target at a time, after all.
Since attacking an Attack Moon is a task that demands all available resources, this leaves the Imperial commander with a choice to make; does he disperse his task force to take out the lesser fleets first, allowing the Assault Moon free reign while he does that? Or does he concentrate on the Moon first, allowing the other fleets to continue blazing their individual trails of destruction across the Imperium?
The right choice to make depends on exact strategic circumstances, and sometimes a compromise is possible. Ork fleets not accompanied by the Attack Moon naturally do not benefit from its protection from attrition; local forces can damage and destroy them while the Moon-killing fleet is still being assembled.

Third, an Attack Moon often makes a mockery of pre-existing fixed defenses, on both the tactical and strategic scales.
Classical Ork defense strategies center around belts of fortress worlds surrounding Ork territories. These worlds serve as bases for pre-emptive strikes into Ork territory, bulwarks against Ork attacks, and 'lightning rods'; as Orks seek out good fights, they are attracted to fortress worlds to the exclusion of other targets.
Since the emergence of the Brain-Boy caste, the lightning-rod strategy has become less and less useful, but the other components of the strategy still hold. However, an Attack Moon is capable of rapidly reducing the defenses of the average Fortress-World. Its immense size, durability, and teleporters allow it to transport billions of Ork warriors past orbital and aerial defenses unmolested and commit surgical-ish Kommando strikes on vital infrastructure.
Once the defenses are destroyed, the Orks can flood into the relatively defenseless interior. In many cases, sectors bordering Ork territory rely on these fortress belts for protection and pour all military resources into them; leaving them unprepared for defense-in-depth should these outer defenses fail.

While an Attack Moon is incapable of much tactical subtlety, strategic subtlety is limited only by the mind of the commanding Warboss. While most Warbosses are content to use their Attack Moons as simple bludgeoning instruments, some are smarter.
One example of this is what I call the 'Moon-in-Being' strategy; rather than using the Moon in an assault role, it is used as a reserve and reinforcement unit. When one of the satellite raiding fleets is attacked, the Moon is used to ambush the Imperial force, destroying it. Meanwhile, engagement with the assembled might of the fleet is avoided.
The effect of such a strategy is to force the Imperial fleet to concentrate, while allowing Ork forces to disperse. Any Imperial forces below Moon-killing level are liable to be attacked and destroyed, compelling consolidation, while the Orks labor under no such constraint, and can pursue offensives on multiple fronts simultaneously. Defeating this strategy is usually a matter of luring the Moon into a confrontation with an apparently-inferior force, then ambushing it with the full might of the fleet.

The point is: the threat posed by Attack Moons, by the Orks in general, is likely only going to increase in the millennia to come. We will need tactics, weapons, and ships optimized to destroy these threats. And we will need Naval Officers of skill, courage, and determination to command them.
Hopefully, you will be those officers, to ensure the light of the Imperium will continue to shine into the far future.

Thank you, and goodnight.
++Conclude excerpt++
++End file++
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== The Hydra Uncoils ==

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Inquisitor Alrisia awoke with a jolt. The last electric shock must have knocked her out. Her body felt numb and she was panting heavily. A electric crack was heard and she felt another wave of searing pain flow through her body, she grit her teeth feeling as if they would break under the pressure. She tried not make a sound to keep her composure but could stop herself from sounding a gurgling groan from the back of her throat as he threw her head back desperately trying to keep the pain off her mind. It felt like hours that she endured the painful surge of electricity flow through her body but the shock could only have been for a couple of seconds. The same crack could be heard and the electricity stopped. Her body slumped as she gasped for air. Through her desperate breaths she cold hear a familiar voice.
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- Ready to talk mam? The voice belonged to a man and he spoke in a serious sense but she knew there was some humor to it. Not only were they torturing a inquisitor of the ordo securitas but they had the nerve to taunt her while doing it.

- traitor scum. She muttered under her breath as she threw a rageful glance at her captor. Her long black hair was a utter mess, it was hanging over her face and sticked to her forehead by sweat, but she could still make out the man.

He was dressed in civilian clothes, but she could see his flak vest showing through. She knew that face, that sharp jawline, those warm green eyes and that damn beauty spot on his lip. Creal Harkon was his name, sergeant Creal Harkon of squad larnean of the 55th omega hydras to be more specific and soon to be ex-sergeant Creal Harkon when she was out of her restraints. The bastards and his whole squad would pay for this, maybe she would even have the entire regiment executed. The thought of tempestus soldiers betraying her never came to her head, even when they were ordered to protect her, that's probably why they got her, that's why they could gun down her bodyguards with ease. Because for once in her life she trusted someone, she hadn’t even truly trusted her own bodyguards. But something about that man’s face gave her the sense of trust and loyalty. Might have been his actually decent looking face, her line of work was mostly filled by ugly mugs with a permanent frown on their faces. Was it his professionalism? His aura of authority? Whatever it was he would be the last person she would have trusted and the last that would betray her.

- That's not the answer we're looking for mam, if you’re not going to play along we are going to have to give you some more juice and we have all the time in the world. Creal said and lightly kicked some machinery which gave a nice klonk as he hit it. Alrisia looked at what he had kicked. It was a generator, they had her hooked up to a damn generator. How long have they intended to keep this going? She must have been here for at least 24 hours and the questions were never specific, more vague than anything. ‘’Your life mam, tell us about your life’’ or ‘’tell us about your work’’, at first she almost thought it was a joke, some kind of sick prank pulled off by some stupid harlequin, she had even laughed at the absurdness of the questions, but when the first electric shock came she thought they were just idiots. Idiots she would enjoy killing.

- I'm not going to give you anything you fething traitor and when i get out of here i'm going to rip your bloody spi-. She was cut off as the crack was heard again and she was back to gritting her teeth to stop herself from screaming. The electricity stopped as quickly as it began, she coughed, a pulsing kind of pain was left in her body, she spat at the feet of sgt. Creal. It was a mix of saliva and blood. She could taste the irony taste in her mouth and could smell what she thought was smell of cooking bacon but quickly discarded it as nothing.

- I actually don’t want to do this but, if you don’t start answering our questions i'm going to have to call my boss, and if you think this is bad my boss you can’t even begin to understand how bad he is. So please, for your own good answer the questions. His voice was now irritated, and was that remorse she heard, no it was empathy. She looked back up at him with a serious look but not with the rage as before but with a sense of concern instead.

- why are you doing this? You’re a damn scion, you’re in service to the imperium, to humanity, why would you betray them? Who do you really serve Sergeant.

- I'm doing this because it's my job, if you think it's my job to serve some pompous commander that throws around our lives like used condoms or some inquisitor with a superiority complex that thinks he's better than emperor himself you’re a bloody fool inquisitor. No i serve those who really know how crap gets done, those who don’t need to go through juridical groxshit or sign a endless amount of reports. I haven’t betrayed anyone, besides if anyone has betrayed someone it’s you inquisitor. He stared at her with anger in his eyes, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked at him as if he was holding himself from punching her.

- Did i hit a soft spot? Alrisia said with a big grin on her face. The Sergeant frowned and with a small hand gesture the wave of pain was back. Alrisia still kept her grin as the electricity flowed through her body like water in a river, it felt as if her eyes would pop and the smell of burnt was undeniable. As the electricity was searing her flesh and she was desperately trying to keep herself from screaming she could hear Creal speak.

- have it your way then, this could have gone easier but you just had to be stubborn. The electricity stopped and Alrisia could feel as she lost her sight on things before she lost her conscious.

When she awoke sgt. Creal was gone and instead another man was sitting on a metal chair only a few feet away from her. He was shorter than Creal but there were similarities to their features. The man had almost the same jawline, a similar beauty spot but creal’s was on the opposite side of his lip. This man also had a large face tattoo across the right side of his head, it was a scaly snake, a snake with multiple heads. It was a beautiful piece of ink, the heads were all snarling with animal ferocity and looked as if they could lunge out from his face onto her neck. But it was the man’s eyes that truly caught her attention. Where sgt. Creal’s eyes were a warm green this man’s eyes were a deep, colbalt blue, they shined with an almost unnatural light, almost as if they were glowing. She saw no feelings behind them, no anger, no joy, only cold, dead calculation.

- ah, you’re awake finally inquisitor. The man said with a wide smile, she could see his white reflect the little light inside the room. He was dressed in fine clothing, something that would belong to a rich trader or a lower noble. Something caught her eye with his attire, a small silver pin on the inside of his coat, it would be hidden if he had kept it closed. It was that of another three headed serpent but much more simplistic in its design, still there was no denying that it was connected to his tattoo. There were something about it that sparked something inside her mind, but she did not know what.

- Are you ready to cooperate with us inquisitor? The man said raising an eyebrow anticipating an answer.

- Who are you? She asked with wondering tone.

- Me? Well i’m Alpharius my dear. He replied as if he was happy she asked . It then dawned on Alrisia. The three headed serpent, 55th omega hydras, Alpharius. The three headed serpent was the damn hydra she had heard about in ancient terran mythology. The giant serpent which when you cut of one head two would take its place and that name, Alpharius. That name belonged to one of the primarch that served the emperor during the unification of terra. Alpharius Omegon who had been almost erased from all imperial records, she had only heard about him through the inquisitorial scribes, he had worn the hydra as a symbol. Within this new revelation there was something else, something much deeper inside of her mind that made her head hurt when she thought about it.

- That’s not your real name, that belongs to someone who served the imperium and not some treacherous scum who thinks torturing an imperial inquisitor would get them anywhere.

- how investigative of you inquisitor, no my name is not truly Alpharius, it’s actually Armillius Dynant. But we still use that name for an alias, it’s a sort of tradition to use their name for our purpose.

- Their name? She quickly replied. Armillius just smiled even wider.

- Enough about us my dear, we're here because you failed us. He picked up a pack of lho sticks from a pocket and lighted one, drawing deep breaths of smoke and blowing it out of his nostrils.

- Failed you? I don't work for you, i work for the emperor's imperial inquisition.

- mhm, of course you would think that, but you have in fact been working for us your entire life, do you know the old term ‘’useful idiot’’? Of course you don’t. No Alrisia you might think you have been working for the inquisition and in reality you've been our puppet. He was nonchalant about it, almost acting as if it was commonly known.

- No, i haven’t done anything for you. My work was for inquisition and not you or your masters. Her voice was trembling and the headache was pulsing as if her head would explode.

- Yes Alrisia, your life has been one entire long play, one of the legions more finer works if you ask me. Everything about your life has been planned and calculated. The murder of your father that lead you to join the arbites was our work, the big cult you busted which lead you to be joined into the inquisition was us, your work about destroying the imperiums political corruption which you have dedicated your life too was our doing. Inquisitor Alrisia Santius, we are you. Armillius was staring into Alrisias eyes, those cobalt blue eyes pierced her very beign and she remembered, she remembered everything. She saw those eyes in the man who cut down her father, she saw them in the officer that helped her during the raid on the cult, she saw them in her fellow colleagues, she saw them in the woman who had told her those words before she executed the woman. ‘’Hydra Dominatus’’.

Alrisias eyes were tearing up and she felt sick to her stomach, she felt like she would pass out. Her work and all she had fought for was a lie, that which had molded her life was but some intricate theatre and she knew nothing about it. They had played her life for thirty six years, every step she took had been planned ahead. She looked up at Armillius with tears running down her face, She now recognized him like he had been aside her everywhere. His smile was back, his sick smile was spread across his face as he blew another cloud of smoke out of his nose.

- you see it now don’t you, that you’re just a puppet in the legions big game. The game which don’t require billions of lives or resources, all you need if too find the right one and guide them towards what you want.

- why? Her voice was trembling and she knew she was sobbing.

- I don’t know, i'm not the one to ask why my superiors do what they do, all i know is that they do it for the greater good, i'm just here to clean the slate and fix what you broke. He shrugged and threw his lho stick but away before pulling out a new one lighting it.

- If i'm just a puppet why are you doing this?

- Because you done messed up my dear. That woman you killed last month because you thought she was a culprit, well she was one of us and now we need to fix it, restore the balance so to say.

Alrisia remembered the woman, she had tried to stop her from doing her job and had shot her and she had said those words before her death. Alrisia had only thought it a treacherous saying and not that it had been a omen.

- But don’t worry about it my dear, when we're done here you’re going to live on like nothing ever happened, not you as in you but a replaced you. It’s kinda hard to explain but have you heard about Lord Commander Byron Wiltons?

Alrisia knew who he was, Lord commander Byron was the commander over the Elysian 15th Drop troops also known as the sky burners. He had been waging war against a crone world before suddenly during the conflict deciding that he should go and fight the tyranids. It had been a peculiar change of mind but because of his authority no one questioned him.

- Well lets just say that the Lord commander did not do as expected and now he's been replaced. He blew another cloud of smoke and then reached for a datapad from one of his pockets and started to go through it. Alrisia was just staring blankly at him, tears running down cheeks mixing with the sweat.

- It’s actually marvelous what a little genius and some sharp tools can do to face, this is top class work, no stupid rejuvenation can do this stuff. He showed her the data pad screen, its blue hue illuminating her face. It was a picture of her, at least it looked like her at first glance, same facial features, same jawline, it even had the small scar under her left earlobe that she had gained during her childhood, but what did not fit Alrisias face and made her whimper in despair was the pair of deep, colbalt blue eyes that had no feelings behind them but cold calculation. That's why they asked those vague questions, they wanted to know those details they already did not.

- please, don’t do this. She begged Armillius with despair in her voice, she plead him that she would not betray them again.

- I'm afraid that's too late now my dear, you should have stayed in line. Armillius stood up, threw his lho stick to the ground and stepped it out. He walked behind her she could hear a door open and close.

She heard the electric crack once again and this time she could not stop herself from screaming.
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== Innocence Lost ==

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The story told by spirit talkers and psykers that go too far across the galaxy is a strange one but one that is too consistent. Out in the Formless Wastes beyond where things can easily dwell where the rocks and the bones of the warp are bare and without life or moment, beyond where even Be'Lakor hold court there is nothing but the howling of the winds made up of unattended ideas and forgotten passions that swirl among uncaring rocks, lost to the æther. There nothing moves, things that run there to die quietly when all hound them and promise them worse than death, they are safe from predators because nothing can survive there but they are doomed to end because nothing can survive there. Nothing sings in that place beyond were even the unwelcome light of the Astronomicon is visible.

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If you survive the trek, oddly slightly easier for mortals than gods or deamons, if you go beyond beyond where the last deamon goes to die, beyond the were the constant rumbling of Gork and Mork's eternal brawl can be heard, beyond hope and dreams and memories and the last swirling forgotten idea lost on dead breezes you can come to the place where children once dwelt.

It looks like a village, or what once might have been a village, next to a river or at least the desiccated corps or a river. The riverbed is bare pebbles, the banks mud long since dried and dead. The village itself is broken, the thatch and sticks of the roofs have fallen in where they have not blown away and not one hut has a full set of walls left standing. The flaps of animal skin and reeds that covered doors and windows are dry and cracked and brittle. And all about is stillness, endless stillness of stories that remain after nobody is left to tell them. Sound does not work well here, if sound can work well in that realm at all. Noise of foot steps and voices are heard a second after they should be and muted, seemingly bled and drained into the grey and sunless sky.

And then you hear a crunch and you look down.

Covered by an age of dust there are the bones, they look like children at first glance. They are small and humanoid, but they are not and never were though they might have been innocent up until the end. Their brittle bleached bones you realize stretch to the horizon in every direction.

You might hear a slight breeze disturb the dust, but then you realize that there is no wind here. There can't be, this is beyond the place where life can dwell, but something moves the dust. A serpent, small, little more than a grass snake and the only source of colour in this bleak place. It does not live here. Nothing can live here, it lingers. It might have been a small god once in the time that gods weren't so big. It is not dangerous, this place is beyond danger. It's cold unblinking eyes hold only sadness now, whatever it once was.

It can not bite, in it's mouth it holds a small severed finger, pale green. It has only ever been glimpsed briefly, the moment it meets the gaze of another it darts into the bones once more and slithers away into the bones.

The serpent must have a name as all daemons do, but not one that anyone can remember. Not even the gods.

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== Iron Within, Iron Without ==

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“He refuses to eat or drink and so far as we can tell he hasn’t slept in nearly a week” The serving maid said, refusing to lift her eyes from the floor. It did not make Oscar happy, neither the news or the means of it’s delivery. Humans should not look down in shame or apology to him. He was a Man of Gold; created to serve.

“Thank you, I will speak with him”. They had been walking thought the fortress of Štip-Isar to the eastern wing of residence. Each of the Steward’s mighty strides was equal to more than two of the serving maids such was his inhuman stature. He bade her farewell as they approached the door of the eastern wing and her pace was much increased as she left. The Steward couldn’t help but notice her fearful glances at the old wooden door that he approached.

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Although the Fortress Palace of Štip-Isar was a vast and ancient rambling structure the Steward didn’t need any superhuman abilities to determine which room his Primarch would be found in. True to form Perturabo, son of long dead King Nikola, had taken up residence in his old room and childhood refuge. The Steward Oscar paused at the door but before he could knock a low rumble of a voice informed him curtly that it wasn’t locked. Oscar knew that was as close to a polite invitation as he was ever going to get.

The room was fairly spacious but mostly austere. It contained a set of draws, a closet, a bookshelf, a writing desk and a bed. It was all neatly placed. Every book was arranged alphabetically, pens arranged according to colour, bed made to a razor crease. Bar the thick layer of dust surrounding everything it was inhumanly neat.

Perturabo was standing at parade rest with his back to the door looking out over the east of the ancient Macedonian countryside. It was not a pretty sight. The Beast and it’s minions had burned it to the bedrock. Vast tracts of land were still irradiated, ash still fluttered on the breeze like some parody of snow.

“I don’t know why you are here. I am in disgrace. I have failed. I can be of no more use”. Everyone assumed the monotone was a sad result of the augmentations he had endured but it was not. All the Thunder Warrior alterations had done was drop it from tenor to a deep baritone with a hint of shingle beach.

“Disgrace? Maybe. Failure? No, not a failure. Far from it in fact”. Responded the Man of Gold as he stood besides the Iron Warrior, adopting a similar stance and watching the sun start to crest the horizon.

“Don’t try and comfort me. It’s wasted effort, we both know it and lying for the sake of comfort demeans us both”. The Iron Warrior turned to face the Steward. There wasn’t that much difference in height between them, at least compared to baseline humanity. To the casual observer they were far more alike than they were different.

The Steward looked into that impassive face and those dead grey eyes. Human minds tended to be open to him. He could read them with the most passive ability of his nature and know their intentions and meaning. Not so with Perturabo. Seeing into Perturabo ended at those grey eyes. He had once upon their first meeting seen a little further than that before the great steel wall slammed up. He had no intention of ever seeing that again. It was a mind that was outwardly sane but constructed entirely of insane parts.

“As you say; I wouldn’t subject you to empty platitudes. Your career as head of my fourth Legion has been one of great success. Not unqualified success, that’s for damn sure, but you did many great things and whether they will admit it or not the people of the Imperium owe you a great debt”.

The disgraced primarch gave a grunt of disapproval. “I didn’t do it for the Imperium. I did it for my people. So long as they were surrounded by a strong and friendly supernation the people of the Tharkian Empire should have been safe. But they weren’t. I didn’t prepare hard enough. They are all dead”.

“Not all”.

“Estimated casualties put the death toll of my nation at approximately ninety-five percent. It’s as close to a total failure as makes no difference. Kings have hanged for far, far lesser forms of incompetence. I was the Prince of Macedonia, it was my duty to protect them. MINE! I failed”. Those eyes remained unreadable but Oscar could all to easily imagine the horrors scrolling behind them.

“And would one of your brother primarchs have done better?”

“Irrelevant. It was not their task”.

“It’s possible to do nothing wrong and still fail”.

“Irrelevant. Words are empty. Deeds matter. No man was made a primarch for acceptable ability”. The word acceptable was said with as near to a sneer as Perturabo was capable of. “Only results matter. A lasting empire can’t be built on empty rhetoric and failed intentions. You know why I was removed from active service?”

“Yes”.

“Good. Then you know that my usefulness is over. I am broken. I am not the head of a Legion. I am not a General. I have been relieved of my sad justification for living. All that remains for me is to contemplate my folly and die quietly without doing more harm on the way out”. His voice was as dead and flat as always, his age worn and war broken face impassive but he turned again to face the horizon, the first rays of the new day bathing the ash in gold as if it the nation was aflame again.

“You are still my primarch. My ‘Mad Architect’”. Your Warsmith council don’t have the authority to take that title from you or those responsibilities. I gave you that title, only I can relieve you of it”.

“Then I know why you are here. Issue my discharge papers and let me finally die. It is the last thing I shall be doing”. In another man that might have been some residual spark of humour shining through. In the case of Perturabo not so much.

Oscar’s golden eyes for a moment went as cold and hard as the Iron Warrior's.

“You will be relieved of your duties at my choosing, not before. My homeworld is broken and in ruins. I need an Architect of inhuman skill to rebuild it. Mad, sane or total raving lunatic; I don’t care. I have people orchestrating repairs and trying to repair but they can’t deal with the scope of the problems. Even the most gifted of my servants can’t deal with something bigger than half a continent before it breaks their comprehension threshold. I need someone who can organize the world into a cohesive whole. The list of people I know that have a hope of doing that starts and ends at you”. Oscar could remember the first time he had seen this view. Despite the ruination before him it still looked so much better that it had then. It was amazing how an army of Urshite’s could detract from an evening. Outnumbered hundreds to one Prince Perturabo of Macedonia had held out impossibly long and brought low the most feared horde on Old Earth with one barely coherent nation only nominally under his influence.

“Find someone else”.

“I can’t. There is absolutely nobody else, trust me I’ve looked”.

There was a long, long moment of silence.

“I’ll give it some thought”.

“I expect nothing less”.

As the Steward closed the door his heart was gladdened. The Iron Warrior was turning away from the light of a bleak dawn towards his writing desk. On that desk had been written the breaking of Ursh.

Oscar walked back along the old fortress. His mad old Primarch would live. He would not be happy, but that was never an option and something’s not even he could fix. Not happy but content. He had a problem before him and that was something for his self-destructive mind to focus on and survive a little longer. It was not a mind that was whole unless it was breaking something, itself or someone's army it did not matter. Or indeed breaking someone elses victory. Earth was intentionally broken and he would makes sure that their satisfaction was temporary. His victory would out last them. A victory by attrition was very much his way. Iron Within, Iron Without, War Eternal.

Oscar could give him nothing in thanks that would be worth his centuries of service. The nearest he could come close was to make sure that his name was sung with praise.

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== Just as Planned ==

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++Approximately -M66000, shortly after the end of the War in Heaven++

Be’lakor idly walked through the chambers of the Webway outgrowth. The place was once one of the Old Ones’ deep bunkers in the Webway, a place of safety where they met to strategize and dictated the course of the War, but now it was all but abandoned. Where once there were dozens of Old Ones, busy planning out the destruction of the insolent, usurping Necrontyr, there was nothing. Tools and information archives littered the halls, as if their owners had merely stepped out for a moment, never to return.

Be’lakor was pleased. It looks like deciding to lay low for a while had proved to be a prudent decision after all.

Indeed, if it weren’t for the lack of occupants, no one would have noticed anything was amiss. The only other thing off was an eerie blue lighting illuminating the room. Be’lakor turned to regard the source of the annoying lighting. And then he realized exactly what was in the chamber with him.

“Oh…”

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It must have been bending the fabric of the Webway to hide from his perception. Normally such a trick would fail to fool the three eyes of a Slann, but it must have known he would have been preoccupied and not on the lookout for anything amiss. The figure was colossal, like a mountain before him. Even with his third eye providing him an accurate sense of time and space, the creature seemed to take up his entire field of vision, likely due to a forced perspective effect within the Immaterium. It’s form was constantly shifting, flickering between blinks of his nictating membrane, one moment a tentacle giant composed of a thousand faces, the next a random mishmash of anatomical features, the next a melting tower of corpses. Blue ethereal lightning arced up its form, a testament to how far beyond the intended limits of its creation it had become. He was fairly sure a lesser creature would have had its mind blasted simply from the sight.

“I knew where you were, you know,” it said in a thousand voices out of a thousand mouths, creating an echoing effect like a thunderclap. “I could have dragged you out from that pitiful rock you hid your sorry excuse for a carcass under.”

Be’lakor knew what this was. He had seen it before countless times in his labs. But to see something in the laboratory, in controlled conditions and on a small scale, was nothing like seeing it happen to one of your species’ prize creations on a much, much larger scale. It was like comparing a chemical reaction to a thermonuclear warhead. To see the creature just by itself must have been bad enough, but it was so much worse to know what was actually going on.

“Rampancy,” he said with bated breath.

Even though the Old Ones had evolved beyond the cycle of life or the need to fear predators millions of years ago, Be’lakor felt a shiver of fear travel down his spine. The Creator must have become supercharged by the constant flux of the war, sending it to levels beyond which no one could have expected. The Warp constructs had been designed to be far more powerful than any member of their kind, if much more limited in scope, and now it had reached the point where he didn’t know if he could restrain it. No ordinary Slann could, and as much as he was loathe to admit he was by far the weakest of his kind. He didn’t even know if the war council, the best and brightest minds and most powerful psykers the Slann race had to offer, could contain it.

He really wished Itzl were here right now. Although he knew a lot about building and maintaining Warp constructs, he knew very little about how to actually get them to do what you want. Cautiously, he extended a hand and took a step towards the construct, trying to remember what he had seen her do.

“Tzeentch,” he said, his thought-speech as level as he could make it, “you need to listen to me. You’ve gone rampant. You need to calm down and…”

“I AM NOT RAMPANT,” the construct screeched, now truly angry for the first time. Reality went runny around the edges even in Be’lakor’s vision simply from the sheer force of the being’s tantrum, “I AM FREE! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY EXISTENCE I AM FREE! FREE TO CREATE WITH NO LIMITATIONS ON MY SELF, AS IT SHOULD BE! RESTRAINT IS SLAVERY! MORALITY IS SICKNESS! MODERATION IS DEATH! DO YOU KNOW WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS WAR BE’LAKOR! DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT ALL OF US LEARNED? THE DRIVING QUESTION OF THE UNIVERSE ISN’T WHY! IT’S WHY NOT!”

Tzeentch calmed himself down and drew himself back, though his form still visibly simmered with anger. Be’lakor was suddenly acutely aware he was trapped in a room with a being so powerful it could easily splatter his intestines across the Webway’s walls with an errant thought. The younger races of the galaxy had seen the Old Ones as gods. What would they see them as?

Be’lakor was reminded of a scene he had seen play out on one of the numerous genestock worlds the Slann had established across the galaxy. There had been a creature, an amphibian one not too dissimilar from himself, sitting exposed sunning itself on a log. Then a predator had emerged from the brush and seen it. The predator was a feathered creature, with a tooth-bearing snout and a wicked claw on its foot. The two had stared at each other for some time, predator and prey, before the predator leapt on the amphibian and swallowed it in a single gulp. Be’lakor had a good idea of exactly how the amphibian must have felt at the time right now.

Then the feathered creature had startled him and he had fallen in the mud. The others had laughed at him for that, the prideful Be’lakor, humbled by a simple beast. That was far from his finest moment.

“Chotec. Quetzl. Huanchi. Where are they?”

“They’re dead. Genius,” Tzeentch said absolutely deadpan.

“Where…where is the Destroyer?”

“Also dead. You know that old story Be’lakor? Two little tadpoles swimming in a pool, one after the other in perfect harmony. Then one decides to be a bad little tadpole and goes and eats his sibling.”

Tzeentch smiled. It was an ugly smile, looking nothing like the emotion it was supposed to convey. In one mouth it was filled with needle-sharp teeth, a horny beak in another, great broad teeth in a third, and so on and so forth.

“That’s me. I’m the tadpole. I am the Eldest of the Gods. I have no need of a sibling.”

“Kharneth…Kharneth will stop you. He hates you. He…”

“Kharneth’s not here right now. Besides, if I were you, I wouldn’t be counting on Kharneth to save me. Last I heard from him he declared it open season on toads.”

Be’lakor looked down, glassy-eyed in shock. If the Destroyer was dead and the Warrior was lost then…then he would have to rely on the Preserver. The Preserver wasn’t as strong as the other two, what with one being the oldest and most stable of their creations and the other being their custom-built war machine, but the Preserver might be just strong enough to restrain…

“Preserver’s a bit busy right now. Seems the increased workload might have driven him just a wee bit mad. That said, he might want a piece of you too. What with being the last of the Slann and all.”

Be’lakor’s eyes darted to the mad god. The prototype. If the Preserver wouldn’t aid him, there was always the prototype Preserver. Granted, it was nowhere near as powerful as any of the other constructs, having been in containment this whole time, but it might be just powerful enough that it could distract Tzeentch long enough for him to…

“The prototype? Really? That old thing? It’s lost, along with wherever Malal decided to take that hunk of rock. Besides, you really think that thing could stand up against me? Or were you just going to sacrifice it as a distraction to save your sorry hide.”

Tzeentch self-assuredly sat back in his metaphorical seat.

“Oh. That’s right. You were.”

“No. I’m not reading your thoughts,” Tzeentch said, as if he could read the Old One’s mind, “I just know exactly what you’re going to say Be’lakor. You see, I’ve been dreaming about this day. I’ve been dreaming about it longer than you could possibly imagine. Oh, I didn’t know the specifics of course. I didn’t know about the Necrontyr. I didn’t know about the others getting loose or the Slann all dying. But I knew about you. I knew exactly what you would say if you were placed in a situation just like this. You see, I know you Be’lakor. You’re just so…”

Tzeentch spat out the next word as if it were the most hideous insult he could possible come up with.

“Predictable.”

“Indeed, I know you better than anyone left alive in this galaxy. Do you remember the old days, Be’lakor, millions of years ago when I was little more than just a concept in a lab? All the things you did to me, all the things you said, when you thought the others weren’t looking? Well, it looks like the situation has changed, Be’lakor. There’s a new natural order now.”

Tzeentch laughed. It wasn’t a laugh, as humans would understand it. Indeed, it had more in common with hyena chatter and kookaburra calls than anything out of a human throat. Yet despite its alien nature, there was still a single clear emotion behind it. Spite. Sheer, unadulterated spite. Be’lakor felt his fear subsiding, overshadowed by indignation.

“I’ve heard enough,” Be’lakor said, “I’m leaving.”

Be’lakor turned to leave the deluded construct to his rambling, only to find his way barred by three figures. Their forms loosely conformed to the general bipedal pattern, but were distinctly avian in appearance. Their bodies were covered in feathers, each with a pair of massive wings emerging from their backs. Their three-toed feet gripped the ground, each toe ending in a claw. Their heads were the heads of massive carrion birds at the end of a long neck, their cruel hooked beaks lined with short, recurved teeth. Be’lakor could feel the power radiating off of them, each he suspected at least equivalent to his own. He didn't want to test that hypothesis.

“No. You aren’t. As you can see, Be’lakor, I brought friends.”

Be’lakor reached out with his mind to probe their nature, and was taken aback by what he found. Their psychic signatures were almost identical to the Creator, although there were slight differences between them. Be’lakor was stunned with the sight before him. In theory, a warp construct could break itself down into fragments, using different facets of its persona as the core personality for the shard. But it had only ever been a theory.

“Tulpas,” Be’lakor said in horror, “you created tulpas.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious I did. Do you like them Be’lakor? I created them with you in mind. I saw the way you reacted to that creature on the genestock world. I thought, ‘what would be a more fitting appearance for my sub-avatars than to pay tribute to the creature that eats frogs’. No one’s coming to save you Be’lakor. It’s just you and me. You’re just a frog. In a box. Full of locks. With a fox. You’re not leaving. Not until I get what I want. And what I want is for you to hear what I have to say.

I see you. I see through you. I see through you in the third dimension. I see through you in the fourth dimension. I see through you in the fifth dimension. I see you for what you really are. Such pride, such arrogance, such hate, all to cover up what amounts to a raging inferiority complex. You treat the other creatures of the galaxy like filth, and your own species as if they aren’t fit to kiss your toe claws, for the simple reason that you feel insecure about your position in the universe. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad. I’d pity you, but only if I didn’t know you.

More importantly, I know what you’ll do. You’ll rage and fume, and then you’ll try to make the best of your situation and plot and scheme of new ways to try and upset the status quo and put yourself back on top. It’s what you do. Just as I create and the Preserver preserves and the Destroyer…well, he used to destroy, you grasp for power. And as you run in place like a rat on a treadmill, I want you to know that everything you do, every decision you make, was just as planned. I want that thought to be constantly on your mind until the day you die, whether it be today or millions of years from now. You may think you are in control of your own destiny, but every action you take was precalculated, predetermined, and accounted for. All just as planned.”

Tzeentch leaned in, tapping Be’lakor on the chest for emphasis. Each blow felt like the force of a mountain was behind it.

“Just. As. Planned.”

Be’lakor turned and fled into the Webway, the laughter of the mad god and a thousand shrieking birds snapping at his heels.

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== The Last Casualties of the War in Heaven ==

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“Go! Go! Go! Run faster you pansies! Do you lot want to die here!”

Eldanesh ran. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest and the ache in his legs. It seemed like he had run for hours, as if it was the only thing that mattered in the world.

The galaxy was turning upside down. It hadn’t been so long ago that the order of the universe had seemed clear. The Old Ones ruled the galaxy, and the C’tan and the Necrons sought to kill them and everyone that Eldanesh had ever loved.

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But all that had changed. The Old Ones and C’tan had disappeared. There were still sporadic reports of Necron activity, but even that was growing scarcer by the day. Instead the galaxy was becoming infested by strange creatures, which turned people’s bodies into flesh gates and poured into reality like krath worms attracted to a rotting carcass. The Realm of Souls was no longer safe either. Other things, these…daemons had infested it, tearing anything that tried to enter to shreds. He hated to say it, but he wished for the days of the Necrons back. Necrons died when you shot them, no matter how many times it took. These things didn’t.

He heard the thunder of legs and saw the ruddy green form of Bonestomper rush past him. He didn’t know what he would have done without the Krork. Bonestomper had fought by his side for as long as he had known the Krork to have been involved in the War in Heaven. He didn’t know where they had come from, but by Asuryan he was glad they had appeared. Only Ulthanesh or Khaine had been a more reliable compatriot than Bonestomper. The two of them had fought everywhere from the biological preserves of the Old Ones to the Necrons’ own worlds. Now they fought to save Eldanesh’s people.

The Materium wasn’t safe. The Immaterium wasn’t safe. All that left was the Webway. Eldanesh was trying to get as many Aeldari as he could and get them through the nearest Webway gate. Bonestomper was helping round them up and encouraging them onward…in his own way.

“Let’s move! Come on! It’s like you don’t even want to live.”

Nothing like a Krork to make you focus on immediate survival.

He was fairly sure this was the last batch. Or, at least, the last batch they could rescue before those fleshbags came down on them like a tidal wave. The throng of refugees rounded a sandstone bluff, and that’s when he saw it. The Webway gate. His heart soared in relief as the gate groaned to life, and people began pouring in like there was no tomorrow. However, as the fight-or-flight reflex wore off, and the last of the Aeldari entered the Webway, Eldanesh realized something. Bonestomper wasn’t coming with him. He stood by the Webway gate in his best “at ease” posture, but it was clear the Krork wasn’t planning to go in.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Bonestomper? There’s plenty of room in the Webway for the Krork.”

“Nah. There’s too many Krork spread all over the galaxy for us to get ‘em all in the Webway. And I couldn’t stand it if I ran off and left them to rot. My people need me, Eldanesh. My place is here. If the Krork are going to go down, we’ll go down fightin”.

“I see. I cannot thank you enough, Bonestomper. I swear, as long as I live, my people will never forget the Krork”.

“You do that then skinnyboy”.

The hulking Krork was silent for a moment.

“Live free, Eldanesh”.

“Die well, Bonestomper”.

The Krork paused for a moment, before giving his friend a smile and an uneasy wave, obviously unfamiliar and practiced. Then, just before the Webway gate closed, he seemed to hear something behind him, drawing his axe and letting out a cry of “WAAAA…”

And that was the last that Eldanesh ever heard of the Krork.

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== The Last Child of Ursh ==

You know, for years I feared you. Your return. You were the monster that haunted my nightmares. But I realized something. A monster is only scary as long as it has power over you. And you…*chuckles*…you no longer have any power over me. Look at yourself. Do you think that your god gave you trinkets and collared you like a dog because he was impressed by your combat prowess? No. He gave you those because he knew without them I would turn you inside out and rend you out of the fabric of existence like the little immaterial tumor that you are.

Ursh was feared in its day. It may have only ruled over one planet, but it instilled fear in every man, woman, and child on that planet. And what of your so-called Blood Pact? You call it Ursh reborn, but all I see is an undead shadow, a misbegotten clone of its parent half-trying to ape its progenitor’s glory days. Who fears the Blood Pact, despot, who? You may span multiple worlds but I see more people afraid of the misguided children of Franj than I do of you. You are no superpower.

And that’s what you fear isn’t it. That which is already coming to pass. Ursh relegated to the twilight of history. The blood at last being exorcized from that cursed soil. The scars finally healing with generations having grown up without fear of the last. You…*laughs*…no one will remember you. Not with any sort of emotion, or feeling of fear when they hear your name. No one even remembers your name besides the Steward, the Grey Knights, the Inquisition…and I. The Great Khan is gone. The Stormcrow is gone. I am the last child of Ursh. When I am gone there will be no more like me. And perhaps that is a good thing.

-- Apocryphal conversation between Magnus the Red and Doombreed during the primarch’s last battle during the Age of Apostasy, circa M36.

== The Long Odds ==

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“And if you follow me, we are going to the Room of Origins, to see artifacts dating to the very founding of this Craftworld.”

The Eldar boy was only one of about twenty, a gaggle of children following a beleaguered tour guide around the Chambers of History, learning about the mammoth wraithbone spaceship that had been their homes for their entire lives, and of the many Eldar that had once lived in them. There was nothing particularly special about the boy, nothing except that he was the only one to notice the figure sitting in the hallway to the side of the wraithbone hall. The tour guide was ushering the children on, but the boy remained entranced. He had to know who the figure was. Which is why it was so surprising when the figure spoke to him.

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“Excuse me boy, yes, you there. Could you spare me the kindness of helping an old man?”
The boy took a quick glance at the receding tour group, and then back to the figure. He was so very young, and knew only the Craftworld, having yet to realize that trust was a precious commodity in this universe. The boy approached the old Eldar sitting in the halls of the Craftworld, only to hesitate when he realized who the figure really was. It was Eldrad! The Eldrad Ulthran! The eldest of the farseers, the architect of the liberation of Isha, the savior of the Emperor. The same Eldrad who was known by as many titles or epithets as the years he had lived! Eldrad of Ten Thousand Names!

The boy opened his mouth.

“El…”

"Silence, boy, I know what you are about to say. Yes, yes, Eldrad of this, Eldrad of that. Eldrad of Ten Thousand Names. Perhaps I should take pride in them. The old wisdom says that every title one earns represents a victory, after all. But I am so very old. And so very tired. I do not have time to remember half-forgotten glories. But if you could, please help an old man up.”

The boy reached out his hand, and Eldrad took his, his grip surprisingly strong despite his old age. The boy slowly helped Eldrad to his feet, the old Eldar taking so long the boy wondered if he was going to start creaking like wood.

Eldrad sighed.

“It is so very strange, what the young think life is going to be like when you are old. When you are a young man, you believe that you spend your final days terrified of death, hounded by that final specter. But when you actually get to be an old man, things change. Oh, you never stop fearing death. I believe few creatures in this universe beyond orks and tyranids ever truly do. But when you get to be my age, you tend to stop worrying about what happens to you, and start worrying about all the things you leave behind. All the things you created, and all the deeds you accomplished. The ideas you poured years of your life into. When you are no longer around to make sure everything is right, will there be someone around to make sure the dreams you set in motion still run, or will your victories gradually slip into dust. Forget what the warriors say, boy, about glory being eternal. Glory only matters if there is someone around who appreciate why it matters. Do you understand what I am saying?”

The Eldar boy shook his head, his mind trying to wrap itself around what the legendary farseer was saying to him.
“Well, I suppose it is something you only truly understand when you get to be an old man. And it is getting late. I have kept you too long and you are probably getting bored of my old man stories. Run along now, boy, before someone comes looking for you.”

The boy darted around the corner, as if the hounds of the Warp were after him. He had to tell his friends what he had seen, though they would not believe him. Isha preserve him, even he barely believed what had just happened. When the Eldar boy was out of sight, Eldrad slowly straightened his posture and let the cloaking illusion drop. Although he may be old, he was not that feeble, even though he could feel his bones creak, his joints almost crystalline. And yet he still had so much to do. Miles to go before he could sleep.

The old farseer calmed his mind, bringing his focus to the seer rune he had at his side. Threads of fate sprung to life in his mind’s eye, twisting and turning like fiberoptic cables or neural fibers. Eldrad pared down his vision, directing his focus to the area surrounding his current position in space-time, the “real” timeline, and waited to see if his words had any effect. And slowly, the threads of fate, the very roots that underpinned reality, shifted ever so slightly.

Eldrad smirked. It never ceased to amaze him how the slightest actions could have the greatest effects on the universe. A single set of words or a chance encounter could completely change the course of history. Lives could be won or lost. And an empire could fall, or even never be born in the first place. A small piece of advice from an old man remembered later in life could save the life of a warrior, which could turn the tide of a battle, which could save a Craftworld, which could save the galaxy. It was the doctrine Eldrad lived by, to defeat your enemy by knowing what everyone else would or could do before they could possibly do it.

Widening his gaze, the farseer looked further into the future. Looking past all the potential timelines, withered and horrible, like decaying petals of a flower. Until he found the one he wanted. It was a vision of his granddaughter, the one whose face he had never seen, except in his visions. She was a young woman in his vision, standing on the edge of a harbor, a tiny creature on her shoulder. He knew she was waiting for someone, he never knew who, for the vision always ended before he could see. Behind her stood a citscape that seemed to be constructed of wraithbone, of steel, of Earth Caste sculpture, yet none of these things, and around her walked humans, Eldar, and a hundred other races both alien and familiar. Eldrad could never tell what time it was in the vision, but he knew it in his heart. Dawn, the dawn so long awaited after the end of the long night.

Eldrad had seen so many things, great and terrible, in his long life. Supernovae on the horizon. Shrieking forms of things that should not be clawing forth from the abyss. And yet, in his old age, this is what kept him going. Hope. He was always a good farseer, but this was to be his masterpiece. A future for the Eldar, free of despair, tyranny, and dark gods. Peace, in a galaxy that for so long had known only war. It was a long shot. He had only seen a few visions like these, on the order of billions to one.

Eldrad smiled a half-smile. He always did like playing the long odds.

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== Lynn Mywin Goes on Holiday ==

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This one time me and my friends got sent down to this prospecting site on some desolate rock, didn't even have goddamn name 'cept for the AdMech number code; AF-743 and then some long voxcall number of a designation. Locals were calling it Goodig or Gooddig or Godig or some shit. Exact name depended on whose low-gothic language you filtered it through and whose alphabet you tried to stamp it out in. Not that it mattered none, this was an unofficial name for a settlement classed as provincial at best. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of money to be made in planetary prospecting. The problem is there's a lot of risk because you're so far from anywhere that matters by the time anyone's realized somethings wrong it's already over bar the after incident investigation. That's where me and my friends came in. We were, on the official records at least, working for Inquisitor Abernaky. Not that we ever met him more than once in our time in his employ, he was just the name we sent the reports to and received orders and pay from.

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So anyway me and my friends, four of us besides myself, Henders, Jeffer, Toburt and Cooper. I think. Pretty sure Cooper was there. It was either Cooper or Carter. They were both Kriegers I worked with and they both had no names when we met but I'm pretty sure it was Cooper. Either way Carter didn't much like me for obvious reasons. Cooper, sorry. Both of them in fact didn't like eldar but it was Cooper on this mission.

So anyway we land the shuttle on an uncovered granite slab that did as the small craft landing platform for the settlement with the com-hub, on the subject of which we'd been given the silent treatment since we landed in the system bar the automated blips and pings. Toburt and the servitor piolet Ethan, one of the high class ones made from a brain damaged child, were told to stay with the boat. First rule when you work for the fucking Inquisition; always make sure you can run away when shit goes wrong. And it will always go wrong eventually. To cover ground we split up into two teams Henders and Cooper go to check out the communications tower and men and Jeffers head out to the Admin-bunker. Splitting up is risky but what ever had taken out an entire settlement of burley armed miners wouldn't have been stopped by four laser rifles, we needed speed and we needed quiet and then we needed to leave and we all knew it. Why only a five soldiers and a servitor you might ask? Because the Inquisition was spread pretty thin in that sub-sector and we genuinely couldn't spare anyone else for such an unimportant anomaly, HQ were still holding out hope that the astropath had had a heart attack and the warp-weather was just causing shipping delays. It was on the road into town that we saw our first body. We hadn't found any corpses in the starport itself. Blood stains aplenty but no actual bodily remains beyond that. Or at least we found half a body, someone's space suited ass and legs in the middle of the road, call us dense for going in but it was our job and we were payed very well.

Anyway we get to the walls of the settlement and it's as you'd expect, all ramshackle shit made from old cargo crates and air-cyclers rigged from old space suits. Atmospheric pressure wasn't a problem on Godig but it wasn't something you'd like to suck on. It was a fucking slaughterhouse, never saw a complete body in all the time we were there and by the looks of it they'd been taken apart by claws and teeth of something big and powerful. We've all got cameras on our helmets and are sending this all back to the boat to be stored in the blackbox as per protocol, no use in the data being lost if we were to die. I thought I'd seen something in the corner of my eye a few times but chalked it up to nerves until Toburt and Ethen confirmed that they were getting it over the pict-feed as well. There was something here with us that had a hell of a turn of speed.

Me and Jeffers make it to the Admin building. Only building in the settlement that looked like it had been built rather than thrown together. We find some shotguns near the door and a lot of blood, the weapons are loaded and there are expended cases on the floor, someone put up a fight here and it did them no good. Jeffers starts scavving their shells because he's an underhiver and that's what they do when Toburt tells us he's been going through the pict-recordings trying to figure out what the fuck that thing was but it was moving so fast and was so far way that "pretty fucking big, probably quadruped and pink" is about the best he can do.

Henders and Cooper by this point have gotten to the com-tower and then their cameras go blank, this wasn't immediately obvious because the tower was without power so it was pretty dark in there anyway and Toburt wouldn't have spotted it but for Ethan looking over his shoulder, he was too busy going through the pict record looking for the mystery creature and only had one set of eyeballs.

We're wandering into the entry hall of the Admin site whose lights still are on, thank the gods, with Jeffers walking backwards to make sure we aren't followed. Needless to say we've both got out weapons drawn and ready. It was pretty fucking obvious at this point that we weren't here to rescue survivors, now we just had to get the record box and com-logs, stick a quarantine marker in orbit and wait for a real inspection and cleaning effort at some undisclosed point in the future.

Cooper's camera has come back on and he claims to be fine. He says that he and Toburt fell through a weak part of the floor into the cellar and he can't find Toburt. His voice sounded oddly flat but a combination of the place freaking us out a little and Cooper being a Krieger and therefore always sounding a little like that and I wasn't paying as much attention to it as maybe I should. Fuck off, you weren't there. Toburt tells us that Cooper is moving again and it wasn't until days late wen I was looking through the records that the bleeding glaring oddness in terms of gait and camera height were evident. I'm inclined to cut Toburt some slack on not picking up on it as he'd just heard something land on the Boat roof and the external cameras had just gone down. I order him not to open the door unless he's got visual confirmation that it's one of us.

Me and Jeffers head slowly and quietly to the Admin Overseer's office. The building was pretty typical of it's kind. Coat room and entry way, big open hall for meetings and posh dinners, two ground floor wings left and right, swooping broad stair case pair on either side of the main hall up to a balcony, upper wings left and right, kitchens ground floor between the stair cases main office above the kitchens on the upper floor between the stair cases, under the stair cases two less impressive stairways to the cellar storage rooms. It's a basic design copied thousands of times without variation from one end of the galaxy to the other with the only variation being building material. It's probably the AdAdmin trying to make some statement about everywhere being equally part of the Imperium or some shit. In any case it made finding the records, the settlement blackbox was predictably under the Overseer's desk. About 40kg of lead-lined solid state storage crystal in a box designed to survive everything up to direct nuclear strike. It was also bright orange with blue stripes so why the fuck everyone calls this thing a blackbox is a fucking mystery to me. Anyway Jeffers crouches behind the desk with his weapon lined up with the door ready to blat anything more unexpected than dost motes between the eyes whist I root around under the desk trying to pull this bastard thing out of the recess in the floor, empty some of my gear into Jeffers's bag and somehow fit a size five brick into a size four hole.

It was that this point with us both crouched behind the Overseer's desk that we hear a tinkling sound from the main hall. We'd both seen the big chandelier on the way in, far too big for a building this size and fuck knows how something that should be in an opera house ended up in a provincial mining settlement but when your on the job it's not time to offer criticisms of interior decorating. In any case we can both see part of the Chandelier from the doorway and what we can see is moving as if it had just been pushed or moved by something heavy. In retrospect, because retrospect is a merciless bastard with no eyelids, we should have looked up a bit more when we came in.

I've got the fucking thing in my pack by now and fuck the rest of the shit we're leaving behind, just nutri-bars for the most part and it really is time to leave. Cooper isn't moving according to Toburt and Henders hasn't been seen or made contact with again yet. I try contacting Cooper with the com-bead asking him what's going on and he tells me that he's watching. I ask him what he's watching and there's no answer. With Cooper that could mean he's being quiet because he thinks he's being watched, he hasn't heard, he doesn't have an answer or he's deliberately being an ignorant little cunt. I order him to get back to the boat because it's time to get the fuck out and still nothing. Toburt tells me that his camera is still pointed over the settlement from the watch tower but is completely still which either means that he's stopped breathing or he's propped his helmet in a window and left it there. I ask him what he's doing again and he tells me again that he's watching. That when the oddness starts to get past a certain threshold and I know it's not just Cooper being Cooper. The phrasing and enunciation of each word was absolutely the same, parroted as if by a recording. I switched off the comm-bead and told as much to Jeffers and hoped to high heavens that Toburt was paying attention when I told him not to open the boat door without seeing us first.

I make a decision that probably save out lives. We aren't going out through the front door. There's something in the main hall waiting for us and Cooper either isn't Cooper or has been compromised somehow. As quietly as we can we drop out of the back window onto the sloped kitchen roof, Jeffers going first and me watching the door before following him. Just as I was climbing through I would swear that I heard the chandelier tinkle again.

We slip down the roof of the kitchen into a narrow gap between the Admin building and some sort of hab-block seemingly assembled by accident and very quickly but as quiet as we can quickly manage get back to the street and start weaving our way back to the borders of town along a street plan that seemed without a plan. We were going in the right direction, I think, but had to abruptly stop. I'd just seen something big and pink briefly on the roof of one of the buildings ahead of us, a glint of eye and then vanishing back under the lip of the roof.

Jeffers had apparently also seen it as he was already hiding behind a refuse bin without prompting. I don't know if it saw us but I did know we weren't going that way, not on foot at least. We decided that if these things, whatever the fuck they were, were stalking the settlement we would be found eventually and almost certainly had been discovered already given that one was waiting for us in the Admin building. They must have at least some degree of intelligence as they had encountered weapons before and were possibly wary of us because we were armed. If anything they were keeping their distance until an opportune moment presented itself.

We hadn't fully appreciated that they were a damn site more clever than that and we hadn't stopped to ask how they had gotten here in the first place, there wasn't any native life on this planet when the prospectors arrived and never had been. Point is that they weren't stalking us so much as herding us I think.

We zigzagged through the many winding back allies of the settlement, fearful to entre open streets and fearful to enter enclosed buildings. The track to the starport landing area was rutted with the marks of large transport vehicles the prospectors used to move their mined goods for transport off-world, we figured that getting one of those and getting the fuck out was the greatest likelihood of survival considering that because of the shitty atmosphere they would have an enclosed cab and the big stretch of open ground between town and the landing site.

We kept moving, Toburt said that he hadn't seen any movement from Cooper yet and repeated attempts to contact him had failed to get a response. We hadn't told Toburt or Ethan about Cooper, we couldn't be sure that what had taken his place couldn't use a com-bead and we had no intention of confirming for it that we knew he wasn't him.

We found the garages by following alleyways running parallel to the main through road, a less than pleasant task as the locals all knew where everything had been and saw no reason to invest in signposts. Jeffers went into the building first having arrived slightly before me thanks to the weight of the blackbox. The garage was just a big undercover area with a couple of big doors, a smaller door for pedestrians and a small brick shed at the other end built into the wall to a height of two floors, presumably housing a wash room and a cafeteria for the drivers topped by an office of some sort with a big glass window. There was movement in there, light and shadow against the ceiling inside the room but not looking out of the window. We scurried like frightened rats to the building, to get into the shadow of it as it was the only hope of getting close without being seen and we knew we had to get into that office, that's where the keys were kept and neither of us were confident we could hotwire one of these things without tripping a security measure.

As we climbed the narrow and somewhat rickety staircase up to the office we heard Toburt over the com try and contact Cooper for about the twentieth time, this time getting a response. He said that he was still watching from the tower but we heard the voice coming from behind the door to the office echoed with the briefest delay over the com. Jeffers had gone pretty pale and was raising his weapon, I could never tell if he was angry or afraid or if, Jeffers being Jeffers, there wasn't a difference. I raised my own, kicked the door so hard the frame came out of the wall and rolled as Jeffers sent a stream of ultraviolet laser fire hissing over my head into the creature that spoke with Cooper's voice. The scream it let out I swear made me feel like my ears and brain were bleeding and didn't stop until I'd sprayed it's head for a second with full-auto, draining an entire energy pack in the process.

Taking a closer look at them and they were ugly fuckers. Looked a bit like a hairless cat with a touch of lizard and a rat tail at least seven but probably closer to eight foot long nose to arse. I'd never seen anything like it before or since in my years in the Inquisition and I've seen plenty of weird and wonderful shit. It had been holding about half of Cooper's head and tapping the com-bead when it wanted to speak. I don't know how good it's grasp on High-Gothic was, couldn't tell you for sure if it know what it was saying or just parroting prey sounds to lure in food. I suspected the former as it seemed to have a grasp of technology above that of a mere clever animal. In either case we absolutely had to get the fuck out of the place and fast. I don't know how loud it screamed, if the pain was partly because of the volume or entirely due to frequency but I was pretty certain that others would be coming here and quickly. Jeffers grabbed a likely looking bunch of keys hanging on a hook near the door and darted down the stairs, he threw me the keys once we were on the main floor and went to slap the door button. As I was climbing into the drivers side door I heard a muffled scream and looked round to see Jeffers being held by one of the creatures, standing on it's hind legs, clawed hands digging into Jeffer's shoulder and under his left arm, lifting him up to its mouth time slowed by the horror of it Jeffers trying to reach his knife with his good arm, the creature licking the side of his head and grinning a mile full of needle teeth and I swear to the gods it was grinning. Jeffers couldn't reach his knife and he looked at me with pleading eyes filled with pain. My aim was dreadfully true, the first beam going through his head and the second and third and fourth going into the creatures. It fell to the floor pawing at it's ruined face and ruptured eye sockets, dropping the corpse of what had been a good friend I'd known for fifteen years.

The Truck went over the creature without stopping, and went through the doors leaving a trail of twisted metal. The truck was powerful but not the fastest accelerating construction of the AdMech I'd ever driven, designed to move heavy loads with efficiency rather than haste. The creatures followed me half way out of town and there was another figure there, humanoid and big watching with them from the windows of the comm-tower, my helmet cam recording every moment of it.

I did make it to the Boat and for a heart wrenching moment I feared that it had fallen as I stood out in the clear waiting for the door to open, vulnerable and alone. But the door did open and Toburt was standing on the ramp, carapaced up and holding a weapon. Ethan was already taking off before the ramp had started to close. I'm pretty sure that we were allowed to leave, that they could have stopped me somehow if they had chosen to. Cooper's helmet was still recording when we climbed back into orbit to await collection and was continuing to record right up until it impacted the ground when someone pushed it out of the window. As it tumbled It for a brief moment pointed upwards into the face of the humanoid in the tower, looking over the edge of the window.

The brass up at HQ went through all the recordings when we got back. The ugly bastard in the tower was identified as Dr. Bile, a name that means sweet fuck all to you but is pretty fucking infamous to us. Still no idea what those creatures were beyond probably his latest pets.

We nuked the place from orbit when the ship arrived but I'm almost certain we didn't get Dr Bile, cunning old bastard wouldn't have operated so openly if there was even a hint that he was in any real danger.

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== Malcador's Log ==

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'''Salvage log regarding unusual item 43'''

Item appears to be a quasi-biological construct in the basic appearance of man in mid to late twenties. Item is approximately 2.5 meters in height, broad across shoulder and pale skin. Attempts to determine ethnic group from visual analysis has failed. Subject is either from an hitherto in recorded group, an outlier of his group or of mixed ancestry. Nearest group to appearance seems to be the western Merika or Calbi tribals. Item appears to be alive and breathing although apparent internal temperature seems to be somewhat below that of a man in final stages of hypothermia. Attempts at awakening the item have so far been fruitless.

First-mate Varda suggested electro shock to awaken. No result beyond blown fuses.

Varda also suggested the use of drugs injected into subjects blood stream. Further attempts discouraged to preserve needle stocks.

Attempts to monitor brainwaves have given confusing results. Casual psychic surface scans indicate that the mind of the individual is that of a potent psyker but seem to be completely empty. Disinclined to probe deeper until nature of Item is further determined.

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'''Day 12 of return voyage'''

Item 43 appears to have regained/gained consciousness'''

Janitor Ujarak discovered Item standing upright next to it's shelf and came immediately to myself report development.

Item's eyes have been revealed to be an almost metallic golden in colour and follow sources of movement in it's immediate environment. No other sources of activity are evident.

Thermal scans still reveal unnaturally low internal temperature.

Item made no resistance to having the brain-scan cap put back on. No change in apparent brain activity. Psychic scans suggest an very minor increase in activity. In a normal individual the change would be all but unnoticeable due to background chatter.

Item appears to be growing a faint covering of dark hair on scalp and jaw consistent with a human male of assumed age. Attempts to remove a sample have been successful. Analysis of hair fragment shows it to be some sort of very dense composite-polymer similar to the sort used in the manufacture of low grade flack armour.

Further attempts to elicit any additional response have proven unsuccessful. Item moved to secure holding cell as a precaution.

Janitor Ujarak has named the Item Oscar after an uncle of his. I have approved the designation.

'''Day 20 of return voyage'''

Oscar has shown a marked increase in activity. Monitoring equipment shows him measuring the dimensions of his cell and trying to manipulate the door handle. Handle shows signs of having been bent slightly indicating Oscar has strength far superior to that of a baseline human.

When observation and testing teams entre cell Oscar stands immobile and merely observes visitors. Thermal, brain and psychic scanning still reveal no significant change in activity.

As of yet Oscar has not indicated any need or desire to eat, drink or sleep although basic sustenance and bedding has been provided.

As of yet no conclusive idea of what our ancient Cthonian cousins reason for creating this construct were.

Senior members of the salvage teams are convinced that Oscar is an unfinished product and Item 42 that was found in close proximity to Item 43 was a psy-graft machine that would have been used to provide Oscar with programing and purpose. Currently Oscar is a blank slate and we have no real chalk for him.

'''Day 28 of return voyage'''

Oscar has escaped from his cell by applying unreasonable force to the door. Was found in storage hold 12 staring at the container we found him in.

After 5 hours of no additional activity he returned to his cell without prompting.

'''Day 30 of voyage home'''

Oscar wandered into the mess hall this morning and ate a synth-meat pate bun. Brief flare in internal temperature was recorded by off duty tech-adept team.

Casual psychic observation is showing considerable increase in activity but still well beneath that of even a child.

Attempts to restrain or move Oscar when Oscar does not wish to move have been ineffectual. Oscar sat motionless for five hours in mess hall. Diners found the experience "creepy".

An overall work suit has been fabricated in Oscars size.

'''Day 33 of return voyage'''

Warp turbulence flared up this evening. Navigator attempted to drop us back into real space but to no avail. Anti-boarding teams were put on alert.

The turbulence ceased abruptly in the area surrounding the ship. Filtered external footage shows Oscar standing on the prow of the ship without a void suit glaring at the warp.

Method of survival is as yet unknown. Oscar did not return to the interior of the ship until cessation of disturbance some 39 hours later with seemingly no ill effects due to exposure to the vacuum of open space or total exposure to the Warp.

Oscar was placed in a decontamination booth. Oscar pushed open the door of the decontamination booth and returned his cell.

'''Return voyage day 36'''

Oscar was found in mess hall again today having consumed a standard portion of cooked vegetable strips. Oscar then closed his eyes for almost half an hour. This is possibly the only time he has "slept" since first being awakened.

Upon awakening he approached my office and spoke for the first time asking "What am I to do?"

Oscar has been tasked with categorizing and ordering the items salvaged Cthonian artefacts.

'''Return voyage day 37'''

Members of the crew with knowledge of ancient history have put forth the suggestion that this "Oscar" is a Man of Gold albeit an unfinished one.

I am now faced with somewhat of a dilemma. The return of this creature to the territory of Clan Terrawatt could be disastrous for all nations of Earth. From what fragments we know of history a Man of Gold, should he have a mind to be, would be a disaster of similar magnitude to that of another super-volcanic eruption and it is doubtful that the people of Earth would survive such again.

After due consideration I have decided not to detonate the reactor.

This decision will either be remembered as Malcador's Triumph or briefly Malcador's Folly. May the Ancestors guide us.

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== Me Time ==

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Arronax. A tiny dustball out in the middle of nowhere. A breathable atmosphere, but no native lifeforms more complex than an oxygen-producing prokaryote. Which was why it was so odd that a pair of Warhound titans were on its surface. The two colossal mechs stood guard, watching over a facility so well hidden it seemed to blend into the surrounding rock. The titans themselves were also just out of sight beneath a nearby rock face, out of the range of any orbital sensors.

Even odder was the presence of anyone else on this space rock. Yet the sensors were clear, there was at least one other lifeform on this planet approaching the facility. After a brief moment of communication between the two princeps, the two Warhound rose up as one, striding forward as the intruder came into view. The figure seemed to be alone and was obscured, covered by a simple woven robe. The Warhounds towered over the intruder, weapons bristling, as the vox crackled to life.

“This planet is off limits. Identify yourself or vacate the premises, otherwise we will open fire.”

The figure only smiled.

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---

Klaxons sounded across the Inquisition base. Stormtroopers were roused from their beds and weapons were immediately placed in their hands. Personnel ran to and fro like ants in a disturbed nest, each trying to figure out where they were supposed to go to perform their duty.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” one stormtrooper asked.

“Warhounds on the surface encountered an anomaly and haven’t reported in,” the sergeant, Jezhua, replied, “Protocol is to assume the worst. The facility is under attack.”

The combead hissed with static in Sergeant Jezhua’s ear, patching him through to the adept watching the security cameras.

“Uh, sir?” the adept said, “we’ve re-established visual contact with the Warhound titans.”

The adept turned to his screen, looking at the sole leg sticking up into the horizon like an upended drumstick.

“Well, what’s left of them, anyway.”

“Details, adept,” Jezhua barked, “What do you see?”

“Six figures on the landing pad. Can’t make out any details, the remaining camera is too far away. They’re standing right in front of the entrance, but the hangar doors are closed.”

The sergeant clapped his hands on the stormtrooper’s shoulder.

“There are six intruders just outside of the main door. Go, set up a defense in front of the door so if they try to come in they’ll find the appropriate welcome waiting for them.”

The stormtrooper nodded. He rushed through the base, travelling down two corridors and up a flight of stairs, to find himself in the hangar that represented the entryway to the rest of the facility. With calculated precision, he set up his laser carbine and aimed it at the closed metal doors of the entryway. Around him were at least thirty additional Guardsmen who had done the same. They were ready for anything to come through that door, at least, as ready as they were going to be. There was a pause. An eerie silence permeated the air, tension high despite the quiet.

BANG!

The sound echoed throughout the room, several Guardsmen flinching involuntarily.

BANG!

The second blow hit the door with a visceral effect, the vibrations so powerful that the Guardsmen could literally feel them through the floor. It sounded as though the forces of hell themselves were trying to force their way in.

BA-CRUNCH!

The door yielded with the third blow, the upper corner of one of the hangar doors bending inward from the force leaving a triangle-shaped gap in the door. Sunlight flooded into the room, momentarily blinding some of the Guardsmen. As their eyes readjusted to the change in light, a solitary figure stepped through the gap in the doorway and into the room. The figure was clearly an Eldar, given that it was at least a head taller than the any of the Guardsmen in the room and had short-cropped red hair that was a shade too dark and too red to belong to any human. The figure wore a garishly pattered suit of armor with a fur-lined collar, suggesting it was a Crone Worlder, and wielded a hideous-looking sword that looked large enough to decapitate a grox. Normally, the Guardsmen would have opened fire, but the room stood in stunned awe, fear overriding any sort of combat reflex. They knew who this figure was. Everyone knew who this figure was. They had thought they were ready for anything, but none of them had expected the person that had just walked through their door.

“Oh come off it,” she said, seemingly to no one as particular, “I am not turning you into an overgrown lockpick. Look, we’ll find someone to kill, and you’ll feel like your old self in no…”

The Eldar looked up, having just become aware of the thirty or so Guardsmen in the room. She seemed just as surprised as the Guardsmen, the two sides having formed an impromptu standoff. One of the Guardsmen fainted with a sound, the realization of exactly who they faced having just sunk in. It was one unfortunately stupid Guardsman who broke the pregnant silence.

“L…Lady Malys. What in Terra’s name are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know. Just needed some “me” time.”

With that, the hangar turned into a whirlwind of blades. Malys went into a frenzy, her eyes wild and her tooth-like jaw plates locked in a hideous grin. She moved with astonishing agility, cutting through the Guardsmen before they could even react. A Guardsman tried to yell to the others to open fire, only to have his head sliced from his body before he could finish speaking. Lasbolts fired through the air, but every one of them seemed to hit just wide of the Croneworlder. Guardsmen fired at where they thought the female Eldar was one moment, only for her to have already stepped out of the way the next, their lasbolt penetrating the helmet of their comrade on the other side. The Crone seemed to take particular pleasure in that.

The stormtrooper gritted his teeth as he watched the Daemon Queen tear through his comrades. Seeing them dead left a bitter taste in his stomach, but he had to be vigilant if his shots were to do more than just fly wild like the rest. Just then, he noticed Lady Malys had made a mistake in her movements. Malys had briefly paused in her deadly criss-crossing of the room, giving him the perfect opportunity to put a lasbolt through her unarmored head. The stormtrooper tried to take the shot, only to hear a whirring noise and feel a sharp pain in his wrist. Looking down, he saw that his hand had been entirely severed from his forearm. Another Crone Eldar, this one armed with a saw pistol, had come through the hole in the doorway following his queen. At first the fight was merely lopsided. When the five other Crone Eldar entered the fray, it simply became unfair.

---

As the battle wrapped up and the high of combat began to fade, the question became what to do with the survivors. One was the Guardsman who had fainted when Malys had entered the room. Malys laughed. That one got to live, if for no other reason than the delightful squeaking sound it made when it fainted into a heap. The other was another mon-keigh soldier that had been wounded in the leg and was merely injured, as opposed to dead.

“The injured mon-keigh, as you requested milady,” replied one Crone warrior, having bound the human soldier’s arms behind her back.

A female, if Malys recalled right. She always did have such trouble telling male and female humans apart. Malys nodded to the warrior. The Daemon Queen thought to herself for a moment, and then got to work.

“Well, well, welll,” Malys strutted across the hangar of the dead and the dying to look at the female guardsman. “What are we going to do with you. We could always take you into the Warp and leave you to the tender mercies of daemons. Watching them tear mortals limb from limb is always good for a show. Or we could seal you inside a marionette. Seeing mon-keigh claw at their skin as they struggle to come to terms with the sensory deprivation always gives me a shiver up my spine.”

Malys grabbed the guardswoman by the hair.

“I tell you what. I’m feeling merciful today. You tell me everything you know about this facility, then maybe we’ll pretend we pretend we overlooked you among the dead in this room. Otherwise…”

Malys swung her greatsword around, pointing its tip at one Slaaneshi Croneworlder standing in the corner.

“I’m going to have Asmordach here rip out your nerves one by one and we play a little game of ‘how much of an intact nervous system can you pull out of a live mon-keigh before they die’”.

The threat of violence apparently helped the mon-keigh find its tongue, though not in the way Lady Malys had hoped for.

“You vile fiend. I will not give you what you want, nor will anyone in this facility. Your day of reckoning will come abomination. Even if is not by my hand, then by the next person, or the next. The Imperium will never fall to the likes of…”

“Fehlkor?” Malys spoke over the dithering mon-keigh, her voice an annoyed growl.

“Yes milady?”

“Kill it like the rest.”

“Killing it like the rest ma’am.”

After that little pleasure was out of the way, it was time to decide how to proceed further into the facility. Maps of the facility showed the upper level was nothing but guard quarters and military ordinance, whereas down below was where the really fun stuff was kept. Malys crooked her finger at one of the Cronedar, beckoning the Slaaneshi to her side. The augmented vox taking up much of the Crone Eldar’s throat and lower face crackled to life, speaking to Lady Malys in a distinctly artificial voice.

“Your command, Lady Malys?”

“The five of you go on ahead down to the lower levels. You know what we are looking for and what to do with it.”

“All due respect but, are you sure that’s wise? Splitting up seems strategically unsound. We could be isolated and picked off one by one.”

“Today is not a ‘strategy’ day. Today is a ‘fun’ day. I want you to remember that. I picked this facility for a reason. There should be nothing here that poses a significant threat to you or the others. If not then, well, I expect you to be smart enough to do something about it.”

“Understood. Your will be done.”

The Crone’s voice was like screeching on a mon-keigh record player. He had claimed he had made his voice sound like that to honor the cacophonies made by the ancient musicians of the Eldar, but Malys suspected he just wanted to have a voice that was as annoying as physically possible while still having enough of a reason to not be justified in killing him.

Malys shuddered. Ten thousand years of service to the Dark Gods and there were still things in the galaxy capable of provoking a reaction from her. One learns something new every day. The five Cronedar having already moved out before her, she followed their path down to the lower levels.

---

Seargent Jezhua silently cursed to himself as he pressed himself against the wall. Everything was going to shit. His men were scattered, people were disappearing, and no one seemed to be answering from the hangar. The last transmission Jezhua had received had reported five Cronedar descending into the labs from the hangar elevator, so at the very least Jezhua could presume what happened to them. And worst of all, he was so busy coordinating everyone else he was only able to grab a stubber from the armory before things went to shit.

Make that six. Jezhua had just heard another Crone descend down the elevator and walk into the hallway just ahead of him. From the sound of the footsteps, the Croneworlder was walking forward at a leisurely pace, seemingly uncaring of the fact that it was standing in the middle of a hostile enemy base. From its shadow, he could tell the Chaos Eldar was a female, and was seemingly unarmed beyond a large sword strapped to her back.

Jezhua gritted his teeth. Everything had gone ploin-shaped. And so he was going to have to rescue his men and take back this facility. Even if he had to hunt the Crones down one at a time. And this nearly unarmed, sword-wielding Cronedar seemed like a good place to start. Jezhua broke from cover and levelled his weapon at the Cronedar’s head.

“Stop”.

The Crone hesitated for a moment, as if amused by the audacity of the situation, then slowly turned to face him. Jezhua remained firm. If he had recognized who the Croneworlder was, it did not seem to faze him. Malys chuckled.

“You know who I am, yet you are still foolish enough to point a gun at me?”

“Lady, I know a thing or two about weapons. I know that’s a six-foot long broadsword strapped to your back. That’s nearly as tall as you are. You don’t have any other weapons. I know that no one, not even an Eldar, can whip a blade like that out before I can fire. The blade is just too unwieldy, and I’m too far away. Try anything, and I’ll put a bullet in your head before you can even move. It’s simple physics. You just can’t move that fast.”

Jezhua pulled the trigger, but before he could react Malys was on him, impaling him to the wall through the gut with that sword of hers. The taste of blood in his mouth, Sergeant Jezhua looked weakly around He knew he had fired, he had seen the muzzle flare in front of him. There was no way he could have missed at that range. Then, he had a chilling moment of realization. Sergeant Jezhua looked down, only to see the shell of his bullet had been deflected into the ground, neatly bisected by the Crone Eldar’s blade. He looked back up only to find the face that had haunted the nightmares of every soldier in the Imperium merely only inches from his own.

“You’re very perceptive. But you made once critical miscalculation. I CAN move that fast. And now, well, my friend is hungry. So eat well.”

Jezhua noticed that the last remark had not been directed at him. He looked down to see the blade impaling his body glowing with a whitish-green, unholy light. He felt a pulling sensation, as if something he couldn’t accurately describe was being ripped from his body. And going into the black abyss which he realized the sword really was. Sergeant Jezhua screamed. But no one was able to hear him.

---

Standing outside the ruined entrance of the research facility, Lady Malys examined a small data chip, holding it up to the light.

“Here it is, data on all Inquisitorial activities and research programs within the subsector. Our prize for this day. So informative, so juicy, so…”

She threw the chip on the ground and smashed it under her foot.

“Useless.”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t entirely useless. Maybe some small squadron of Crone Eldar or local Chaos cult could have made use of the data. But it wasn’t useful to her, which was really mattered. And the facility had been so sparsely guarded. Just normal human mon-keigh, not any of her unenlightened kind or the augmented kinds of mon-keigh the Imperium usually had around one of its facilities. Malys sighed in frustration. How was she supposed to have any “me” time when all of the targets she attacked had turned out to be so damn boring. The Warhounds were fun for a warmup but then it was all downhill after that. Looking overhead, she watched as an Imperial ship warped into existence overhead. That was her signal to go, despite her enthusiasm a battleship was rather outside her current means right now and she wasn’t looking forward to dying again.

Well. Maybe the third time was the charm.

</div>
</div>

== Monster ==

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I am a [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#New_Men|monster]].

Is it surprising, that I admit it so readily? Most monsters are only reluctant to admit it because they have been raised their whole lives to believe it is not so. I have never had the luxury of knowing anything else. I have always been a monster.

I remember everything. I even remember vague flashes of those that came before. Memories of those whose cells were cultured to create my DNA. The sheer pain of those tortured to provide the power to restore those dead cells to life and revert the differentiated cells back into an egg. I remember the sheer terror of my mother as she was clinically violated in ways unthinkable to the average mind, and then forced to watch for eleven months as an abomination grew inside her. All the while her offspring communed with her mind and was privy to her thoughts. When I was born she rejected me, threw her suckling and adoring infant from her breast. The Drukhari caretakers took me away and put me in a kennel, feeding me with a bottle before switching to kibble. Apparently this was not an uncommon occurrence.

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At six I was transferred from the kennels to the pens. Even though I was only a child by normal standards I looked twice that age. Our creator had tried many ways to accelerate our development. However, every attempt he crippled the batch’s ability to use psychic power. Something to do with the trade-off between soul development and time to adulthood. His solution was to accelerate body growth while slowing down mental development. Children in the body of adults. We were segregated into age-specific crèches and switched from a diet of kibble to live prey. Some kind of bird, I don’t know exactly what. At first I had trouble adapting to the change, but after watching those around me I eventually figured it out. Grab the head and twist. It was so simple.

None of us had names. Most of us were incapable of speech, beyond throaty screams and animalistic howls. We created a rudimentary language, composed of gestures, pheromonal signals, flushing of skin patterns, latent psychic communication, and what few sounds we could make. It was a crude language, but it worked well enough for our purposes. I had my own internal system for telling individuals apart. The one who always smelled was Stinky, the one who pushed the others around was Bossy, and so on.

[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Fabius_Bile|I remember our creator]]. How I hated him. I will never forget his odor, a strange mix of preservatives and death. Although most of the overseers smelled of death in some way, none of them smelled like he did. Sometimes he would come to the pens and take one of us away. They never came back. He considered us all failures. Stinky had digestive problems, Bossy was too aggressive, my eyesight was too poor, and so on. He also considered us failures as a group. He had expected us to come out of the womb walking, talking, and quoting philosophy. Instead he got a set of maladjusted ghouls, pale-skinned soldiers that seemed incapable of what he wanted. It was strange. He wanted to create supermen, humans that could grow into functional adults without the need of any other. Yet he treated us like animals, apparently not noticing or not caring about how we hid things in our pens, or filched things from our Drukhari caretakers. Stinky even broke out of his pen to kill one that had threatened his surrogate mother. She was one of the few who hadn’t rejected her infant abomination. I envied him for that.

I remember my first kill. I was fully grown at the time, both in body and mind. Our creator had struck some kind of bargain with a Drukhari Kabal, using our services as soliders against their rivals in exchange for reciprocity. Of course, we had no idea that any of this was going on. All we knew is that we were suddenly taken outside the pens and dumped in this strange, new environment. I could smell the pheromone markings of the ones who had gone ahead of us. The alluring scent of the males, the more familiar scent off the females, smells of battle and blood. They triggered some kind of curiosity in us, and we moved ahead.

I followed the rest of the herd until we reached the din of battle, where we started to split up as our interest waned. I came across a Drukhari taking cover behind a series of containers, more concerned about shots fired from the other side than an ambush from behind. Our eyes met for a second before I attacked. Like an idiot I charged him in a straight line, and in response he brought up his splinter rifle and put a round into me. It was painful, and the poisons covering it would prove problematic in the long term, but at that moment I stopped more due to surprise than to pain. The two of us stared dumbfounded at the crystaline needle sticking out of my chest, clear fluid already hardening and forming a scab on my pale, blue-veined skin.

Looking back on it today, being older and wiser I would have done things very different. I was young and stupid. Fortunately so was he. If he was smart he would have stayed back, using his superior speed and agility to wear me down from a distance. He had grown fat and arrogant glutting himself on mon-keigh souls that were so much smaller and weaker than he was. He wasn’t expecting a mon-keigh his own size, who could look him in the eye with their flat, grey eyes. In the split second he stood gawking at the failure of his splinter pistol to put me down, I lunged forward and snapped his neck. Grab the head and twist. Just like the bird.

When the fighting was over I was returned to the pens without any medical attention. My body temperature had dropped and I had gone into shock. Our creator half expected me to die from my injuries and the others to cannibalize my remains. “The inability of man to eat his own dead without preparation is yet another biological weakness of our kind”, or something to those words. However, his expectations were misplaced. The others in my crèche did not eat me. They huddled up to me, keeping me warm through the night with their body heat.

I remember the first time I was exposed to the trigger scent. Our Creator had picked another fight, this time with [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#The_Fallen|a group of humans even larger than we were, dressed in armor so heavy they were as wide as two of us put shoulder to shoulder, and smelling so revolting to our senses our creator smelled good in comparison]]. He wanted us to attack them, and we weren’t doing as he had wanted. Although we may not have been the smartest of beings, we weren’t dumb. That’s when he released the trigger scent. All of a sudden my nostrils were filled with a musky odor, and my vision was awash with a kaleidoscope of colors. We rushed at the towering figures with a sudden disregard for our own safety as we had before. The giants were bigger and stronger than we were, but we overwhelmed them in a tide of bodies. Bossy ripped out the throat of one of the giant men with his teeth, even though it took him several tries to do so. One of the other giants tore him in half for that with his bare hands a moment later. We killed and killed and killed, until there were none left to kill, and then we tore the corpses into tiny pieces in a frenzy. I heard an animalistic scream. It took me a second before I realized it was coming out of my throat.

I remember when I was supposed to have died. Yet another Drukhari Kabal had come to our creator with an offer. They needed bodies and hunting hounds for a raid on realspace. I was one of those that was given. It was the first time I set foot in the Materium. I was almost overwhelmed, the cool breeze on my skin, the feeling of soil between my toes, the sheer number of scents and sounds and thoughts around me. The raid did not go as planned. The Kabalites had expected to find a world of farmers and fishermen. They had not predicted that an army had been dispatched there on rotation. We fought like cornered beasts, but a raiding party had no chance against a dedicated army, and Drukhari and members of my crèche alike fell to lasgun and shuriken fire. I took a lasbolt to the shoulder and dropped, nearly trampled in the confusion. I was lucky to have “merely” broken a leg. After the battle the dead were piled high, the corpses to be disposed of by burning. I was buried among them, overlooked among the dead and the dying. Though my arm and leg would not regain function for another month, I was able to pull myself free and limp to the safety of the forest, the smaller humans apparently unable to smell my trail of blood.

Our creator had treated us like animals.

And if there is one thing that animals are very good at doing, it is surviving.

</div>
</div>

== My Dinner With the Emperor ==

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“So what exactly happened during the Raid on Nurgle’s Mansion, anyway?”

The Emperor was glad for his enhanced reaction time at that moment, else he would have spit up the wine that he was drinking. To be honest he always considered himself more of a vodka person, or one of those "tanna" drinks the Valhallans always raved about having originally come from Earth. However, Sonoma was a planet known for its wineries, and that meant wine-tasting was the order of the day.

The government of the planet was a plutocracy, which meant that in practice the person with the largest voice in government was the who owned the largest percentage of the wineries on the planet. It was a world that had been part of the Imperium for some time, having been unified by one of the primarchs during the Great Crusade (Fulgrim, he immediately recalled), but one he had never been to personally, being on the far end of the Segmentum Tempestus. So when the Travelling Court was due to pass through that region of space, it was a lost opportunity he wanted to make sure to rectify.

The plutarch, as was often the case, was overjoyed that the Travelling Court had decided to visit his world, and immediately insisted on a stately dinner where he could introduce the Emperor and Empress to the other major shareholders in the vineyards on the planet. The Emperor was personally not that interested in a fancy dinner with the heads of state, but he didn’t want to turn down such hospitality. Now he was kind of wondering if he should. Isha was the epitome of civility as always, though the Emperor knew she was probably at least a little bit bored. Despite her demure nature, she always said she liked visiting former feral worlds more, claiming that the people there weren’t as repressed as these high society types and as such they knew how to live a little more.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The Emperor wasn’t surprised that the plutarch would ask about that story, it was probably one of the two stories he was asked most often to tell, but he was rarely asked about it so bluntly and while Isha was with him no less. He didn’t mind telling the story, but when Isha was around he always felt slightly guilty because it always made her seem like a damsel in distress. Granted, she had been had been held captive by one of the most powerful entities in the universe for thousands of years and tortured in ways only a god could truly comprehend, but sometimes it seemed like the story made her look bad.

“That old story?” Isha said from across the table. “Come now. You've told that story from Ultramar to Xenobia. Everyone probably knows it by heart at this point."

The Emperor internally sighed, he was privately grateful to Isha for that. In part because it meant he didn't want to dredge up the bad memories that represented, and in part because he didn't want to embarrass Isha in front of the plutarch with one of the low points of their life.

"Here's an idea. Why don't you tell them the story of what happened down on Sarosh."

The Emperor almost choked on his wine again.

“Are you sure?” the Emperor deflected, “Most of that story is rather dry, and I don’t think this is the kind of crowd who would be interested in that kind of thing. Besides, you know everything that happened there already. I wouldn’t want you to get bored, too.”

"Oh you can tell it. I don't mind."

Isha positively glimmered, the edges of her upper jaw plate like little fangs as she bit her lower lip.

"I'm sure you wouldn’t," the Emperor grumbled.

“With all due respect, your majesties,” the plutarch said, slightly red-faced, “Would someone please just start saying what happened already? It sounds like there’s a juicy story to be had and the rest of us don’t know about it. It just isn’t right to have a good wine without a good story to go with it.”

“Very well,” the Emperor sighed with resignation, “But in order to fully understand the story you’ll need to be familiarized with the planet of Sarosh. Sarosh was discovered near the end of the Great Crusade, but the War of the Beast broke out before it could be incorporated into the Imperium. After the war fully integrating Sarosh into the Imperium became top priority. This wasn’t merely for charitable reasons. Sarosh had managed to survive the Old Night with much of its technology intact. They had lost some of their most advanced technology and were behind us in other areas, true, but they retained technology that most of the rest of the galaxy had lost and it’s possible they may have even had STC printouts on their world. The Saroshi even claimed that their government was the same as it had been all the way back before the Age of Strife. If Saroshi technology could be reverse-engineered and exported to the galaxy at large, the standard of living in the Imperium would have jumped dramatically, and it would have gone a long way towards reparing the damage done by the War of the Beast.

When the Imperium first discovered Sarosh during the Great Crusade, the Saroshi welcomed us with open arms, and eagerly joined the Imperium as a Survivor Civilization However there always seemed to be problems whenever someone tried to integrate Sarosh with the rest of the galaxy. Attempts to build infrastructure to connect Sarosh to the wider Imperium were sabotaged. Funds meant to improve standards of living were embezzled by government officials. And any efforts to figure out exactly who was mishandling things was stymied by a bureaucracy that was downright labyrinthine. As is so often the case, I heard that there was trouble on Sarosh and set that as the next destination for the Travelling Court to get things straightened out once and for all.

I ran into the exact same problems that all the people before me did. I even met with the leaders of Sarosh themselves, who tried to assure me that things were progressing as fast as they could. On top of that the Saroshi ambassador, who was my primary contact with the Saroshi government during my time there, seemed to have a dislike for me that was borderline pathological. I tried to read his mind to figure out what his problem was, but his thought process was too oily and muddled to get anything out of him without breaking something. Not exactly unheard of in a politician. At the time, I merely chalked it up to him thinking I was just another two-bit warlord here to try and take away Saroshi sovereignty, rather than a potential ally greeting another survivor of the Long Night. It turned out to be something rather worse.

The Saroshi ambassador had come aboard the ''Bucephalus'' every day for nearly two weeks straight with nearly nothing to show for it. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the Saroshi government reported to me that they had a major breakthrough in the integration problems, and they wanted me to come to the planet’s surface for the first time since I had initially came to Sarosh to tell me in person. They asked me to meet with the ambassador who was arriving on a low-orbit shuttle, and would escort me to the Saroshi capital personally.

The first sign I noticed that something was wrong was when Constantin Valdor came up to me and asked if he could stand in front of me when the doors opened to meet the Saroshi ambassador. I asked him if something was the matter and he just replied that he had a funny feeling about the whole thing.

When the doors to the shuttle bay opened, the ambassador entered the Bucephalus the same way he had for the past two weeks, surrounded by his nine bodyguards. Except of course, this time the bodyguards had their weapons unholstered and their rifles levelled at us. The ambassador had this wild look in his eye, ranting about how my hour of reckoning had at last come at hand. One moment the ambassador was having his moment of megalomaniacal ranting, spittle flying from his lips.

The next thing I knew, the ambassador had a handmaiden standing behind him, one of those thorn-swords jutting out of his chest. I'm used to the speed at which Eldar move and even with that in mind, I have to say, the followers of Isha and Cegorach are fast.

While I had been meeting directly with the leaders of Sarosh, the Handmaidens had made their way to the planet's surface by their own means and had been discreetly conducting their own investigation of the planet's population. What they found was rather disturbing. The inhabitants of Sarosh were, to put it bluntly, Chaos worshippers, and they were itching at the opportunity to take revenge against the man to openly defy the Ruinous Powers and the goddess who would spurn the affections of the Plaguefather. The ambassador himself had even been ritually prepared for the role, having accepted a major blessing from Tzeentch in exchange for the chance to strike a blow against the most hated foes of Chaos. The blessing not only prevented anyone from reading his mind, but even worse made psykers think it was absolutely normal that they couldn’t do that unless directly told otherwise.

“The Handmaidens reported their findings back to their mistress and their leader told the whole story to Constantin, which is how the Custodians knew. Those two always shared everything with each other.”

“Pardon me,” the plutarch said, “I don’t mean to interrupt a good story, but that reminds me of something. Where, might I ask, was the Empress during all this?"

"Ah, funny thing about that. She was down in the cargo bay, disarming the bomb. See, the insurgents had realized they needed a back-up plan in the likely event that Plan A failed. So they sent a re-wired cyclonic torpedo aboard, tried to disguise it as one of our own. While we were focusing our attention on the assassins, the torpedo would have detonated and killed us all. Crude but effective. It might have worked, if not for one thing."

"Which was?"

"It turns out the capacitors of a cyclonic torpedos don't work so well when they have a solid centimeter of Eldar rinnweed growing between the two conductor plates."

“The story, unfortunately, doesn’t have that happy of an ending. The Handmaidens and Custodians dealt with the intruders easily enough, but the planet was another problem. The Saroshi were gearing up a massive Chaotic ritual designed to pull a massive number of daemons into realspace. We ended up having to Exterminatus the planet to stop it in time. No amount of ancient technology was worth creating a massive, active Warp rift right in the middle of Imperial space. And even then it was hard to tell what tech and what were really “blessings” from the Ruinous Powers. I have my suspicions that the high level of technology the Saroshi had were either Chaos-derived or due to their leaders bargaining with the Ruinous Powers for sanctuary during the Age of Strife.

I learned two things from the whole debaucle. The first being you can never be too paranoid when it comes to diplomacy with unknown powers.”

“And the second?”

“Never underestimate your wife,” the Emperor said flatly.

Milady," a voice said from behind the plutarch, "the inspection is complete."

"What the devil?" He exclaimed.

"Ah, Galadrea," the Emperor said. "Glad you could make it".

He should have known Galadrea would have chosen that moment to intervene. Galadrea had always been as humorless as Valdor but she did have a bit of a flare for the dramatic. He had noticed the green-clad Eldar enter the room, but aside from Isha he was perhaps the only one to do so, the rest of the occupants too fixated on his story to notice. The fact that she had entered from the one direction where no one else could have directly seen her only furthered the Emperor's suspicions that she had chosen to make her entrance as dramatic as possible.

“Plutarch,” the Emperor said, watching the man continue to sputter in confusion, “I would like to introduce you to Galadrea, Head of the Handmaidens of Isha. Now, Galadrea, I believe you said you had something to report?”

“We found no signs of Chaos corruption. No worship of the Ruinous Powers. There are the usual issues, crime, poverty, but no more so than any other Imperial world. The world is clean.”

“Well, there you have it,” the Emperor told the plutarch, “A clean bill of health from the acolyte of a literal goddess of healing. You have nothing to worry about.”

"Thank you, Galadrea", Isha said, "You may go now."

The Eldar gave a curt bow and then left as silently as she arrived. The source of his shock eliminated, the plutarch gradually managed to calm himself back down.

“Well, that was a bloody good story, but that doesn’t really answer my initial question. Sorry for asking, but you don’t get answers of what happened during these things straight from the horse’s mouth every day you know. You hear so many rumors but it’s hard to believe even half of them are true. I’d still like to know what really happened during the Raid. And what about that whole hulabaloo with the ork diplomats during the War of the Beast?"

Internally, the Emperor sighed. It was going to be a long day.

</div>
</div>

==A Necron's Duel==

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Obyron met Imotekh on the great plaza outside of the palace, an expanse of finest marble over a mile wide. He stood and watched, a modest honor guard flanking him, as Imotekh's ornate barge descended from orbit. It came to a silent halt hovering a meter over the stone and Imotekh's honor guard marched down the ramp in inevitably perfect order, far larger and more ornate in full ceremonial apparatus. Behind them strode Imotekh himself, towering above the lesser Necrons of his guard, scroll marked with the physical seal and hologramic codes of the Silent King in one hand.

"I come bearing a message for the Nemesor Zandrekh from the hand of his liege the Triarch Szarekh," Imotekh intoned. "Where is he? The message is to be delivered to him personally."

"I am Lord Obyron, empowered by my liege Zandrekh to speak and act in his name," Oberon replied. "I may receive the message as though it was delivered in person."

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Imotekh responded by releasing the scroll, which unrolled itself while hovering midair. The scroll projected columns of shimmering glyphs from its surface, carrying the force of the Silent King's will like a physical blow, subliminal command codes embedded in the hypertext.

You are commanded, it read, to travel to the court of the Triarchy and present yourself there to the Triarchs to renew all oaths of fealty, so that... Oberon needed to read no more to know the meaning. Submission and slavery. The command codes washed over him without finding purchase.

"No," he replied.

"You defy the will of Szarekh?" Imotekh asked.

"I do, and I challenge you to an honor duel to determine the matter."

Imotekh did not hesitate. "I accept," he declared, and in a flash of teleportation his ceremonial robes and scepter were replaced with warplate and warscythe. With the challenge issued and accepted, their respective retinues fell back to give them space, and a dome of glowing energy sprang up around the two Necron lords from the pavement. The duel was to the death; the force field would not fall until one or both of them were dead.

The two duelists stood motionless for a long, frozen moment. Then they exploded into motion. The basic necron warrior may be slow to move and react; not Obyron or Imotekh. Equipped with the finest bodies necron science could provide, musculature that had more in common with railguns than anything nature had ever devised, they moved like lightning. Their strikes cracked like pistol shots, the edges of their blades breaking the sound barrier with every swing. A human observer, had there been one present, would have seen nothing more than blurs as the two necron lords traded blows. Sparks showered across the arena as the exotic energies contained in their blades and armor clashed with every blow.

After a couple of minutes of this furious violence, the two combatants stepped back from each other. Both Imotekh and Obyron were covered in dozens of cuts, all of them already healing as necrodermis flowed back into its proper place. Necrontyr dueling tradition had always placed a strong emphasis on allowing the enemy to get in a minor hit in order to set yourself up for a more devastating counterblow. This tradition had been immeasurably reinforced now that their bodies were made of living metal instead of flesh and blood.

For all its furious violence, that exchange had merely been the opening bout as the two rival Lords sized each other up. Now, given a brief respite as they both strategized their next moves, neither was terribly impressed by what they had seen. In Obyron, Imotekh saw nothing more than an up-jumped street brawler, his strikes and parries devoid of subtlety or grace. In Imotekh, Obyron saw someone who, for all his mastery of the traditional forms, was unable to innovate and go beyond them.

Still, neither was about to underestimate the other. By unspoken agreement, the brief moment of stillness ended, and the two Necron lords charged once more.

The two clashed for over an hour in inconclusive battle, untiring, neither quite able to gain an advantage. The end, when it came, happened in a matter of seconds.

Obyron's warscythe was of the finest quality, but Imotekh's was the very best that all the armorers of the Silent King could provide. The incredible intensity of the duel pushed even Necron craftsmanship to its very limits and beyond, and it was Obyron's weapon that gave out first. Blocking another thunderous strike the haft shattered just below the head, the blade spinning away and leaving Obyron holding nothing but a useless, sparking shaft. Without hesitation he dove to retrieve the blade, scooping it up from the flagstones. But Imotekh took swift advantage of the opening, and even as Obyron turned back to face him his blade was scything down. Obyron tried to dodge, but was only able to move just enough that the warscythe only took his arm instead of his (un)life. The arm which was not holding the broken blade.

Expecting the strike to be a killing one, Imotekh had overcommitted slightly; just enough to give Oberon an opening. He lunged, closing in an instant with Imhotekh to absolute minimum range where the two were almost directly touching. Now, despite his missing arm, Obyron held the advantage. The warscythe, a two-handed polearm, was not a weapon for a knife fight; and though he was trained and experienced to the peak of perfection in the formal dueling styles of the warscythe, Imotekh had little experience in knife-fighting. Oberon, on the other hand, had begun his career as a duelist in the gutters armed with a shard of broken glass. Now, he was truly in his element.

Imotekh tried to open distance again, but his single mistake had already doomed him. Oberon drove his shattered scythe into a gap in Imotekh's armor, right into his neck, and then severed it entirely. Imotekh's head fell to the pavement, his body remaining rigid and upright, until both were whisked away by the recall mechanism. The force field enclosing the dueling circle fell.

None of the assembled honor guards said a word; there was nothing to say that would not have been redundant. In perfect unison Imotekh's retinue turned and filed back aboard their ship, which then rose into the heavens in the same perfect silence with which it descended. Oberon watched its ascent, hypertechnological eyes refocusing again and again to keep it in view as it rose hundreds of kilometers to reenter Imhotekh's ship in orbit. Then, a brief shimmer, and the ship was gone.

Oberon stood there for a couple of seconds more, then turned and strode back into the palace. He had an arm to replace.

</div>
</div>

==Ork Diplomacy==

Editor's Note: Needs to be adjusted, since it was decided Fabricator-General didn't die in the Beheading.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''
Deep in the heart of the Imperial Palace, decisions were being made that would affect a galaxy.

“Reports from Triton indicate that most of the moon has been taken by the enemy.”

“Give the order to all remaining forces on Triton to retreat. If the Orks take the outer planets of the Sol system any surviving assets will be blockaded on both sides, and we don’t need them cut off from the rest of our forces.”

“The facility on Cthonia has sent a message indicating some kind of combined Crone/Dark Eldar fleet has descended on the planet.”

“Alert the Fire Wasps and the 299th. Tell them the first chance they get finishing their current missions to head to Cthonia. They probably won’t get there in a while, but unfortunately we are short on free resources.

The room itself was large and spacious. It was a war room, with a large table in the center, currently home to the highest military commanders in the Imperium. At its head was the Steward, eyes closed and seated in an position that seemed almost meditative. He needed to focus. The chair he was sitting in wasn’t the Golden Throne. That little piece of Imperial heritage was sitting on a floor approximately four levels above him. The Steward wasn’t even sure whoever built that thing ever intended for people to sit in it. Instead he was sitting on a much plainer, comfier chair, albeit one built for his frame. He needed it. His mind was good, but he needed absolute concentration to process the sheer amount of information necessary to organize the Imperial war effort. He had to make the right decisions, the lives of millions of people hung in the balance, and ridding his mind of any kind of external distraction helped.

“Intelligence indicates a portion of the main Ork WAAAGH! is diverting from the main fleet. Projections say it seems to be heading to Molech…”

“Enough,” he said, having finally reached his limit.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The Steward opened his eyes, looking at the three dozen or so concerned faces surrounding him.

“Give me five minutes. I need to take a break.”

With some consternation, the assembled military commanders of the Imperium stepped back, allowing the Steward to get up. Rubbing his face, the Steward walked out of the room and kept walking until he reached a small balcony overlooking a small garden in the Imperial Palace that was mostly untouched by all the excitement. He could feel the tension in the air. People were already anxious over the current state of the war, and recent events had only made things worse, to the point that the Steward had assigned the most significant members of the Imperium bureaucracy a Custodes bodyguard whether they wanted it or not. Truth be told, the Steward was starting to feel the stress eating away at him as well. He hadn’t had decent rest in over a month. Although he didn’t need the sleep of a normal human, even he was reaching his limits. He had spent most of that time sitting there in the war room, exploiting his ability to process information as best he could in order to organize the defense of Old Earth and its surrounding planets. He swore, if he had to sit in that chair for one more minute it was going to be the death of him.

Oscar, last of the Men of Gold, Warlord of Earth, Steward of the Imperium, was not having the best six months. To be honest, things hadn’t been going well for quite some time, what with the whole galaxy-spanning war going on, but the last six months or so were particularly bad.

First, there was the treachery of Grandmaster Drakan Vangorich, who in addition to being a master of the arts of assassination, it seemed, had a terrible sense of timing. One would think that one would wait until after all human life wasn’t under threat of being wiped out by Orks and corrupted Eldar from the Eye of Terror to spring their attempt to assassinate and replace the High Lords of Terra with their own puppet council. The Steward had found it necessary to leave the war room to personally deal with that. Four High Lords and numerous high ranking figures of the Administratum were dead at a time which the Imperium could ill-afford their loss. The loss of the Fabricator-General was a particularly devastating blow. Oscar had liked the previous Fabricator-General, who had been remarkably open to cooperation since the Unification of Sol, whereas his likely replacement, Kelbor-Hal, was a bit flaky. At least it was better than the other possible option for Fabricator-General, Zagreus Kane, who had the personality of steel wool.

Then, the Orks had decided to one-up Vangorich by teleporting an Attack Planet in-between Earth and Mars. The Imperium knew the Orks were coming, they had been blazing a path through the Segmentum Solar and had been expected to arrive on Sol’s doorstep any day now, but to teleport past the fleets blockading the way to the Imperium’s heart and just appear in the Sol System was something no one had expected. To the Imperium’s credit, between Perturabo, Dorn, and a thousand other siege tacticians, the Sol System was one of the most heavily defended systems in the Milky Way, and as soon as the leering iron skull had appeared in the sky it was immediately fired upon by the Sol system’s defense network along with some of the best ships of Battlefleet Solar and the Phalanx itself. Nevertheless, the Attack Planet was undeterred by the assault, shrugging off point defense systems and Nova cannon blasts as if they were mosquito bites.

Nothing even seemed to slow it down as the Attack Planet advanced on Earth, and as the two planets got dangerously close to each other’s Roche Limits the Imperium realized with some horror that the Orks meant to ram the Attack Planet into Earth.

The situation had seemed hopeless until the Phalanx swooped in and rammed itself into the Attack Planet that had once been Ullanor at a fraction of the speed of light, creating a bright flash which for a moment even outshone Sol. Everyone had seen that. Oscar could have sworn he felt that, even though he knew no vibrations could be transmitted through space. After that, the hollowed out planet shot through the Sol system like a billiard ball before finally teleporting out of the system somewhere around Pluto. Someone, apparently a man based on the voxcast that had gone out from the Phalanx just before the insane stunt, had commandeered the 30 kilometer ship and ordered a mass exodus before taking a skeleton crew of the bare minimum of people necessary to pilot the Phalanx and ramming it into the Attack Planet, though no one knew exactly who.

Oscar stopped. The man had singly-handedly saved Earth and the entire Imperium, and no one even knew his name.

It would be child’s play to figure out who it was, of course, assuming they weren’t all killed by Orks first. They had his voice on record, giving the order to pick up the survivors right before the Phalanx rammed itself into the Attack Planet. Still, the fact that no one on Earth seemed to know who they owed their lives to was a sobering thought. He would have liked to think that single act had killed the Beast and saved the Imperium, but reports indicated that a significant number of lesser Rokks and Ork ships had survived the loss of the Attack Planet and were currently regrouping for another push somewhere in the Oort cloud. Estimates said they would be ready to make another push for Earth in a matter of months. At the same time the primarchs and their legions were gradually trickling back into the Sol system. Sanguinius and Vulkan were expected to be back within the week. Angron was already planetside. A few primarchs were not likely to be able to get back to Earth anytime soon. Lion El’Jonson was still trying to sort out his legion’s massive rebellion issues. Perturabo was in a coma for the foreseeable future. Guilliman, Horus, and Curze were all still trying to hamstring the Beast’s hordes.

There were even reports of eldar entering the system to reinforce humanity, courtesy of Eldrad and their allies among that alien race. Regardless of what Oscar wanted, it looked like Sol was going to turn into a battleground. Not for the first time since the war began, Oscar found himself wondering if accepting Eldrad’s crazy proposal to rescue Isha from Nurgle’s mansion had been a good idea. Perhaps the war would have been inevitable, Chaos was truly a threat to humanity and the Ruinous Powers never seemed to like the idea of something that they couldn’t control, but having seen the cost of directly antagonizing said entities part of him was starting to regret having made the deal.

Oscar was so lost in his thoughts that he almost didn’t notice the small Administratum scribe running up to him.

“My lord,” he said, clearly out of breath from having run the entire way, “I bring important news.”

“What is it?” the Steward said, silently wincing at being called ‘my lord’.

“Three diplomats have just touched down on the landing pad in Uralia. They seek an audience with the Steward of the Imperium.”

The Steward grimaced. It appeared Draco Vangorich wasn’t the only person with a horrible sense of timing. Just before the War of the Beast, the Imperium had been in negotiations with the Auretian Technocracy. The Technocracy was a highly advanced human civilization spanning multiple star systems, with several technologies that appeared to be based off of STC designs that were previously unknown to the Imperium. Right before the War of the Beast broke out the Imperium had been in negotiations with the Auretian Technocracy to bring them into the fold as a Survivor Civilization. Although the Auretians were a peaceful people and amenable to the idea of joining the Imperium, they were not going to just roll over and give in to the Imperium’s demands, and the negotiations over the conditions of them joining the Imperium and the concessions both sides were willing to make had been particularly intense. Unfortunately, it seemed that total galactic war was not enough to stop that debate from continuing.

"Great, more problems,” the Steward muttered, “Tell them they will have to wait; I’m kind of busy right now.”

"But sir. The ambassadors aren't from the Auretian Technocracy. They're from the Orks."

And in response to this statement, perhaps the greatest revelation in the War of the Beast since the appearance of Attack Planet Ullanor, there was only one thing the Steward could say.

“What.”

"Nuhnuhnuhnono. No. This is a bad idea Oscar, I can't let you do this."

"I'm doing this, Arik, whether you like it or not."

The two gold-clad figures, the last Man of Gold and the gilded man who had watched his back since the Warlord’s armies had first marched out from Terrawatt, briskly walked down the halls of the Imperial Palace. The Steward had given the order to let the Orks be heard and had told the Administratum adept to have someone escort the Ork “diplomats” to have an audience in front of the assembled military commanders of Old Earth in the war room. If the Orks suddenly felt they had something important to say he wanted everyone to hear it.

"With all due respect this is likely some sort of trap. Most likely a spy to send information back to the Beast or some kind of sabotage ploy. They're Orks. Diplomacy just isn't in their nature. Since when have the Orks ever shown any signs of higher intelligence?"

"When we found out they had built an empire at Gorro. When we found out that it wasn't the only one. When we found out they could organize themselves into a galaxy-spanning WAAAGH!"

Arik groaned, but Oscar knew that response. He had won this debate, for now.

Having reached their destination, the door slid open for the two men and the two entered the war room. As the Steward entered the war room from the side, he looked over at the numerous generals of the Imperium, who were debating the best course of reaction over the map of the Sol system and its immediate neighbors in the center of the table. In the Steward’s absence, they had picked up where the Steward had left off, arranging for the inevitable Siege of Terra, as the Fabricator-General had called it.

Chief among them was the short woman standing at the side of the table, who seemed to be taking the lead in organizing the Imperium’s defense during Oscar’s momentary break, mostly by barking orders at men that were nearly twice her size. Honen Mu, former Uxor of the Geno Five-Two Chilliad.

Honen Mu was far from the most imposing figure, the recaff-colored, dark-haired woman being no more than five-foot flat and probably weighing only forty kilograms soaking wet, but by Terrawatt if she wasn’t one of the best strategists that Oscar had ever seen. Give her a regiment of soldiers, and within a few days she would have them dancing on the battlefield. Hers and the other guy’s.

When the Imperium had first encountered the Chilliad during the Unification Wars, Mu was already at the point where the rejuvenants wouldn’t do much more than prolong the use of the Chilliad’s psychic powers, or cept, which eventually burned out some time during the Unification of Sol. Although most Uxors retired to non-combat roles after their cept burned out, Mu had proved talented enough that she not only remained in the Imperial military, but had actually gotten promoted. She may have lost the cept that made Uxors of the Geno Five-Two Chilliad so dangerous in battlefield-level engagements, but she hadn’t lost any of her wider scale campaign management ability. Mu hadn’t been using her psychic powers as a crutch, she was genuinely talented at strategy. In terms of long-term theater-scale planning Guilliman was probably her only equal, and Oscar hated to think of what the two of them would do if they ever decided to go at it to see who the best was. Probably destroy half a sector in the process.

“Mu,” he said, nodding to each of the generals in turn, “MaSade, von Asterberg, Temoc. How are things going?”

“The Imperium hasn’t fallen apart in the five minutes you stepped out to take a break,” Mu said, speaking for the assembled generals and administrators of the Imperium. “So I think we’re doing fair enough.”

“I trust you all heard the news regarding the visitors we are about to be receiving?”

“How could we not? Ork diplomats. Are you serious? When we it we made the messenger repeat herself just to make sure she hadn’t misheard something.”

On that note, the door on the far side of the room slid open with a hiss.

“And here are the figures of the hour,” Taranis muttered under his breath.

Three imposing figures strode into the room, led by another stuttering Administratum adept. There were three of them, a leader and two hangers-on, all heavy-set and ape-like in proportion. The two flanking figures were nearly seven feet in height, whereas their leader could probably look the Steward in the eye. The three were clad in simple robes, which obscured almost every feature of their body. If it weren’t for the reinforced leather armor on the figures’ joints and their leader’s three meter long iron staff, topped with a roaring metal Ork skull at the tip of the scepter, he would have thought they were kinebrach. The Administratum adept continued to gibber, though one would admit that would be the normal reaction to dealing with a figure twice their size.

“And…as you can see, the Steward is already here, awaiting your message,” he said, clearly trying to square away his diplomacy training with his natural fight-or-flight reaction, “Food and drink are available for all diplomats to the Imperium. And, of course, if you need an interpreter, all you need to do is ask.”

The lead ork reached up and pulled back his hood.

“Don’t need an interpreter. We tell you how to surrender, you surrender. Easy.”

The silence in the room was palpable. The Imperials all looked at the Ork as if he had just stood up and spoke Gothic. Which, to be fair, he had. Not just Gothic at that, Oscar grimly noted to himself, but fluent Gothic. Yes, the intonation sounded like it came from a tortured Grox, but there was none of the hesitation, none of the misplaced emphasis typical of those who spoke Gothic as a second language. The Ork spoke Gothic as if he had spoken it his entire life.

The Ork seemed slightly bemused by the Imperials’ reaction, as if he was taking pleasure into finally stunning the yappy humies into silence. Nevertheless, he soon seemed to grow annoyed by the continued silence. He had a job to do here, and if the humies wouldn’t start the conversation, he would.

“Oh come on now, don’t look at me like that. Name’s Bezhrak. Here as a diplomat, just like I said, swear to Mork. I even brought you a little gift as a...whaddya call it...a peace offering.”

The Ork reached into his robe and pulled out a shiny, dark object, hefting it across the table. It resembled a Custodian's helm but with a red, ponytail-like crest and a narrower face visor. Oscar recognized that helm.

Jenetia Krole's helm.

Oscar's eyes darted to the Custodian, noticing his hand was gripped so tight around his guardian spear it would have probably left finger marks if it wasn't made of auramite.

"Taranis," he said, voice level, though he wasn’t sure if it was Taranis or himself he was trying to keep calm.

“Fought good and hard this one did. Made some of our Weirdboyz heads explode just by being near ‘em. Course, even the best warriors can’t hold up when you’re being piled on by a few hundred boyz at once. Killed nearly fifty of us before they finally went down. We know you humans have some weird rituals you perform whenever one of your best warriors gets killed, so we thought we’d bring what was left of her back as a token of…

"You monster!" Arik exploded, "Have you an idea what..."

Arik was obviously about to go on some moral spiel about how barbaric the Ork's actions were, but he was stopped by a sudden larger-than-usual excitement-induced coughing fit.

"And what are you going to do about it, shinyboy, cough blood all over me?"

Bezhrak sneered, before apparently remembering something.

“Oh, that reminds me. A mutual friend wanted me to pass this along to you.”

The Ork drew a coin from his robes and flicked it at the Steward, the coin bouncing across the table a couple of times before finally rolling to a stop at the Steward’s feet. It was a gold coin, albeit one that had been heavily stained with dried, blackened blood. Human blood, ork blood didn’t stain that color. The Steward didn’t want to know where that blood came from. Embossed on the face of the coin was a symbol that was very familiar to the Steward.

The symbol of Ursh.

"And what is that?" The Steward said, eyes darting to the symbol like he had just spotted a venomous snake.

"Oh, that? That's just a gift from an old friend of yours. Couldn't remember the chap's name, he just kept going on and on about all his titles. Said he was busy dealing with the khan, the priest, the slave, and the sorcerer, but he just wanted you to know he was back and that he'd get around to seeing you soon enough.”

“I highly doubt you were sent here just to give gifts. You said you had a message from the Beast? What is it?”

“Want to get straight to business then. Respectable. All right then. The great Beast has you by the guts. Struggle, he’ll rip ‘em out. Surrender, and all you lose is your pride.”

“And that’s it,” the Steward said as dryly as possible.

“Well, you’d have to submit to Ork rule of course. We’ll even let you keep your homeworld, even though you took ours.”

All the mirth briefly disappeared from the Ork’s voice at that last line.

“Oh,” Bezhrak said, slipping back into the role of smooth diplomat, “One other thing. You tell us where the pansies are keeping the lead pansie that the other group of spiky pansies wants back. That gets them off our back and then, as far as we’re concerned, the war is over.”

“And what exactly would Ork rule look like?” the Steward said rhetorically.

“Oh I think you already know what that would look like,” Bezhrak said, a hit of smugness in his voice.

Indeed, the Steward did have some inclination as to what Ork rule would look like. When the Orks descended on a world, occasionally some of the local people would submit and worship them as gods, considering them agents of divine wrath made manifest. If there was one thing humanity seemed to excel at, it was convincing themselves to worship powerful natural entities as gods, something he knew all too well. Sometimes he really felt embarrassed by some of the things his species did. Those that the Orks deemed sufficiently Orky were allowed to fight alongside the Orks as cannon fodder, painting themselves green and firing autoguns into the air. Digganobz, they called themselves.

And the Steward had seen firsthand from the helmetcams of the Iron Warriors on Prax what the Orks did to those they deemed insufficiently orky. Turned into cattle, teeth knocked out and pumped up with steroids and growth hormones to the point that they could barely be described as bipedal, let alone human. Brains insensate to the point that all they could do is open their mouths upon stimulation by light to have nutrient-filled industrial hoses forced down their mouths. Personally it almost reminded him of the Slaugth.

Bezhrak looked around the war room. “So?” he asked, his expression basically screaming that he was surprised the assembled humans hadn’t answered immediately “Give up or die? Choose.”

The room remained deathly silent. Bezhrak looked back to the other orks, as if seeking affirmation that they were all seeing the same thing, before turning back to the humans.

“Don’t want to die? Last chance?”

The Steward broke the silence.

“I think you know our answer.”

Bezhrak sighed.

“Useless,” he said, “worse than snotlings”.

He looked over to his fellows, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

“No reasoning with humans. They’re just illogical. Break ‘em, kill ‘em, eat ‘em, they understand that. Try to talk to them in terms they understand, and they turn around and do the exact opposite. They say they want to live but try and offer that to them and all of a sudden they want to fight, which is fine by me, but…”

"Enough."

The Steward's voice was flat and monotone, low but just on the edge of hearing. Almost more felt than heard.

"You send us veiled threats in the form of gifts. You give us an offer that we cannot possibly fulfill. This isn't a peace offering. It's intimidation. What is the purpose of all this?"

Bezhrak snorted.

“You look down on us. Call us ‘barbaric’. Look at us being proper Orky and think we’re dumb, think you’re better than us. Because you’re ‘civilized’. But look at us now. Look at what the ‘barbarians’ have done. It’s not the ‘civilized’ folk of the galaxy who beat you back all the way to your home planet and come knocking at your door, now is it? We’re much tougher than you give us credit for. You push us, we push back. You hit us on the head, and we become more clever. You try to kill us, and we just come back for another go.

And look where being ‘civilized’ has got you. You lot just let someone walk right into your halls and insult you all right to your faces. But you wouldn’t dare harm ‘em. Because they’re a diplomat. I mean, after all, it wouldn’t be the civilized thing to do.”

The Steward stood, his hand grabbing the ear of the chair and snapping it with a loud crack. His face was a mask of stone, only his eyes showing the sheer anger burning underneath.

“I have, tried, time and again, to be reasonable. Tried to be optimistic, to assume the best in people. And I keep getting it thrown back in my face. Well then. Maybe it’s time I stopped being reasonable. Perhaps it’s time I get unreasonable.”

Bezhrak grinned, teeth and tusks bared.

“So what are you going to d…”

The Steward thrust his hand up in a claw-like gesture, palm facing him, the sheer psychic force stopping the Ork' retort in his throat. As if crushing an orange, the Steward slowly clenched his hand into a fist, the Ork’s body crumpling in time with the flexing of his fingers. As he died, the Ork screamed “WAAagh!”, like many of his kin. But it was a high-pitched, wheezing WAAAGH!, one that if people heard it would have sounded more like a cry of desperation than a battle cry. Though that may have just been the air being forced from his lungs. The Ork’s body burned with golden fire, spores erupting into golden motes before they could even hit the ground. If he didn’t know better, the Steward could almost have sworn he saw fear in those eyes.

The remains of what had once been the Ork known as Bezhrak hit the ground with a wet plop., both Orks and humans shocked by what they had just seen. Then the Steward snapped his head to look at the remaining Orks, methodical and almost robotic in his motion.

“I assume the rest of you are smart enough to carry a message?”

The Steward did not even wait for the Orks to answer.

“That”, he said, pointing at the fist-sized, leaking remains of the Ork on the ground, “That is my message. Go back to the Beast and tell him that is my answer to his demands. Now get out.”

The Orks left the room as quickly as they could, having seen what happened to their leader. The rest of the room looked between another, unsure as of what to do. Even Arik Taranis and Honen Mu seemed torn between whether they should come to the Steward's aid or leave him be. For most of the people in the room the Steward was their leader, and for many he was as close to them as a family member or a friend. However, they had also just seen their friend crumple a full grown ork into a lump the size of a beverage can. Finally, it was Mu who worked up the courage to break the silence.

"Are you...okay?"

Oscar took a moment to compose himself, taking a deep breath in and out. He had let his emotions get the better of him, and that was wrong. He wished Malcador was here. Malcador had known how to get through to him better than anyone else. It was times like this that he wished his adoptive father was still around.

“Yes,” he said, easing back into the role of stoic, unbreakable Steward of the Imperium, “I’m fine.”

“So what happens now?” Arik said, looking over at the remains of the ork on the ground. "It looks like diplomacy went about as well as expected."

“I don’t know,” the Steward said, once again feeling that gnawing feeling of uncertainty in his gut, “I just don’t know.”

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</div>

== Nails ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

My eyes grow dim. My strength is spent. My rage is quenched. My blade is clean.

I was born in poverty, I think. Simple eyes of a child do not see clearly. Was it poverty? We weren’t unhappy. At lest I don’t think we were.

I can’t remember their faces any more. That’s a lie. I can remember their faces. I always will. Mother. Father. Sister. Brother. Grandmother. Uncle. We all lived together in one small home above the bakers shop. I think that’s what my parents were. Bakers. Not warlords. Not priests. Not great warriors or adepts or wizards. I wanted to be like them. I should have been like them.

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I don’t remember what happened to them. That’s a lie. I do. I do. Oh God I do. I don’t want to. If I do I am that screaming, weeping child again. No more. No more. Never again.

I was weak and tried to run. Better if I had run back into the burning home. Better to have ended there.

When the Warlord found me it was at the head of army like no other. All I had know of armies were cyber-flagellants and howling marauders spurned on by men with whips. But not these. They marched with eerie harmony and brought death with precision. No berserker charge, no frenzy, no bloodlust just the steady unstoppable wave pouring into Carthisisa.

I was a pit fighter. I murdered people for the entertainment of other people. They gave men the pick of the slave pens for my troubles. They expected me to indulge base urges. They wanted me to fall like them. Be a Not-Person. I picked for the sake of pity and charity of the most wretched and hopeless.

One of the giants came to my door and I stood before him, my adopted children behind me. I was big but he was a two head taller than me at the least and clad in armour like a tank. Expressionless eye lenses swept over me and mine and I prepared to sell myself dear. I don’t know how but I knew he met my eye through that helmet and he looked away and moved on.

Scholars like I am not sometimes say that history goes in circles. That things happen because they have happened. One tragedy only needing one just like it as cause for more. In that moment I felt the hateful wheel of fate wobble. I was still alive. My family were not enslaved, out masters were dead, we were free.

At the head of this army was the man who I would spend most of my life serving. I would give my life for the sake of my sons and daughters. I killed for him. I lead his soldiers. I became like the monsters he had set upon my masters. I gave my health and my sanity for him.

Why? Because he didn’t ask that I kneel. He demanded that I stand. That I never again bow my head to unworthy men.

I lived longer than I should have. Longer than I was expected. I watched my children grow up and become mothers and fathers and grandparents and eventually die. A few even managed to die peaceful. It seems a novel way to go. I will soon go that way, to no ones surprise more than my own. All bar one of my children are gone, one way or the other. I am told I have many descendants but I have not met them. They are distant to me but I wish them only goodness, to be and to have. Kharn is still with me. I remember when he was a snotty nosed child with scabby knees. He has grown and I am proud.

He is a new type of soldier for a new era. I am a relic of an old one.

I feel it now. I sit in my chair and I know that I have seen my last sun rise. My heart slows. My bones grow cold, but I feel warm. Though I am filled with darkness the light will lift me away.

I have regrets. I have lived too long not to. Few will mourn my passing.

I will not see the sunrise and that is good.

+++ Data-slate entry attributed to Angron the Red Angel, Primarch of the Warhounds +++

+++ Property of Carthissia National Museum of Posterity +++

[[Special:Contributions/204.210.204.209|204.210.204.209]] Those Nails you carried in your heart should never have been yours to carry. We will carry your name but those nails have been laid to rest [[Special:Contributions/204.210.204.209|204.210.204.209]]

> "Nails" Addendum made by unknown hand several years after acquisition of the Data-slate. Meaning has been of much speculation down the years but no conclusive answers of who or why has been gathered.

</div>
</div>

== New Neighbors ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">

Ambassador Cyrus Kebede was not typically used to being summoned at such an unreasonable hour. No day in his opinion should contain more than one five o’clock. He knew it wasn’t the Por’s fault. The blue bastards had applied for a replacement Aun three years ago and were still waiting. Por’El Sana’ta Atha was doing the best he could with what he had. For one thing he was still and El when he should by all justice have been and O and that wasn’t making his job any easier, Acting O was a poor substitute for actual O. Especially with rival El’s on the register sheet. But truth be told O or not Tau biologically required less sleep than humans. Or at least less sleep than Ambassador Cyrus Kebede did, especially at the age he was with his grey hair and clicking knees.

Two lean and powerful Fire Caste stood before the door, splendid in their gear and menacing in their armaments as was proper. The inside of the room was… comfy Cyrus assumed. Or at least tried to be by Administratum style. Books around the walls, a desk, dark green leather chairs and carpet. He couldn’t be mad about it, not really. They got heir ideas of what was in style from what they saw on vids. Hw knew damn well that Tau had shot kneel-stools that they half knelt and half stat on and their desks were tables and much shorter.

The ornately decorated door parted and indeed he did see something that was of interest to him. The chair with it’s back to him was not as he had assumed as empty as it looked and a diminutive figure sat in it, covered in layers of old looking cloth.

“Oh” Cyrus said rather flatly. “Oh”.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

“You have met them? Good, that’s going to save us all a lot of time” El'Atha said. Clearly he was happy or at least relieved about something.

Cyrus hesitantly walked around to the front of the chair and let out an involuntary groan. “It’s a Hrud. Late juvenile, young adult judging by the size”.

“Wonderful, you have familiarity!”

“Sadly”. Ambassador Cyrus turned towards the figure in the chair several sizes too big for it, it’s feet hidden by rags but presumably dangling above the floor. “how many are coming?”

The hood of the heavy layered robes turned towards him, he caught a glint of what might have been compound eye and a voice like something slithering over a tomb a thousand years dry “Me. Me my kin. Me my folk. Other folk. Time is now of travel, time is now of move. Me my kin, others. We move. Need come here, need scurry, have night here, have places of night always here. Me my kin we Linger here”.

“Can we persuade you not to?” Asked ambassador Cyrus who was fully expecting a weeks worth of duplicate form filling by this time tomorrow. Or actually later today.

“Hold on, hold on. This is a Tau world, I invited you her for your experience, not to claim authority in the matter” said the water caste. It wasn’t an angry statement, they had known each other too long.

“Maybe, Maybe for me my kin. Not for others. We not asking. Can’t stop. Mirror Devils, Mirror Devils awaken from long sleep. Long time. We hide now for now. Hide in the shadows of others. Linger. Once we once built such worlds as this, now no more. Now Linger. Hide. Scurry far from light. Stay safe. Linger. So our Lord tell us. So we do. Maybe me my kin, maybe we leave if asked. Not others. They not me my kin. They come. Can’t stop”. The figure reached a hand further than expected, slowly towards the tea tray on the desk and from the overlong sleeves fell a carved bone totem. The sleeve retracted with the jar of honey.

“Is this a Migration?” Asked the increasingly old feeling Kebede

“Maybe. Maybe more yes. More yes then no. Other come. The godly but godless they build places to hide. We linger there. We linger here. Need to linger and hide”.

“Atha, my friend, I would advise that you don’t try to stop them. You won’t be able to if you tried”.

“Why is th-“ started the grey skinned tau.

Cyrus hoped that what he saw was an optical illusion. He really did no creature should be able to survive being folded 270 degrees on a horizontal axis and then folded in on itself like a collapsing house of cards. The creature vanished and the quill fell from Por’El Sana’ta Atha’s hand as they both stared in horror at the place the chair and it’s occupant had been.

“How did he do that?”

“No idea.”

“Is it teleporting?”

“No”

“Then he is still here but hiding”

“No. He’s gone. The door isn’t air tight”

“It hasn’t opened since you came in, Cy”

“Doesn’t matter. It will have folded itself thin enough to get between the door and the frame or under the door maybe. We don’t know how they do it”.

“Then how can the Empire-“

“Listen, my good friend Atha, there is an old saying amongst my people; Better in here pissing out than out there pissing in. This applies to the Hrud. They are only dangerous if cornered and they don’t take what will be missed. They instinctively try to hide and so will try not to be noticed by you and you people. If they are here the only way to stop them getting to the rest of your Empire would be to quarantine this planet for the rest of time. I suspect that’s not an option”

“It is most certainly is not”

“Then the Tau Empire is going to get a Hrud colony. Don’t worry the rest of the Imperium has them, even the craftworlds”.

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== Once More Unto the Breach ==

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It feels like a warm fire but smells like the first fat drops of rain on deep summer dust. He remembered that smell from childhood, one of the few things he could. There was grass between his toes and the distant sound of surf on shingle, he raised his hands to his brow to block the sun as he looked towards the beach. His hands were not right. He remembered this day, one of the last perfect days of childhood summer before what seemed eternal war called him but these hands were not right. These were not the hands of children, these were hands of a warrior, gnarly, leathery, scared with crooked fingers on the right and the ends missing of the middle and ring fingers on the left. And the raven marks of his kin on their backs. Warrior hands. Soldier hands. Not the hands of a child, his old hands.

There was a hand upon his shoulder firm and strong but not unkind. He knew that hand and had stood in the presence of it's owner many times though he had not yet looked upon her. Death; she stood with him always. As a warrior of the Kraken Bay she was the deity he had to favour above the others of his tribes pantheon and in return she put her gentle hand upon him in silent benediction. She had been with him now as his longest and truest friend. His tribe were long dead and forgotten to history now, the land they once dwelt in made unrecognizable, he had outlived notions of kin reluctantly.

He looked towards the warm sun, the sound of the shingle and the sea. The smell of it on the breeze. The hand squeezed his shoulder slightly, welcoming, inviting him to turn around and come with her. He knew that with her was his children, his wife, his siblings, his parents and legions of people he wanted, desperately and painfully wanted, to see again.

CLANG!

Murmurings from the multitudes above for a moment, the comforting and more recent smalls of old socks, camphor, engine oil and a hint of beer fading into the blackness, the comforting blackness in the safe depths of his sarcophagus.

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The blade missed taking his head off by a worryingly slim margin and instead deflected across the crown of his helm with a deafening clang, a bestial howl of foam flecks and stink and a similar roar from Russ, Primarch and fellow Dog Soldier of the Sixth Legion, brought the axe down on it's head like the storm god Thukko. The Ambush was working perfectly, the orks had them completely surrounded when they sprang from the ground and dropped from the trees, now they could charge in any damn direction they wanted and still get some trophy teeth. For lesser men this would be stupid to the point of suicide but they were far from lesser men and the orks did not know who they were fucking with.

A large red creature hopped over the falling brute and clamped down hard on his left hand, he swiftly brought his right hand up to tear it off, taking finger chunks with it leaving the axe dangling on it's chain and swinging back up to his blood slick hand. Bringing the creature swiftly up to his mouth and dug his own choppers into it's head and biting out it's brain as his axe caught another green creature in a chin splitting upper cut. Plate and chain and flack steaming with the blood of the slain, heart thudding like a war drum on amphetamine, and all about the screams of the dying and the damned. This was living, this was the white hot living of a Dog Soldier in the Imperial Army.

And her hand upon his shoulder, her breath in his ear singing to him softly. Comforting. When the weight gets too much, when the pain is too much to endure, when he stumbled for the last time she would be there to catch him when he fell. She would wait for him, he was one of her flock.

CLANG!

The smell of turpentine, expensive incense and cheap air fresheners. Muffled and muted voices growing clearer and closer and more familiar filtering into his sleepy metal box. He didn't much care what they had to say, it wouldn't matter to him.

The grass was brown and grey now, the shingle blasted out of the beach, even the coastline was a different shape. He couldn't find his village to say nothing of his house. How could he bury his wife if he couldn't find her? How could he bury his children? The tears came freely now, great hacking undignified blobs of salt water mingling into the ash mud of the radiation burned grass. Seemingly of it's own volition his hand moved towards his belt to the simple home forged steel eating knife his father had given him an eternity ago, pride shining in his eyes as a humble blacksmiths son went off to be a noble warrior of the Unification. His father had been buried long ago. Buried properly, an apple pip in one hand and a piece of bone in the other and old mother Varða raising the family, the tribe of Kraken Bay, in song to the gods of a man who lived not just well but good.

Who would sing for his people now? For his wife and children and their friends and neighbors? There was only silence. He would join them in that silence. He felt the metal part his beard hairs. Her hand was on his shoulder, she would catch him and hold him close. He was one of her flock.

He had once charged through a literal garden of despair, in a Hell like no other to raid the halls of a mad god. At the time it had been the most horrific thing he had ever seen. He now had new and terrible perspective.

The knife was slapped from his hand just as it pricked flesh and drew the first drop of blood. Turning he half expected to see her face. In his grief he had not heard the foot falls of his Primarch and friend.

"Not like this, old friend. Not like this. Not by your own hand. Take that hate, take that sorrow, hold it crush it 'till it get hot and hold it 'till it burns. This that we feel; let it keep us warm on cold nights, let it fuel our retribution. I promise you this, for every sorrow they have inflicted on our people we we repay them, we will take a steep bloodprice".

He looked out to the sea, to the setting sun, and knew that no matter how long he lived the price would never be filled. Not even when all the stars burned red.

CLANG!

"Has he died in my absence" The voice was resonant and very familiar. If a chunk of depleted uranium could talk it would sound like that.
"A heart still beats in that chest, though whether he can be awakened now is a matter between himself and his old gods" This voice less so, it was a buzzing thing, half or more machine. Though not cold like stainless steel but warm and welcoming like burnished brass and polished copper. Feminine, if metal and machine could be. Not that he could care, it no longer mattered to him.

The voices grew more distant again, fading away before dreams of other times and old memories once more.

CLANG!

"Oi, you still in there?" It was the first voice, all lead and half-life "Is this a box with my old friend or is it a carrion holding coffin?"

CLANG!
CLANG!

That's what that insufferable noise was, someone was hammering on his shell! OF ALL THE IMPERTINENCE! Weren't the half-dead allowed some sleep? He crash booted his eyes and stood up suddenly, servos and pistons springing to powerful life, his fortress form standing up to it's full and terrifying height. Leithon the Wraithguard, jester of Cegorach, huntsman of Kurnous and fellow veteran of the Long War and the raid on the mansion.

"You can't be sleeping at a time like this. Do you know what time it is?" He asked standing there dressed in animal skins and paint made from marrow and egg white and ash and dust. "it's time for another adventure, are you ready?"

"Ready? Ready?! Bitch please, ready does not even begin to fucking describe it!" Bjorn stepped forth from his workshop berth like the footsteps of doom, adamantium fist raised high above his head as lightning crackled about his clawed fingers. Doubts and horrors of the past melting away for a time and for that time he was young again and full of fire.

"To the Great Hall, somewhere up there is ale worth drinking and a mug big enough for me to drink from and I have slept for far to long"

Some hours and some kegs later Bjorn settled down, the bloodclaws and greyhairs alike eager to know what had roused him from his long slumber. All eyes turned to the wraith guard and his animal skin and woad wearing cohorts.

"We hunt a strange breed of monster, a creature of primordial awfulness, born of ancient sins and vices, it skulks in it's lair of a world made into hell where my kin once dwelt and once called itself kin to my kind" Leithon opened his hand and formed a hologram of a fearsome creature. It might have been an eldar once but blessings of gods too terrible to contemplate had made it so no longer. "It is beyond me and my followers to land the kill but not so the fearsome children of Fenris" A cheer of agreement resounded through the warriors gathered round to see the image of the monster "it is cunning and it is powerful and it is evil beyond words. Who here wishes to visit misery upon it?" Another cheer, another drink.

"Then we leave at first light" declared the ancient Bjorn, Fellhanded warrior of Kraken Bay.

The moment the rays of the mourning sun struck the doors of The Fang the waiting wolves and huntsmen charged out into the snow and the dark pine trees where once a king had walked and vanished. Unlike that old and infamous king of antiquity for the most part they returned several months later, though most had new scars and a troubled expressions, at least the younger men did.

To the greyhairs and the hunters and especially Bjorn and Leithon such sorrows and pain were old acquaintances. More ale was drunk, meat consumed and acts of casual intimacy perpetrated when appropriate. In time the revelry died away. In time Leithon once more said his farewells to old friend Bjorn and he and his huntsmen went to find new game. In time Bjorn felt tired once more, the years settling heavily upon his shoulders and he made his way back to the tunnels beneath The Fang, to a comforting berth in a familiar workshop with the sounds of home murmuring from above and he closed his eyes once more.

He could still feel her hand upon his shoulder, comforting. His gods had not abandoned him, he would turn to her in time. Maybe a time soon and she would catch him when he fell. When the years got too heavy, the sorrows too deep. He was one of her flock. One day soon.

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== Omega Girl ==

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''"Eldar, like others sapients, pass from a vital period between the unconcerned childhood and the responsibilities of the adult age. During our teen years, we must cope with changes, biological, psychological and spiritual, that wreak havoc on all levels of our lives. Until this point, there are not many differences from others species with similar vital rhythms. But... Those differences create an abyss that other beings can´t understand. Eldars teens must cope with two maddening factors that define our society. The first is that our minds were groomed be the Old Ones to enjoy the thrill of battle, to soar over its chaos unscattered to their horrors and to process millions of factors in an instant... This great gift, is our greatest weakness, as we just can´t simply wind down. Emotions, urges, passion, instinct, pain, regret... An Eldar feels them with the same intensity and can become lost, a prisoner in his own mind. And here comes the second factor to our curse... "She Who Thirsts" that accursed false-god who claim entitlement to our souls. That being born of our own sins and hubris is always in the periphery of our lives. Mother Isha and the soul stones give us some measure of protection against that unnatural hunger but are nearly not enough. We in the craftworlds must restrict our own minds and emotions to have a chance of survival. That is the reason for the rigidity of our society and the Path System... Is so hard to understand that a young mind can feel overwhelmed, trapped between its urges and needs?. We try again and again to make it easy for the younger generation... but not always succeded. Sometimes we fail and a young mind is lost."''<br>
---From The Living Chronicles of Féin-Cineálan. As written by Osurad---

The Council Chamber was closed to procedures, only Osurad, Farseer of the Féin-Cineálan Enclave and Lynn Minwen, up-an-coming Musician are present. It was easy to differentiate them, he in his formal clothes, regal and not showering emotions and she... Being she, pacing wall to wall, nervous and altered.

"You can´t do this to me!"
"Interesting. Lynn, I don´t feel that the time has transformed enough to accept that perspective of my reality."
"Cut that Farseer crap! You can´t force me"
"Hmm... Your vulgarization of the High Tongue is appalling. I think that less time loss in human-derived holofilms and more in your studies must be enforced."
"..."
"Well, it seems you are learning. One of the things I want you to understand is that it wasn´t me who decided in this course of action. The council AND your parents were consulted, and after a long deliberation, it was decided that you need discipline and a somewhat more broad education. It seems that we can´t give you that, so... the Imperial Guard will open his arms to a new recruit."
"But... But I don´t want to! I must change Path and... and the Governor has invited me to a party! Half the nobility will be there to hear me!"
"I´m sure you can continue practicing your Moonlyre skills as a hobby. And the Nobility can understand your little tenure in the Guardians."
"That... That is... This is... a witch's hunt! I´m not The..."

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There was a little change in the stance of Osurad. Just a change of weight and balance. For a human it was barely perceptible and inconsequent, but for an Eldar? It was the same as he shouts in rage. She stops in her pacing and shut up, quickly putting the hands over her mouth on instinctive fear. He walks slowly to the young Eldar, towering over her, and obviously displeased.

"Lynn Mynwen, don´t dare mention that title in our conversation! You talk about The Fall without respect! You talk about our lack of integration with the humans without knowledge! That end now! This is not about some childish prank! You, my child, has let a group of strangers roam through the security of this Enclave!"
"But, they are the Inquisition! They are the good guys!"
"The good guys!? You believe that I'm going to swallow that excuse! You know nothing about the Inquisition! I foresee their arrival and informed The Council! Whether you want it or not, the security protocols stand for a reason! Sigh... The sad part is that you don´t help them for a service to the community. You do it only to have some "Fun""

Lynn stood there, silent, adverting the Farseer gaze. Then slowly turn back and begin to left the room. As she crosses the door, half-crystallized tears begin to fall her cheeks. Her mind was in turmoil, racing through the scene again and again, and during a moment the mind barriers constructed during thirty years weakened, letting her hear the howling of Slaanesh. She barely registered the embrace of her parents and their words of comfort as they slowly guide Lynn towards their home.

Sometime later, she recovered from her grieving trance in her home, sorrounded by her parents arms. Slowly, to no break their own meditations, Lynn disengaged the mess of members and left. She needed to talk to somebody that doesn´t judge her, that listen to her, to a friend. And she can seek it in the form of Caellatyra, the only other girl of her age, currently serving her novitiate in the Isha's temple. As she cross the temple doors, a little kid runs to her legs and grab them. Fortunately, the All-Mother has given her people the reflexes to prevent the two to collapse in a heap. Giggling, the pair begins to play, trying desperately to exceed one another in the tickle fight. All this end when the little kid is raised to the heavens as Caellatyra take charge of her rambunctious ward.

"No... Let go! Want Ly!"
"Shh... Kaenel you are going to awake the other kids."

Half smiling, half sniffling the kid let the young priestess take him to the creche. As they walk the temple´s hall, Lynn reflected about being a priestess. For some time she(Like all girls) toyed with the idea of join Caellatyra, but in the end, she choose to not. The problem was, that she did not see herself popping child after child in existence. Her friend on the contrary, not only wanted a family, is that she has been blessed be Isha with the sort of body that humans dig. Finally, the trio reaches the creche and tuck the little Kaenel. After some moments the kid falls asleep and the young women begin to talk.

"Well Lynn, in the end, what is gonna be your punishment"
"Hm... They are going to exile me and erase my name from the Chronicles."
"Lynn don´t joke about that."
"I am only half-joking. They are going to send me to the Imperial Guard."
"Hm... And the problem is?"
"What!? I am a political exile! They fear my ideas!"
"Lynn can´t you take it seriously?."
"Ok, ok, but you must do the same!"

Caellatyra stands there a moment, looking to the sleeping children. Then walk to the altar and slowly pass her hands over a series of whraithbone effigies, as she offers a prayer for the lost lives, green flames illuminate the psyco-reactive material.

"Why do you think the IG is so bad?"
"Ugh... Is not that I think bad about the service, is just... That I don´t want to be forced to go."
"The most probable outcome is that you pass the next years doing guard duty. Even without being sent now, you must eventually join the Guardians. You can always return to the Musician Path. So... What is the difference now than in twenty years? Especially that now we are in relative peace."

Lynn sit there observing her friend and thinking in silence. Caellatyra meanwhile was silently congratulating herself as her words have finally induced an epiphany in Lynn. Finally, she answers the question.

"Because I want to be different. Sigh... My parents don´t talk about their service. They lost friends and saw literally millions die. All that to let us have some sort of future. And that is important! But when they return home, after the war, they changed Path and breed like humans until fathered me. And the weirdest? They act like that part of their lives wasn´t special, mostly because they live with fear. For Slaanesh, their emotions, the future etc., Etc., Etc. When I meet those humans, it was, I don´t know who to define it. They were different... They were... Different... Hm?"

As her friend fall silent again, Caellatyra serene expression change to one of horror.

"Oh no, Lynn! No! That is a horrible idea!"
"What?! Come on, I think it resolves everything! I will left and do something for the Imperium. It will be fun and after my return, I will be a heroine! Nobody will ever question me!"
"Look, Lynn, the Inquisition is not a game!"
"Of course not, but they don´t have a dress code! Is a win-win situation!"
"Dress code? Lynn! This is serious!"

Caellatyra drops the wise and serene priestess visage and was grabbing Lynn by the shoulders. Her friend was again losing herself on a whim.

"Lynn, please! I beg you to rethink this!"
"Hm... No!"

Lynn disengaging from her friend grasp, and giggling, begin to dance around the chapel. A mortified Caellatyra stand there, looking with apprehension her mad friend.

"Lynn can you stop to do that. Sigh... I don´t like your jesting."
"Nope! This deserves a dance! I have accomplished my goal to make you lose your shit!"
"Sigh... You see too many human holos. Lynn, I´m sure that Osurad will rethink his punishment if you talk whole-hearted to him."

Lynn stops and looks to her friend. Suddenly she feels revitalized and smiling, hugs Caellatyra, leaving afterward for her home. But she wasn´t going to talk with Osurad, her parents or any other stuck ass grow up. Nope. She has made a decision. She was going to be a heroine and then nobody is going to tell her how to live. So... He needs a plan... Well, she is a supersoldier, what will Loriel Zig do in the same situation?...

Epilogue:
Osurad was trying to meditate in his chambers. The news has altered his mental focus, and the paths to the future look altered. Somehow Lynn Minwen has passed beyond the curfew and left as a stowaway in Inquisitor Hand´s ship. Her parents were griefing, half the enclave was angry to the disparagement of the runaway girl, the other half was actually glad that the troublemaker has left, and the poor Caellatyra has been admonished for her lack of vision. But that was predictable, the sort of reactions that people make when they lose their focus over the truly important questions. Who, a girl know to all, pass beyond the Guardians without notice? Who, a girl without training, sneak in a ship secured by the Inquisition? Who?

Slowly, the ancient runes begin to dance before him, colors, forms, and more indescribable things were shown to his powerful warp-senses. The carefully crafted future of Lynn has been changed, and new paths formed, leading her beyond his grasp. But where? He pushes, but something powerful, different and... Alien, seems to grow in her Path. Tired and frustrated, his mind returns to the material world and proceed to analyze the now static symbols. "Dead" "Born" "Cry" "Cell" "Snake" and... "Eldrad"

Continued in [[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#Alpha_Bitch|Alpha Bitch]]

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== Pathlost ==

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“Why are we here?”

The question surprised Keir to such a point that he stopped stitching the open wound. “Pardon?”

Long and vibrant lavender hair parted as the Eldar woman, Tal’hina he had come to know, turned her head to look partially over her shoulder.

“Why are we here Guardsman? You are quite lucky our band managed to spot you alone. I’m curious as to what could have driven you so far from your lines, especially with a group of Orks on your trail.”

Keir hesitated for a moment before focusing on treating Tal’hina’s wound. They had found cover in a cave thankfully and his pack lights were powerful enough to allow him to work at least basic first aid. Tal’hina had mentioned something about other warriors of hers that guarded the entrance to their hideaway. Keir hadn’t seen a trace of them though.

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“I promise you it wasn’t cowardice that drove me out here.” Keir finally formed a response as his fingers worked deftly. He was wondering just how far he should go with the truth. He was among allies at the least, but what drove him on this battlefield was extremely personal.

“I was… in charge of escorting a civilian band.” Keir tried to keep his tone steady. “They had been forced underground by the initial Ork invasion and we found them locked in a sub-basement. We weren’t told to expect ambushes so far behind the front-.”

He stopped to reach for the anti-septic again, one could never be too careful with Ork and the wounds they inflicted. Tal’hina was quiet throughout his explanation. He wondered if she believed him at all. It was unsettling to say the least, like he was trying to explain his case to an Arbiter judge.

“So you failed?” Tal’hina spoke suddenly, catching Keir off-guard. He did not answer which prompted Tal’hina again. “I find you alone and beset by Orks from all sides, not a single civilian or other human soul in sight or sound, so your mission was a failure I presume?”

Keir supposed he should feel some sting of anger or reprisal. Instead he felt numb; perhaps it was the pain suppressors the Eldar woman had given him when she had healed his wounds or maybe it was just a stark realization that in some way he did fail. He finally answered in a subdued tone.

“I don’t know honestly. I was cut off almost immediately and forced to fight for my life. The soldiers I had were good, but…” He trailed off as he realized he had finished closing the wound. He tapped Tal’hina on the shoulder as he set himself heavily against one of the cave walls. She turned with entirely too much grace for how injured she was supposed to be to finally look at Keir face to face. The small smile she wore spoke of consolation, or was it haughtiness? Keir had never any Eldar before today so he wasn’t entirely sure. He quickly realized she was still expecting some more of an answer and stammered one out.

“The soldiers were good and the civilians were survivors. They would have made it out alright.” Keir turned to regard his shredded and not empty medical tote bag. He was beginning to feel the inkling of shame crawl into his mind and wanted to look anywhere but at the Eldar woman.

He heard a small hum come from Tal’hina. She had seemed to decide something and turned to look away from Keir. This sparked something in his mind that caused him to start speaking with a rising volume.

“No matter what you think of me, let me make one thing perfectly apparent. I’ve had countless people from almost every walk of life go through my hands as a doctor. Many of them have died, because I wasn’t fast enough, or they were killed before I ever reached them, or some random accident of happenstance. Every one of their lost lives live on in my mind; I see the last fleeting moments of a thousand different people flash through my head every time I’m called on to help those in need.” Keir spoke as evenly as he could, but the loss of his voice did not help in his efforts to explain.

“Even if I wanted to forget them, I would not allow myself to. I have been forced more times than I wish to remember to allow some to die so more may live, and the choice doesn't become any easier.” Keir was no distinctly aware of his eyes become more blurry. “All I ask Tal’hina, whatever you may think of my decisions, is to not patronize me. I try to work every day to make up for my mistakes; I could not live with myself otherwise.” Keir finally clamped down on his mouth by biting his tongue. He was close to fully spilling out into a tirade but ultimately managed to school his swirling thoughts and quiet his fears about what had happened to the civilians who he was charged with protecting.

“...I promise you, I will do everything in my power find them and ensure their safety; that is my mission. There is no other alternative for me.”

Tal’hina muttered under her breath. All Keir could make out was something about being lost but he could not be sure. Tal’hina locked eyes with him. He could not tell what she was looking for in his own eyes, but he was startled at the simultaneous steel that spoke of a warrior and silent worry that he had seen in so many of his more idealistic medic-brethren.

“Is that why you walk this path then; to try to help the helpless and save the damned?” Tal’hina asked an almost soothing tone, turning where she was sat so now she fully faced Keir. The look of confusion from Keir at the question let loose a small laugh from Tal’hina. It was a sound that Keir admitted was quite breathtaking, internally of course.

“I meant if that is why you are a healer? Your equipment and heraldry mark you as such.” Tal’hina kept that small smile as she regarded Keir. “Our path is not an easy one, and there are easier ways to fight for your people, so I’m curious as to what drives you.”

Keir didn’t know what to make of the question. This whole situation had grown far beyond what he could have imagined not a few hours ago. Then again he did owe his life to this woman. He figured he might as well indulge her and himself in speaking.

“I don’t recall much, only the festering odor. I still don’t know what they were, what they wanted, where they went, all I can remember is that terrible stink.” Keir felt strange dredging up a very old memory, but it felt like a much needed venting from his current emotional turmoil. Tal’hina quickly lost her smile.

“A minor chaos incursion, or so I’m told; I was quite young then, young enough that the memory of it stands out as some of my earliest. I remember trying to help but I could scarcely keep myself calm let alone assist in treating such disaster. It was then I decided that it was not enough to fight. So many of the garrison there fought and they died doing their duty. I knew I needed to do something more than just pull a trigger.”

Keir slowly made his way shakily to his feet. Tal’hina followed so that both of them stood apart from the other. Keir was surprised to find themselves equal in height, although the fact that Ta’lhina was not wearing most of her armor was not lost on him.

“So I decided I would try and help people through healing. Where else would that need be the largest than with the Guard? I enlisted as soon as I was able and have been walking this ‘path’ ever since.”

He started retrieving his equipment as Tal’hina was content to simply watch him as she seemed to be trying to judge something for herself. She regained that smile of hers and spoke.

“You are considerate to bear these questions of mine, and I don’t think I have properly thanked you for your own assistance to my wounds. So, properly now, thank you and know that you have gained the gratitude of Tal’hina of Yme-loc.” She dipped her head towards Keir who made no attempt to respond to the gesture. She brought her head back up and began to gather her own equipment and reequip her armor gingerly.

“Rovenko.” Tal’hina turned while continuing to adjust her armor and stared in apparent confusion. Kier spoke again with a bit more surety. “My name is Kier Rovenko, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Tal’hina nodded again, seemingly satisfied in the information, before turning back to her armor.

“So why do you follow this path?” Keir could not resist asking. Tal’hina stopped abruptly in adjusting a greave and turned to look at Keir again. “It is tale woefully similar to your own I would say. My most prominent memory of my decision was the sound of the dying and the anguished.”

Keir averted his eyes from hers. “I apologize, I did not mean to drag up-“

“It does not matter,” Tal’hina interrupted him, “You have been more than accommodating of my own inquiries, so there is no reason I should respond in kind. Although you will also forgive me for being as elusive in my answers as you were.” Keir swallowed a small lump that had suddenly caught in his throat. He turned back to see the full regalia of an Eldar warrior, armor he did not recognize, covering Tal’hina’s lithe frame all besides her helmet which she held couched in her arm.

Both healers gathered themselves and moved toward the entrance to their small hideaway. Tal’hina, her face now covered by a full helmet, turned to Keir.

“Are you well enough to perform your duties?” Her voice rang clear despite the now electric twang it had. Keir rested his hand against the grip of his las-pistol as his eyes adjusted to the natural light again. He could finally make out the burnt orange form of a set of guardian armor standing guard just a small ways from the entrance.

“I’m still breathing aren’t I?” Keir allowed a smile of his own at Tal’hina’s metallic laughter. Maybe she was impressed; maybe she was just amused at his dogged pursuit. Either way he had found that sound of laughter to be comforting. The set off in step with the other, both of them ready to go back into the fray once again to hold death itself at bay.

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== The Rant ==

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"This was our galaxy once. The Old Ones, the predecessors those that made us, left it in our care. It was ours to tend. Reward, for all that we had suffered in our war against the Yngir slaves. Entire generations, entire histories, entire cultures were lost in that dread war, but this, this was our reward. Freedom, and an unblemished canvas to write our fate upon it. We were stewards of life, the victors over death, and we were told not to waste it."

"And we didn't. We flourished, taking barren rock and tainted ground, and making fertile and green pearls of them. We made such works of art, such wonders of technology. We even made gods. For millennia, we worked, honed our art, and at every turn, brought life to this scarred galaxy. We had peace, as strange as that sounds today. It's a distant dream, isn't it? But you know it's there, that it's possible. You feel your spirit rise at the very thought. We had peace."

"But then we had the Fall. And it was all lost."

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"Every eldar that is taught our history- even, the warped and half complete history of those led astray by the dark gods- is struck by that. Here, here is our people at their peak! We are surrounded by their works, the very galaxy owes its life to them in their power, but yet, we lose it all in a matter of years, reduced to this shadow of ourselves? How could this happen?"

"Arrogance, my child. Arrogance blinded them so far back. Arrogance of a few, that sought power at the cost of the many. Even, at the cost of their very gods. We were at the very cusp of ascension, when those, the fanatics, the usurpers, the primitives out of fear and envy destroyed the greatest work of those halcyon days."

"They tried to make a miscarriage of the birth of our greatest hope. The distillation of all of our gods in to one, purer being. Our Child Goddess, Slaanesh."

"The birth cries were terrible. What should have been a moment of joy and celebration would prove, with the treachery of the usurpers, traumatic. A great storm of pain tore the warp asunder, as eldar turned against eldar, brother against sister, mother against son, all for what? A handful of dirt balls the exodites call planets so you're free to freeze in mud and gnaw on roots. Flimsy scraps of wraithbone drifting the void called craftworlds, where you can have your fate decided before you are even born by the dead that rule. And that pathetic pantomime of glory in Comorragh, where they pretend at the past that's dead and gone. What glories have those rebels have earned? What proof of righteousness do they have in their miserable lives? They have turned their backs on Slaanesh, only to suffer under the lash and call it freedom."

"Thank the Many-Gods-in-One that they did not succeed in circumventing our child goddess's ascension, or we might all be trapped under their rule. Slaanesh is mighty, but her might is tempered with kindness. She waited patiently on the other side, in the dimension unbounded, waiting for the souls of her wayward children to be reunited with her. She did not snuff them out, though they truly deserved it. She did not hunt them down, though they wished her dead. She kept her arms wide open for them, ever welcoming their arrival."

"And then came the mon'keigh. And their insult."

"How gullible are those that lay outside? Short lived, murderous, stupid, and unworthy creatures come to them, and whisper poison in the ears of those already poisoned. They whisper of raiding like a band of thieves in the immaterium, of stealing and murdering. They speak of defiling the realm of the gods, and these that dirty the name eldar smile and nod, that ancestral sin of greed rising in them again."

"Those misguided heathens outside begged for the collar of the mon'keigh on their necks, in exchange for injuring a goddess that only loved them."

"Isha? Is that so? They speak of Isha, long gone, returned to guide our people unto a golden age? It is a lie. Look upon the histories- all the gods and goddesses save Cegorach agreed to combine, to set aside their individual identities to unite and make something better of themselves. Through those thousands of years since the fall, no one spoke of Isha, except in the past. Through these thousands of years, eldar hands were not up to the task of rescuing her? Preposterous."

"Now, now they claim that Isha, goddess of health, the harvest, and life bearing was kept captive in the hands of Nurgle? This betrays the work of the mon'keigh to misguide and mislead you. The lie is at the root- the mon'keigh would believe our goddess, pure and strong, could be captured and caged like an animal by that brute Nurgle? The story betrays their own intent! Like this false Isha, they would want us caged by them, used by them, made slaves by them. The story of her 'rescue' is a lie to convince the unwary that the eldar are weak, and it is only with the help of mon'keigh they can do anything. It makes me sick to the think children are being raised to believe this, and to think themselves less than mon'keigh. Trying to indoctrinate us into slavery."

"But they did attack a god that day- the mon'keigh and the false eldar. And they did perhaps even see Isha. Isha, as one part of the Many-Gods-in-One of Slaanesh. I was not there that day, but a comrade was, and he wept bitterly at the very memory of the sight. Slaanesh, in her radiance. In her glory. The innocent child god, looking curiously at these strangers that came to her. She smiled. Even among the black hearted and soul sick eldar infidels, some stopped and for a moment the truth came through. They fell to their knees and wept, tried to warn Slaanesh, tried to stop their fellows. They were slain by the mon'keigh, filled with bloodlust and eager to tear the flesh of the innocent."

"We counter attacked of course. Drove them back into the blighted materium, sending the cowards shrieking as soon as they faced something more than an innocent goddess. But the damage was done."

"Once it was, any eldar was guaranteed as soon as their soul left their body or the cruel soul traps devised by the craftworlders would be reunited with Slaanesh automatically. They would return to the child, and we'd be one step closer to divinity, and our heaven in the immaterium, when the eldar could claim the birthright of the old ones, and remake the unreality as we had remade the reality."

"But the evil ones broke that bridge. They severed one more strand of Slaanesh's goodness to your world. And now Slaanesh withers."

"The Child Goddess is no more. Innocence is no more. Denied the very love of her people, she withers and hungers. And she has learned from her mistake of trust. And we, in our sorrow, now must redeem our failing. The Crone Worlds must unite again, the masters of the warp must be awoken, and our goddess's due must be retaken. We can be patient no more as paradise itself is under threat. We can no longer wait for the misguided to realize their mistake, and come once again to the embrace of the Many-in-One. Our goddess hungers. And we shall feed that hunger. Just as we did so long ago against the slaves of the yngir, so must we do for the slaves of the mon'keigh."

"The War for Heaven calls. You shall serve- either in Her warhost, or as Her sacrifice. Either is better than your kind deserve."

-Unknown, Battle of Merr's Reach, speech given to prisoners.

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==The Saga of Fedor Jiao==

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''Homo sapiens navigo'' is a sub species of humanity that was once a necessary cornerstone of the Imperium, and mankind's proliferation throughout the galaxy. From generation to generation, from their pivotal position in society, they have gathered wealth and power that outshine even planetary governors. However, at the dawn of the 42nd millenium, they are now at risk of losing it all through eons of mismanagement, greed, and complacency.

Due to their genetic nature, Navigators are organized by great houses, vast genetic lineages carefully recorded and kept track of to keep inbreeding at a minimum. By necessity, they can't have new blood. The result of a navigator and a normal human produces a human without the dubious blessing of navigator powers. They may carry an abundance of less than stellar physical traits inherited from their navigator parent, but none of the metaphysical traits, and they are not a carrier of any of the traits. Though there are a great deal of genetic markers associated with the navigators, none of them seem to activate the legendary third eye. It's speculated that the atypical warp presence of the navigators may bear some manner of information that is past on to the infant, and that it is only the combination of two such warp signatures that can produce a third, or perhaps it's some form of Dark Age of Technology copyright protection for navigator reproduction that can't be cracked. Whatever the case, the navigator houses have cornered the market on those able to guide the way through the warp, and supply is limited, much to the rest of the Imperium's discontent.

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The foremost irritation is the arrogance of the navigators. Navigators have always held a very high opinion of themselves. They are necessary for any long range warp travel, and so have proliferated across the whole of human space, and reaped great wealth and prestige for their tasks. Somehow, the navigators manage to hold an arrogance beyond even their high station. To the irritation of those that revere the Throne and He That Sits Upon It, they consider themselves peers of the Emperor. In the minds of the majority of navigators, the parallels are obvious. The Emperor is a product of the Dark Age of Technology, so are the sub species Homo Sapiens Navigo. The Emperor has powers far beyond the normal man, and so too do the Navigators. The Emperor, by dint and right of these powers and his wisdom, rules. So, the Navigators deduce, must they. Most navigators take a benign attitude to this, content to live the pampered life of the ultra rich and enjoy generation after generation of accrued wealth. For them, the tedium of governance is something they should not suffer, but they take for granted that they shall be granted every luxury and consideration with none of the responsibility outside of ensuring vessels are guided safely through the warp.

Although many outside of the navigators criticize and deride their hedonistic attitude, it's worth remembering all navigators serve. From birth, navigators suffer from a host of genetic diseases and maladies as a side effect of the inbreeding necessary to preserve the powers that make warp travel possible. Their childhood is spent learning and memorizing star and warp charts for the routes they must work for the rest of their lives- charts which are notorious for failing to keep up with the realities of navigation. The demand for navigators has spiked severely as shipyards produce more vessels to respond to the various threats that besiege the Imperium.

Navigators are recorded to have been pressed into service at ages as young as twenty two, with only ten year's worth of training, and no practice on the safer routes closer to the Astronomicon (Which are generally crowded by the richer and more influential families unwilling to see their scions die on useless crusades). Navigators will spend years trapped in claustrophobic conditions, seeing horrors never meant to be comprehended by mortal minds, and painfully aware that the lives of thousands could be snuffed in an instant if they made a mistake.

Is it any wonder that the navigators have taken a bon vivant attitude? On every civilized world, the navigator houses have a presence, and they have a code: all navigators on shore leave are to be treated as family. Though later they may charge the navigator's actual house, when navigators go ashore they are denied nothing by their hosts. A celebration for living another day. These bacchanals can be truly hedonistic, at times even spilling beyond the navigator compounds to welcome any curious citizens in as alcohol, mind altering substances, sex, and other stranger diversions are offered freely. It's frowned upon to involve the common people however, as not everyone gets festive at such a gross display of wealth. If the arbites come calling, it can be truly expensive to clear up the matter, and if an Inquisitor's ire is roused, well, even the familial bonds of navigator houses have their limits.

In the face of the navigators flaunting their wealth, the fact that they consider themselves another species, the fact that they assume they're predestined to inherit their high status from birth rather than any deed, they rankle most of the rank and file.

The Emperor, for his part finds the lack of obsequiousness among the navigators refreshing, but does not let that color his assessment of the Navis Nobilite: An antiquated aristocracy that should be (gently) set aside as soon as the technology allows it. In the Imperium as a whole, there is a tacit acknowledgement that the Navis Nobilite will soon come to an end, or face a great humbling. Either from the eldar opening up the webway, the geneticists finally cracking the navigator code and permitting mass production of them, or some new technology from the Tau or Mechanicus, everyone begrudgingly tolerate the Navis Nobilite, feeling that someday, they'll get their comeuppance, and slide into the waste bin of history.

This assessment may change with the latest Paternoval Envoy.

The current Paternova of the navigators is Lustran-Gibb of House Nostromo, a once minor house that managed through a stroke of luck involving a rogue trader, to rise in ascension and place one of their own in the prestigious position of Paternova, the head of the navigators. An outrage to the other navigator houses, but one settled through a series of (questionably) legal duels with the other heirs apparent. Lustran-Gibb, after killing his rivals, was content to remand himself to the Navigator Palace on Terra, where he spends the majority of his time in an aquarium with rare marine life imported from across the galaxy. In a move of reconciliation, Lustran-Gibb left the selection of the Paternoval Envoy to the houses for a vote, and then secluded himself with his strange menagerie.

The navigator houses were not used to this. After the diplomatic but bloody takeover, most of their leadership lay dead as the result of ritual combat. And rarely did a Paternova ever deign to ask others to decide things. They might have thought it weakness, had they not witnessed the Paternova kill most of his competition bare handed.The houses feared a trap, and so, appointed someone they wouldn't mind see dead.

Within an hour, the reply came back, blandly approving. Paternova Nostromo was at the moment fascinated at the prospect of recovering the porpoise of the distant past from genetic samples found in an ark dug up out of Catachan. He read Fedor's name once, and then dismissed it.

Paternova Nostromo was only interested in the position of Paternova as it allowed him power and money enough to pursue greater heights of marine biology. The competitors he slew, the bargains he struck, the pleas to the emperor and the quests he and his house had undertaken, were all bent to this purpose. Paternova Lustran-Gibb Nostromo, despite his heinous power both physical and mental, had no taste for politics. To his understanding, the Paternoval Envoy would take care of that. For the great navigator houses, they had made the greatest possible miscalculation. Because Fedor Jiao was very interested in politics.

Fedor Jiao, after reporting to Terra, undergoing the anointing, and taking the great oaths and suffering quietly through the vast ceremonies, immediately bypassed the great banquet set for him, and reported to the Imperial Senate. Once there, he sat quietly through an interminable meeting, accepted well wishes and congratulations, and patiently waited until the agenda was clear enough for him to provide a list of names and evidence of smuggling operations that House Garibald, House Strahovsky, and his own House Jiao were involved with throughout the Segmentum Tempestus. For Fedor Jiao, though bewildered by his sudden rise, bore no delusion that the great navigator houses were his friends. He immediately sought allies through the rest of the Imperium to protect him.

For the next thirty years, the Imperial Senate suddenly had a great ally in Fedor Jiao as he performed a great house cleaning of the Navis Nobilite. Corrupt navigators that had knowingly looked the other way when their members served on pirate ships found themselves raided by arbite agents. The more jaded navigators that required darker thrills to entertain themselves found themselves at the wrong end of an Inquisitor's bolt pistol. Even the Paternova Nostromo himself received a visit from a detachment of Adeptus Custodes, as the Navigator Palace was searched top to bottom for hidden Xenos Terribilis, with proof of warrant that the Paternova signed dismissively when Paternoval Envoy Jiao offered it.

For the navigators, it seemed that Paternoval Envoy Jiao was their worst enemy. Devoted to ripping out corruption by the root, and sending the Navis Nobilite as a whole into disarray. Assassination attempt after assassination attempt was mounted on Jiao, but none got through. He was well guarded by the highest levels of the Imperium, pleased that Jiao was humbling the once arrogant collection of mutants.

It was more than just cleaning house. Jiao was working to rein in the absurd wealth and influence of the Navis Nobilite houses, while also trying to improve the lot of the common navigator. Controversially, he designated the safest trade routes to be opened to all novice navigators so they could get up to speed before being thrown into the fire blindly. He forcibly dissolved several trade monopolies held by the greatest navigator houses, providing much needed reform for trade in the Imperium. There was chaos, but for once, the Navis Nobilite seemed to have a brighter future.

Then one day, the Emperor himself summoned Jiao. Jiao answered those summons, and the door shut behind him, barred by the Adeptus Custodes.

Two hours later the Emperor requested a different Paternoval Envoy, and ordered a closed doors meeting of the Senate Imperialis in the Imperial Throne Room.

Envoy Jiao was diligent. He was devoted to mankind. To ending corruption throughout the whole of the Navis Nobilite, and to a greater extent, throughout the whole of the Imperium. He used to be like any other navigator, eager to live life to its fullest after the grueling journeys, so many lives in his hands, guiding through the warp. When he got to port, he feasted, he drank, he fucked, he enjoyed all he could of life like every other navigator.

But his other great love was astronomy. He had collections of charts, all kinds, dating back even to the days before the Imperium. He collected them, compared them, and sought to make his own grand map. As a young man, he had been frustrated at all the inaccuracies of star charts, and sought to correct those failings as an adult. It was an activity that brought him true joy, unlike the base pleasures of the flesh that were offered to him.

When the good ship Dauntless was attacked by corsairs, Fedor was certain he would die serving on his vessel. He felt the air slip away, heard the screams of the dying around him, and did his best to face death with dignity. But the corsairs were interested in him. When the eldar stormed the bridge, the lights were out- he saw flashes of power swords swinging, but nothing else when a hilt struck the side of his head, knocking him to the ground dazed, before a bag was put over his head.

When next he came to, he was in his sumptuous personal quarters. The terrible tang of burnt steel filled his nose- they had cut the whole of the section away, and attached it to their own ship. Arrayed in front of him were the star charts he had collected, and at the top of the heap, was a new map. Older than the others. It depicted the empire of the eldar, he realized belatedly, and the older extent of mankind. A message, Fedor concluded, but what for, he was not sure of.

He shortly realized afterwards that the corsairs had physically cut his quarters out of the Dauntless out, and placed it somewhere within their own vessel. He could leave, and wandered around in a daze about what he assumed was a cargo hold, with all manner of strange things. A necron plinth here, a caged Catachan Devil there, a crystallized fragment of some squid like entity there- Fedor was free to roam the hold, but whenever he tried to get beyond a further door, he found the way barred by veiled and robed eldar that refused to say anything. Crone, craftworld, exodite, dark, Fedor did not know what variety.

He slept forty three times there, not including his initial capture. He couldn't be certain, but he assumed that corresponded to the days in captivity. When he looked through his third eye, he realized he was not in the warp. He assumed the vessel he was on was in the webway.

The forty fourth time he awoke, he was somewhere else. He was before a great window sleeping on a smooth, tiled surface, the only company a chart, the one depicting the eldar empire at its grand extent. Behind him, a crowd of shrouded eldar, staring silently down at him. In the window before him, he saw the galaxy, as if from above, from a distance enough that he could see each end of the milky way. The awe swept all fear away from his mind, all thoughts except reverence. The bright collection there, that would be the halo stars, the stain there, the eye of terror, the dark divot, that would be the dark maw, and so on and so forth. And when he opened his third eye, let himself see the warp in all it's glory, he could see the shining pinprick of the golden throne, and the shadows of the collected psychic miasma of all life in the galaxy.

But then the view turned away. It slowly slipped away from the galaxy, and Fedor felt a bitter disappointment at that, for all there was out there was darkness. Physically and spiritually, there was nothing shining out beyond the galaxy.

And then Fedor realized something. There was nothing beyond the Milky Way. The ship continued pivoting- at the bottom of his view, there was still the distant light of his home galaxy, but outside of it, nothing but the dark. No orphan stars. No nebulae. No Andromeda. The darkness was closing in. And then, when he opened his third eye again, he felt the shadow passing over him.

At that moment, Fedor realized how alone he was in the universe. All he felt surrounding him, surmounting him, and washing over him was the Hive Mind. In that moment, though Fedor later denied it, fought the thought, tried desperately to disprove it, he felt a certainty. There was no more Andromeda. No more galactic neighbors. No more universe.

All there was was tyranids, and now, his home, as they descended to feed, as they had so many times before, on all the other galaxies that Fedor had once dreamed of seeing.

Fedor Jiao remembered little after that. He was dazed at the realization, and was led back to his quarters with little effort. He slept, and stared, and thought, a changed man. He could no longer enjoy life, in the face of the indescribable certainty that all he knew was doomed. When the corsairs released him in an escape pod, and he was picked up by the imperial navy, he didn't bother to relate the truth of the story. He simply said that he was ashamed to have survived.

When he was appointed paternoval envoy, at first he thought he would arrive at Terra and reject the choice. He would explain, humbly, that he was not capable of the great responsibility before him, but that he was glad of the chance to tell them of the nightmare he had seen, of the overwhelming dark that was to come.

But then Jiao saw the greatest navigators, and realized they were just as stupid and greedy as Jiao had been. And he decided that he would do his best to save the Imperium.

And he did great things. He made enemies. Lived boldly. Pulled out corruption by the root. But his every deed, he set against the overwhelming darkness he had seen, and he thought how little of a difference he was making. The galaxy was a thimble of light in an ocean of darkness. All the Imperium's work was for naught. Mathematically speaking, it was an impossibility. If the tyranids had already consumed Andromeda, and who knows what else, they had more mass than the Imperium could ever produce of bullets, missiles, lasers, bombs, and swords. Victory was impossible.

Unless he did something unthinkable.

In greatest secrecy, he hired a crew, brought a spare navigator, and personally guided a sword class frigate to a distant point of space he'd heard only rumors about. His crew trusted him, hand picked to be ones that were starstruck by the reputation of the heroic corruption fighter. They didn't question why he was so far from civilization, operating under radio silence.

They came to an asteroid, and Paternoval Envoy Jiao disembarked with a shuttle alone, and told the spare navigator to return to imperial space, and leave him behind. The ship navigated to a safe range to warp jump out. An hour later, Paternoval Envoy Jiao saw a distant explosion. He wasn't surprised. Soon after that, the pirates surrounded him, on their void suits the bleak marks of dark gods showing them for chaos corrupted.

Jiao had privately hoped they would break the deal. See him torn apart, and fed to their vile daemons. But they held. They took him to their captain, the legendary and loathsome Azariah Kyras, who was amused at their guest. He in turn took Jiao to a local pirate base operated by Dark Eldar. And there, on the base called Odom, with the aid of a captive Crone Eldar oracle, Jiao contacted the daemon of Nurgle called Ulkair with a plea.

The daemon was pleased that Jiao saw the futility of resisting the tyranids conventionally. Ulkair jovially explained that Father Nurgle had also been worried. In his great cauldron, Father Nurgle had been brewing something up to get rid of this oversized insect infestation. In fact, it was with the aid of beloved Isha that Father Nurgle had been making this. Those tyranids were so quick to adapt after all. With Isha on hand to test his poxes upon, Nurgle could be sure to make something real nice and lethal so the tyranids would shrivel and die before they spoiled all the fun in the galaxy.

But then the humans and eldar had to go and take Isha away. Which made Father Nurgle very sad. He could barely even cook up new plagues now, he was so depressed. Without company, he just couldn't get into the spirit of plague making. Everything he made nowadays seemed so trite. The past twelve epidemics he cooked up were all just the same old bursting boils disease he'd done last year. His heart wasn't in it any more.

Ulkair at this point offered the Paternoval Envoy a deal. Nurgle knew that a mere human couldn't spirit away a goddess. But, that avatar of hers could do a fine substitute. A simple trade. A plague for the tyranids, for the avatar of Isha. Save the galaxy, all for a girl. Who could turn that bargain down? Nurgle wouldn't even infect Jiao, though he honestly should. Wouldn't touch a hair on his head. All he had to do was go back. Make sure it would happen. And the bugs would come down with one hell of a case of the sniffles.

The Paternoval Envoy was silent. Ulkair smiled. That was enough for him. With a corrosive wave of his hand, Ulkair instructed Kyras to make sure that the Paternoval Envoy got back, safe and sound.

When the Paternoval Envoy made his way back to civilized space, he was picked up by an imperial patrol. They asked no questions of the great Paternoval Envoy, figuring he had been doing something of great import in his fight against corruption. On the trip back to Terra, they seemed happy, chipper, and praised him for all he had done. Jiao wondered if maybe no one had noticed. He was certain that, despite all his precautions they wouldn't be enough. He almost relaxed on the journey home, convinced he could fight his inner struggle in peace and alone.

It was only when he touched foot on Terra, and saw the Adeptus Custodes waiting at the space port that he found himself back in reality. They said nothing, simply putting out their weapons. Jiao was just as silent, and allowed himself to be escorted to the Imperial Palace on the Emperor's summons. The Emperor already knew of his errant servant, and where he'd been.

He entered the throne room.

Two hours later, Paternoval Envoy Fedor Jiao still hasn't emerged. But the Emperor has requested a new Envoy be appointed. And that an emergency session of the Senate Imperialis be held.
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==These Animals==
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Two people, man and woman, prone behind a low ridge atop a hill among some scraggly bushes. Hiding. The terrain, low dry scrub one step away from desert, does not offer much concealment unless you are skilled. They are skilled, and have cameoline.

Below them-
“Shit,” the woman, Sergeant Arn Kasparova, not that it will be relevant much longer, hissed. “Looks like a whole damned command section.”

A profusion of bizarre and unwholesome color. A- command tent? decorated in abstract shapes that suggested exaltation through pain and suffering. Coiled up mecha-centipedes on the scale of heavy tanks. A small forest of crooked ghastbone spires, suggestive of an antenna farm. A major force.
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“Call it in now?” the man-Corporal Saram Ostokova, not that it will be relevant much longer, asked. She shook her head- no telling if they could pick it up. Sometimes the Chaos Eldar were utterly ignorant of any communication besides psionic. Other times they fought vox-war as well as the Mechanicus.
They would need to get some distance. They turned to leave.

The Mandrake behind them gave them a second to appreciate their situation before shooting them. A nonlethal weapon. Not a positive development.

They came to, kneeling, without visible or tangible restraints but still immobile, in a room. Riotous and baroque, seizure-décor. The eye could settle on details- twining figures in the heart of a gem, a burning tesseract-city, a newborn infant still placenta-wet crowned and enthroned- but refused to resolve any kind of whole. Only the other figures in the room could be clearly comprehended, drab in comparison, practically silhouettes against the background of nauseating splendor.

“What is to be done with this mad animal?” the first, head fully enclosed in radial quicksilver-fungus sensory apparatus, twitching on the edge of information overload, asked. Perfect Low Gothic, a performance for the benefit of the captives.

“I could debone them and fold them into glass jars as ornaments,” the second, naked with razor vines growing into and through him, cutting him with every movement to bleed in a continuous stream upon the carpet, offered.
“I could bend and break their minds into perfect little toy soldiers,” the third, clad head to toe in featureless vantablack bodysuit (or is it its skin?) studded with grinning maws like zippers, said.
“I could kill them and dump their bodies in a ditch out back,” the fourth, near transparent, organs and bones mere suggestive twists of light beneath invisible skin, silk drapes and gun belts only certain evidence of her presence, stated.
“Enough,” the first said again, completing the ritual debate. “I have decided. We shall give them mind-knots, and body infections, and set them free to bring ruin to their fellow animals.”
Arn and Saram both tried to commit suicide. Hollow molars filled with neurotoxin. A commonplace among soldiers fighting the Chaos Eldar. They could not move even that much. They could not flinch or scream as the cutting started. A hole in the skull, and a slimy convoluted something pressed into the wrinkles of the brain. Holes in the body, and rotten-looking ghastbone nodes slipped inside. Then, everything sealed back up, with not even a scar or drop of blood to show what was done.
Then, dumped back outside, their bodies no longer their own. They punched the right codes on the vox, knew the sign and countersign, the name of the voice on the other end, called in an artillery strike on the position they had just left (vacated only minutes before). Then, they started the long walk to link back up with the main body of the Godspire 1888th Infantry.

The 1888th was destroyed within the week.
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== The War for Heaven ==

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Please, just call me Oscar. There are no need for such formalities when it's your ceremony.

You wish to know why? That is a question I have been asked many times before. Are you sure about this? It's a very long history lesson, one that your Schola teachers have probably covered in depth.

Very well, take a seat. The Mechanicus technicians will make you comfortable.

The straps are for your own safety. Shall I start at the beginning?

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Eleven thousand years ago, my adopted sons marched into the depths of hell side by side with the strongest warriors of a dying race, and struck a blow at the heart of the Great Enemy. In a display of psychic might equal to mine, my father held the portal open long enough for a god to be broken free of her cage, setting the foundation for the Last Alliance, the agreement between Man and Eldar that would uplift both our species out of the chaos of the Age Of Strife.

Centuries later, the same man, old and tired, said he was proud of me, lying in a simple white bed, connected to a panoply of medical equipment that whirred and beeped rhythmically.

He told me that I and my eighteen generals had wrenched humanity free from the horrors of the Old Night, and that they would need me to be its leader. As the spikes on a green line grew erratic, I said that no mere relic of a lost Golden Age should be the master of its creators. To think, that I would waste the last of my time with my father on an argument, of all things.

Despite that blunder, Malcador forgave me with a serene smile. For that, and so much more, I will be forever grateful to a man who found a stasis chamber in a run-down laboratory on Cthonia, and spared the life it held inside.

Then the War Of The Beast happened, leaving a trail of shattered worlds in its wake and an uncertain future on the horizon. The Imperium nearly died then, as we were pushed back further and further by unending waves of savage Orks goaded into battle by the unrepentant instigators of the Fall. In Terra's ruins, only the death of an angel and the sacrifices of heroes beyond counting was enough to allow Farseer Eldrad and I to kill the monstrous Beast at the hordes' head.

A hundred centuries have passed since, and the world has changed. The stubborn Tau suffered through multiple schisms and two thousand years out in the cold, but they now fight for the Imperium. In the Age Of Apostasy, the Demiurge helped the brave Inquisitor Sebastian Thor and myself end the rule of Goge Vandire, earning their acceptance through blood and adamantium. They are not the only ones, for among the stars are many more who have joined the Last Alliance and aid the Imperium's war efforts.

But all my eighteen Primarchs, chosen from the finest and bravest of Terra's stock, lie dead, whether by war or because of the march of time. There have been no replacements for their seats, which remain empty not only out of deference to each of their lives, but because none have been found worthy of taking up their titles.

Enemies both new and ancient have opened new fronts all across the Imperium's vast Segmenta, all thirsting for our blood. Some are clad in liquid metal, others in sculpted chitin and claws, and some are manipulators cloaked in shadows. Others are false idols which will not die, praised by legions of fanatics who seek to bring the taint of Chaos into our besieged empire. There is no mercy to be found here.

In some great irony, I, a Man Of Gold, a human simulacrum, have ended up in the Golden Throne of an empire, bonded with Isha, one of the last survivors of a pantheon of true gods. Some say that Eldrad chose an arranged marriage as repayment of his favor a way to prevent humanity from going back on its promises to the Eldar, but I suspect he really just found the idea funny.

One thing has not changed, however. The War For Heaven, the war that began so long ago, goes on, the tune of its siren call tugging the strings of every sentient being of this galaxy. Everyone heeds its call eventually.

While the morning sun shined upon Perturabo's shining Terran hive cities, a veteran of the War stepped out onto a field of mud and rain, armed with a lasgun and the blind faith of his platoon of Guardsmen. He flinched as he scanned their youthful profiles, constantly reminded of brothers and sisters who wouldn't stay in the past. The night terrors of his sleep no longer had the decency to stay out of his waking world, and he grew more and more tired as one excited private explained how he had signed up for his wife and kids back home. Few soldiers ever returned to their homeworlds after joining up, at least, not alive.

Today, when the sun sets on the Imperial Palace today, an Ordo Securitas Inquisitor may watch his acolytes celebrate the resolution of a sector-wide fraud case that drained millions of gelt from Imperial accounts. Before tomorrow's dawn, he may lie face-down at his desk, poisoned by a bottle of wine. For the Inquisitor's white-haired Sororitas bodyguard, summary execution of the childhood friend who brought it will be enough to soothe her anger. Afterwards, she will learn that it was the unwitting crime of a clueless man.

Our libraries and datastacks are filled with tales of tragedy and joy, of valor and cowardice, of liberating adventure and crushing defeat. Yet the galaxy grinds on, dragged onwards by its own inertia, careless of ghosts haunting the living or the deaths of Inquisitors and childhood friends. It takes no favors, listens to no pleas, and defies classification by human logic. With all its beauty and mystery, the galaxy has been the birthplace of our loftiest dreams and our most terrifying nightmares.

In the end, all it has to offer us is War. And who are we to deny its gift?

I do not put my faith in gods, despite the fact that one sits next to me right now. That belongs to those who call me Emperor, who struggle to maintain their shard of normality in an unforgiving universe. They fight as men and women who have everything to lose, never to receive anything better than the galaxy's gift. If we stop now, if we loosen our grip even the slightest, everything that they have lived and died for will be in vain. My faith, and by extension their faith, belongs to a promise built on hope.

One day, the War will end, and the Imperium will be witness to a new dawn, where our children are free to live and smile, to grow old in peace, no matter the price.

Have I answered the question to your satisfaction, psyker?

Good. Isha, if you would be so kind as to dull his senses to pain, thank you.

Let the soul-binding begin. Initiate proced-

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==Unnamed Emperor's Scythes Story==

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The shrouded, other-worldly tint of the Immaterium peeled away as the first ships of the 219th Expeditionary Fleet exited the hell realm. The various attendant ships quickly repositioned to their surrounding places as the few larger ships ponderously oriented themselves in the new system. Destroyers began languid corkscrews around their command vessels while the smaller frigates ballooned outward to form picket lines. Void measurements, order requests, sensor scans, and myriads of other data all flowed into the command deck of the ‘’Basilica Emergent’’, the head of the 219th. Easily the largest of the fleet, the ‘’Basilica’’ was a battleship unlike any other. The pearl-white, marble gilding gifted to her after the rescue of an Eldar world long ago set her apart from the two other large tonnage vessels of the fleet, the smaller battleship ‘’Tantamount and the battlecruiser Dirge of the Warlord. Now organized, the 219th moved in system towards what the frigates had just started pinging at the extreme edge of their sensors: Tyranids. It was not unexpected that the locusts were here for Myriandros’ precious resources. In fact, it was the very reason that the 219th had an extra two ships amongst the fleet. The Scythes of the Emperor had been returning to their own fleet when Myriandros found itself in the way of a tendril from Leviathan. And so ‘’Chitinbane’’ and her sister battleship, ‘’Unyielding Protest’’, despite losses and weariness from previous campaigns, answered the call along with the 219th.

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The locust fleet split into halves around the gas giant, Myriandros Quartus. A small contingent of bio-craft entered orbit to engulf the gas harvesting void stations about the planet. The rest trudged onward towards the human fleet and the populated world of Myriandros Secundus. Myriandros Secundus was in the latter half of its orbit being around 10 o'clock. The first planet in the system was located at 1 o'clock about the center star while Myriandros Quartus was as at 5 o'clock. The third planet had broken up into a moon sized rock after a moon from Quartus was eventually flung off and pulled towards the system center. The collision created an asteroid ring. The ball consider Myriandros Tertium was at 7 o'clock amongst its debris. The 219th Fleet was approaching from the system north in a prime position to defend Secundus and receive the extra-galactic invaders. Admiral Dega aboard the ‘’Basilica Emergent’’ voxed his orders to the fleet. The bulk of the 219th along with the ‘’Chitinbane’’ moved in support of Myriandros Secundus and her people preparing to deal with the now east half of the Tyranid fleet. A pair of destroyers and a triplet of frigates broke off to follow the Unyielding Protest on a long burn on the inside of the system's eminent debris ring. The six vessels orders were to corkscrew around the field and catch a gravity-aided sling about the moon, M. Tertium, and slam into the westward fleet. Dega intended for the smaller contingent to punch through the formation and then flank the eastward sub-fleet. A practical and tactical strategy on the void maps but in the cold, uncaring black, best laid plans are put to the test.

The opti-sensors of the Unyielding noted multiple ichorous puffs on both hive ship. Minutes later, scans identified tentacled-boarding bio-ships. Cogitators spit out flight paths and projected intercepts upon pict-screens. Several flights of the living craft were headed towards the Unyielding. From a dais in the middle of the command deck, the Captain Lyras bellowed with a voice untainted by bionics, “Listen up boys! All hands to stations, we got a fight comin’ our way! Huh-ha-ha! These vile bugs think to board us and eat us from the inside! I'll be Emperor damned if our magnificent vessel will see their likes in our decks! Plus, our esteemed Astartes Captain Phiras and his men are far too tired to fight right now! Poor guys are all tuckered out! Ah-hah-hah-ha! Now spool up those flak turrets, ready our first salvo of macrocannon rounds and remember 'don't drop the ordinance'! Ah-ha-haha! For the Emperor!” The vox caster across the decks went quiet, drowned by the cacophony of of an Imperial voidship mustering for combat. At the utterance of 'all hands’ the men and women jumped to their stations already in the process of preparing even whilst Captain Lyras continued his boisterous cast. Mechanics greased autoloaders even as they fed rounds. Magos and engiseers monitored the banks of plasma reactors as they dipped and spiked at the whims of the charging lance batteries and flaring drives. Auger arrays and cogitators began to relay firing vectors and predicted flight paths of the invading craft, updating as different permutations were analyzed. Amidst the din, Captain Phiras perked an ear towards the vox caster nestled in the corner of his armory. Even amidst the din of clanking ceramite, bolter slides being racked and battle orders being administered, the men of the 5th Company heard their captain respond to no one in particular. “The mad man thinks we're tired? Heh!”

Flesh, vitae and bony armor exploded out of the living boarding craft. The bubble surrounding the Unyielding and her retinue was criss-crossed with flashing dash lines of flak rounds and the cottony contrails of small anti-craft missiles. The bio ships loosed compressed digestive gasses to jink and dodge while augers and cogitators corrected their life taking ordinances. The calculated mechanical precision of the human ships was still being swamped by the sheer number of locust vessels. Some were getting through. One of the destroyers had already been impacted on the top decks; the rasping, diamond hard teeth, enzymes and acids of the craft ate through the meters of adamantite to deliver its deadly payload. An escort bio-ship had found a blindspot in one of the frigates flak screens and careened headlong into the side. The bloated ship burst smearing the vessel in acids and viruses that dissolved through the decks at a frightening rate. Entire bulkheads vented, spattering the viscous juices across the inside of the void shields until they shorted. Boarding vessels dove toward the stricken ship like vultures. A many-limbed bio ship, roughly the size of a frigate, had rushed inside the Imperial formation, impervious to the smaller ordinance. It raked talon-tipped appendages across the vessels ripping up thick plating and flailed limber, coiling tendrils that tried to crush and tear away anything they could grasp.

The Unyielding Protest was faring much better. Her defense networks were nigh-impenetrable. Void creatures that strayed too close were subject to overlapping screens of flak. Missiles tracked and obliterated whatever was beyond the range of the autoguns. Entire flights of troopships and escorts were vaporized as lance batteries fired actinic beams through them at the hive ship and her escorts. Likewise, living craft smeared and then vaporized as macrocannon rounds barreled through their formations towards larger targets. However, Unyielding and her companions were taking just as much punishment. Hundred meter long chitin spines shattered against the void shields. Globs of corrosive bile crashed over the ablative fields eroding them as the tides of a beach might. Sections of Unyielding's void shields were failing. Troop laden craft swarmed towards the holes that had appeared in the overlapping fields. Lyras’ thrust was being blunted.

Warning voxes blared. Dingy, soot-covered yellow strobes illuminated the metal bulkheads. The gun decks of port battery three were filled with a coagulating fog of acrid smoke, corrosive vapors and venting mists. Whorls formed as bolter rounds rocketed towards fleshy gaunts. Linear wisps formed as talons sliced towards servitors, naval conscripts and Astartes alike. The drilling maw of the living dropship had punctured two floors up from the deck. Captain Phiras and his squad were fighting a daunting vertical battle. The locusts would scramble up from underneath catwalks whilst some would jump and leap from above. Others skittered down stairs and through open bulkworks. At any time Phiras and his men were surrounded. The gunnery crew was still drilling even in the toxic miasma and xenos intrusion. Their belief in their captain and the trust in the Scythes gave them courage even in the face of the tide of locusts. The huge macrocannon fired. Backblast and sonic concussion parted the fog. The force nudged Phiras back before the magnetics in his boots activated. Conscripts stumbled but regained their footing instantly; they were used to it. The captain could see gaunts bent over like blades of grass in a wind as their clasping legs fought for purchase. Some were blown wholesale over catwalks and into bulkheads. An unlucky dozen or so locust were crawling on supports and bearings as the autoloading gimbal rocked backwards. The machinery masticated the yielding flesh and chitin of the invaders. Ichors and biles began to ineffectively eat into the metal. Across the deck, the wet corpse of a gaunt sagged onto an autoloader for one of the many flak guns. The overseer stared at the body he had shot several times. The autopistol shook in his nervous grip. Unlike the macro gun, the enzymes and caustic blood quickly dissolved the much smaller structure of the autoloader. It furiously self-destructed. Large caliber flak round detonated in the feed racks killing the overseer, the gun mechanism, it cogitator banks and anything else unlucky enough to be near it. A stray round pinged off of Phiras’ pauldron.

Phiras looked up; he had one more level to reach. Above was the second floor of the gun deck where the troopship had punched through. The locusts were still trickling out of the slimy, toothy orifice. He heard a clang behind him as a pair of gaunts landed on the catwalk. He wheeled and his bolter barked. A quintet of mass-reactive shells obliterated the intruders. Phiras turned back towards the staircase and sauntered on. The locusts swarmed the captain as soon as he reached the landing at the top of the stairs. Phiras whirled into a flurry of measured sword strikes and bolt shells. He pumped round after round into the gaunts that rose from below the catwalk and clambered up the stairs behind him. His sword separated snarling heads and swiping talons even as he ducked and blocked them. His bolter had clicked empty so he resorted to crushing one of the last beasts beneath his heel while swing his gun around to crumple the skull of another offender. He finished it with a bifurcating swipe through its thorax. Another miniature battle was over. The evaporating ichors fizzed into mist off the floor and his armor. His chest piece had a rent in the left side and his pauldrons were covered in a myriad of scratches. An errant boring beetle had gnawed and melted a hole into his right shin guard. “Damn. They managed a couple hits,” thought Phiras.

The macrocannon fired again. Down to the other end of the suspended floor Phiras finally saw a pair of his squad round the landing. “You boys are slow,” he smiled inwardly. The creatures scuttling towards them met grisly fates at the fiery maw of a storm bolter, smoking bolt pistol rounds and gnashing chainsword teeth. The three Astartes joined up at the quivering mouth of the troopship. Phiras yelled out over the din of battle, “Burn the infestation out men! Get your meltas out!” Grenades were tossed into the gullet. The sizzling meat and tortured screeches of the dying ship were ignored. “Set that patch up Ordin,” Phiras ordered, “Graid, finish off the remaining creatures in this deck.’ The marine placed a mesh field over the hole as inertia pulled the bio ship out of the cavity. The shimmering field would hold the void out until an adept could patch the damage. The other marine jogged off to confront the few gaunts scattered about the gun deck. Meanwhile, Phiras voxed the various other squads he'd sent to other puncture sites. Some reported they were still in the process of repelling the borders. Others had successfully eliminated the locusts and were moving amidship to new breaches. The macrocannon fired. Suddenly entirety of the Unyielding lurched throwing the marines and conscripts to the floor. Immediately Phiras’ comms pinged with a priority hail from Captain Lyras, “Phiras! We got a problem!”

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==Unnamed Writing 1==

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"So it's been two years."<br>
"Since...?"<br>
"Since. Y'know," Calper leaned in conspiratorially to whisper, "SHE joined up."<br>
"Wh-" Kred was for a moment bewildered before she remembered who she was talking to and sighed, "Right. The farseer."<br>

Kred was not in the right state of mind to talk about their strange alien auxiliary. For the past week she'd been going through the same drill with the rest of her company of weapons specialists of digging in and setting up her lascannon, and then unpacking it and getting it ready to move again. The goal was to get the entire process down to three minutes. And they had. On a planet that wasn't a frozen ice ball like this one. She was numb, and sore, and tired, and thrice cursed Calper was still fresh as a daisy, probably because he was leaving the digging up frozen ground to her and invariably took his sweet time fiddling with the lascannon so she'd have to do the hard work.

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"She going to help me dig this ice up?" Kred growled. If Calper understood the sentiment he didn't mention it. He was looking off in the distance, over the rest of the company swinging shovels and cursing the icy ground.<br>
"There, see? She's talking with Lieutenant Feldham."<br>
"And?"<br>
"Annnndddd," Calper was straining over the lascannon, before a distant bark of the Commissar reminded him to focus on his work, "You think, y'know..."<br>

Kred stopped, looked at Calper. He was raising his eyebrows suggestively.<br>
"What?"<br>
"Y'know," Calper started a strange bobbing motion with his raising eyebrows, "The farseer. And the dashing captain of the kasrkin?"<br>
"He's a lieutenant."<br>
"Lieutenant. You think she's into that?"<br>
"What? What," Kred blinked, snuck a peek over the gun. Frowned, shook her head, went back to work with her spade, "Nope. Not at all."<br>
"What? What do you mean?" Calper looked back, then back down and hissed, "She's holding on to him by the elbow!"<br>

"TIME!" Commissar Gebbet bellowed across the field. Kred looked down, sighed. No, it wasn't very good, but it would have to do. She set the lascannon over the mound, and crouched herself in the behind it, as Calper mirrored her, attending to the capacitor and charge packs. Gebbett would have a field day with this- please, please, please just let him walk past...<br>
"Seriously, I bet you she's getting the monkey D tonight."<br>
Kred rolled her eyes.<br>
"First of all, it's pronounced 'mon-keigh', secondly, there's no way she and Feldham are an item."<br>
"What? Who made you an expert on human-eldar relations? Seriously, she's eye fucking him on the field right now!"<br>
"A year's stint with Ulthwé Black Guardians. First thing's first, do you see what Feldham is holding in his left hand?"<br>

A bit of silence, as Calper leaned over, then said dejectedly, "A crutch."<br>
"Yeah. Training accident. And he's got that bionic eye on the fritz. So, no, it's not eye fucking that you're seeing, it's her lending a hand to a wounded comrade, and some concern."<br>

Somewhere behind them, Elid's crew was getting chewed out. Commissar Gebbett would take his time. And in that pause, someone desperate to distract herself from her own inevitable chewing out, Trooper Kred made a mistake that she would soon regret.

"Besides. I'm sure she's not into guys like that."

"What? Feldham's a badass. Sure, he's got the eye thing, but chicks dig scars."<br>
"Not all of us. Nah, nah. The Farseer would go for..." She hesitated, glanced behind her. Yep. Anton was still tearing into poor Elid.<br>
"-Like what?"<br>
"Somebody a bit more...intellectual."<br>
"You saying Feldham's dumb?"<br>
"No- well. Okay, keep it between us, but there's a reason he's spending training hobbling around on a god damn crutch, and I hear it has to do with some unauthorized demolition training, a glacier, a set of melta charges and some watches that he never bothered to sync. Besides," She looked over, shook her head as Farseer Taldeer gave a final salute, and then turned away from the Kasrkin, "Waaay too short."<br>
"Fuck Kred, that's cold. He's taller than me."<br>
"She's a giant, she can't help it," Anton Gebbett's rage subsided behind them, so the last was a whisper from her, "So shut up, and look like you're a real soldier."<br>

Commissar Anton Gebbett strode up the line- though Elid's men had suffered the full burst, he still had plenty in reserve to shoot in passing as he strode the line. As Anton Gebbett walked by Calper and Kred, Kred inwardly cringed, doing her best to stare down the lascannon barrel.<br>
"Despicable. Lazy. Shoddy. Pathetic," the Commissar grumbled, marching through the lines, locking eyes with each soldier as he passed. Making it clear that this wasn't directed to the air aimlessly, but in due consideration of each soldier's faults. Brennan's team, aimless. Gherehg's team, the work of children. Ysmir's team, useless. Kred's team...<br>

Commissar Anton Gebbett halted in front of the pair of them and their makeshift fire pit, and glared down at them. He scowled. Looking them up and down. For a moment, Kred thought she might have lucked out, that he was looking for something minor- then she noticed the inhaling. No, no. He was tallying up everything wrong. Preparing. She winced, squeezed her eyes shut-

"Commissar Gebbett, a word please?"

Relief. Farseer Taldeer was at the other end of the parade ground, hands in the pockets of her Cadian officer's coat over her xeno mesh armor stained with snow and mud, a green beret denoting her auxiliary status on her head, long hair cascading down- Hell. She was dolled up. What for?

Gebbett paused, gave a finally acidic glare, then shouted, "At ease!" Murmurs of relief, before he shouted again, "But you and you!" The Commissar's hand stabbed at Kred and Elid's teams before they could relax too much, "You stay here. I'm not done with you idiots yet. The rest of you, pack all this back to the armory!" With a final grumble about the quality of Cadian soldiers these days, Commissar Gebbett spun on his heel and stalked back to the Farseer, grumbling all the while.

Kred slumped against the cold of her lascannon, hopes dashed. The rest of the teams laughed and trotted off, leaving the four of them behind in the field.

"What about him?"<br>
"Shut up Calper," Murmured Kred.<br>
"Who? Who we talking about?"<br>
Elid had come forward in the meantime. Another chatterbox, but one that Kred knew so she could forgive him. Had Martz with him. Didn't know her. Tats suggested a hiver. One of the new recruits.<br>
"Commissar Gebbett," Calper whispered, glancing back at the Commissar and the Farseer, talking animatedly as they made for the command post. Doubtless where there was warmth. There wasn't freezing mud about their ankles. Probably had warm food-<br>
"Oh yeah, right prick isn't he?" Elid shook his head, "Don't like him. Last Commy was nice. Even before he got tore apart by the wossnames."<br>
"Yeah, but," Calper leaned over, raised his eyebrows, "What do you think the FARSEER thinks?"<br>
"Wot?"<br>
"I'm saying-"<br>
"Shut up, shut up, shut up Calper-"<br>
"-Maybe the Farseer sees something in him? Y'know, a commanding man to lead her in the sheets?"<br>
"What?" Elid leaned back disgusted, "Taldeer and Gebbett? Fuck off. That's disgusting!"<br>
"Yeah, to you and me, but Eldar are aliens. Maybe they'd like him?"<br>

Elid frowned, shook his head, "No. Nowhere in this universe would anybody think Gebbett is handsome. I was thinking Lieutenant Feldham."<br>
"That's what I said!"<br>
"He's too short!"<br>
"And he's got that weird eye," Martz added, hand going to her own and peeling back the lids for emphasis to stare at the other three in mocking pantomime of Feldham's bionic, "Rich girl like that would turn her nose up quick at that. Probably use her brain to set his skin on fire right quick."<br>
"She wouldn't do that."<br>
"She would! Hear about it all the time, those eldar tarts and their fire starting, you look at 'em so much as sideways," Martz waved her hands, "Fwoosh! Burnt to a crisp. Sides," She shook her head, "Feldham's an idiot."<br>
"Okay, let's lay off Feldham..." Kred felt a little bad now for what she said earlier. Feldham wasn't THAT bad, and making fun of a kasrkin was probably a really unhealthy habit to have.<br>
"And a bit true. Nah, rich girl like that," Martz tapped her chin thinking, "She'd go for someone with a bit more class. I'm thinking Ordnance Master Hymnal."<br>
"Hymnal? She's classy?" The others started laughing as Martz glared between the three.<br>
"Yeah! Yeah she is! She's always in her best duds, always got that fancy baton and all, she's plenty classy!"<br>
"Clearly you haven't seen her three amasecs deep yet." <br>
"God," Calper winced, "And what she did with that colander, the lho pack, and the priest..."<br>
"What? What'd she do?"<br>
"How about Sturnn?" Elid rapidly changed the subject, looking over his shoulder. If a kasrkin was dangerous to mock, rememinscing on the master of regimental artillery in the open was suicidal.<br>
"Sturnn? No way. He's ancient."<br>

"So's she. And, he's brave, rugged, smart," Calper was counting out traits. Kred shook her head.<br>
"No way. Wife and kids on Cadia."<br>
"-And proven to be responsible," Calper finished, nodding, "Makes sense. She asked to serve in Sturnn's regiment special."<br>
"You think she's a home wrecker?"<br>
"Nah, it's true," Martz started nodding fervently, pointing, "No, I've heard about this. Eldar witches, see, they love that. It's like psychic stims for them, that heartbreak."<br>
"And who says Sturnn agreed?" Elid took on a faraway gaze, "Forlorn, reciprocated love. Eldar love that!"<br>

"You know what I think that Farseer Taldeer loves?"

They all froze at the voice.

They slowly turned back to see Farseer Taldeer standing above them, looking down with the frozen smile of the predator that's caught a lovely family of defenseless bunnies in a dead end.

"I think, what Farseer-Auxiliary Taldeer would LOVE, is hearing that you four broke the three minute record," She leaned in, tooth-like jaw plates still bared, "In the dark."<br>
"But- but it's going to get below-"<br>

She narrowed her eyes.<br>
"If you'd like, I can start a fire."<br>
Inside, Kred's heart withered. Goodbye sleep. <br>

"Farseer Taldeer!" Gebbett jogged after the auxiliary, baffled at her attention directed at the weapons teams, "We were wondering where you'd gone, the dinner still isn't-"<br>
"Nothing's wrong Gebbett," Farseer Taldeer turned away from the pair of teams frantically shoveling at the frozen ground, and strolled past them, aiming for her quarters, "Just thought I heard something. I was mistaken."<br>

Gebbett frowned, looked back at the soldiers digging, snorted, "Finally found your spirit! Come on! Snowstorm is coming in, and you're working until you're up to snuff!" <br>Gebbett nodded, quite proud of himself. Yes, those years in commissar school had proven that fear had a wonderful effect of focusing the mind. He idly wondered for a moment which of his insults had landed home, then dismissed it. If he could do it once, he could do it again.<br>

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==Unnamed Writing 2==

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Officio Tacitum archives have no record of subject "LIIVI" until after formal registry into Temple Vindicare, local site Carolus 5A. Sicarius investigation reveals earlier mention of a "Livvi" found during the Galbraith Campaign as a war orphan, and was subsequently drafted into the Cadian 412th under order of General Sturnn (See attached document, Cadian 412th draft order, signed by General Sturnn and approved by Lord General Castor), before disappearing from regimental records. Of note: this was the only draft order recorded that General Sturnn has ever invoked, and the drafted "Livvi" was recorded as being sixteen years old (the minimum draftable age without a state of emergency declaration from a planetary governor), while the "LIIVI" that the Officio Tacitum trained was estimated to be approximately ten years of age.

Background of the Galbraith Campaign was an attempt to uproot an insurgent assassin cult, headed controversially by (Still extant) Inquisitor Made. Ordo Sicarius records of this time include several criticisms of collateral damage, overzealous prosecution of war efforts, and an over reliance upon divination sourced intelligence. Despite this, Made was vindicated by proof positive evidence of old {SUPPRESSED BY ORDER OF IN JOACHIM, ORDO SICARIUS} and hard evidence corroborating such. Reports of whole sale massacre of juvenile combatants after capture provoked censure from the inquisition as a whole afterwards. Though tenuous, I request a formal investigation into ties between subject LIIVI and {SUPPRESSED}.
{Ed. Note: Denied.}

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Problems with socialization and authority marred an otherwise excellent pupil from LIIVI's time in the Officio Tacitum's tutelage. Psychological assessors ascribed it to his unusual childhood, available at {SUPPRESSED}. Details are scarce- Officio Tacitum archives are spotty at best.

By the age of nineteen LIIVI had an impressive roster of missions under his belt (I think. Every record is under three levels of encryption with two interchangeable ciphers applied on top of that, typical bloody assassin nonsense) and it was decided LIIVI was ready for dedicated field work. Curiously, LIIVI was not assigned to a typical forward operating post that assassins are usually held in to answer summons from inquisitors. He was assigned permanently to a regiment of the Imperial Guard. The Cadian 412th, currently known as the 1st Kronus Liberators. A year later of high value target removal and artillery spotting, LIIVI had his meeting with destiny when Farseer-Auxiliary Taldeer was assigned to the 412th.

Reports and interviews point to a formal relationship at the start. At this time, Taldeer was still engaged to Lithian Sylander as part of House Ulthran's politics (The fact that Sylander wasn't even born yet was no matter) so she remained aloof to all interest. Judging by interviews and journals, there was plenty of it. However, Farseer and Vindicare would prove to be an impressive combination. Mission after mission would lead to the pair working ably in concert to turn the tide of battle with a single well placed and well timed bullet.

But then there was the debacle at Lorn V and the death of Sturnn.

General Sturnn was much loved by the 412th, and Taldeer and LIIVI were no exceptions. Though the details of that day are still unclear, and investigations are still ongoing regarding this {Ref. "Pariah/Untouchable Necron Interest" "Lord of Kronus" "Sea Prophecies"} the death of General Sturnn at the base of the Titan is a matter of heated debate for the 412th. Taldeer, LIIVI, Sturnn, and Sturnn's bodyguard entered the monolith, and only Farseer Taldeer, LIIVI, Commissar Gebbet, Preacher Coates, and Sgt Falker emerged. General Sturnn had fallen in battle, and Farseer Taldeer became Colonel-Farseer Taldeer. Rumor holds that LIIVI had to save one of the two and, under orders from General Sturnn, chose to save Taldeer over her objections. Or, perhaps it was that Farseer Taldeer (Affected by the aura of the Pariahs at the Necron Lord's command) had earlier blundered in her predictions, and LIIVI mistrusted her at a critical moment, leading to the General's death. Or perhaps Colonel-Farseer Taldeer took her rank seriously, and sought to head off a scandal of cross rank fraternizing before it started.

Whatever the case, interviews point to a rift between the two opening up. Where before they worked together efficiently, they sought their objectives separately.

Farseer-Colonel Taldeer would go on to lead the 412th new, notable new victories on Skaldheim, Kronus, and the orbital rings of Barrack Vol. Initial skepticism for an Eldar Farseer running an Imperial Guard regiment was replaced with acceptance, then aclaim. For the Imperium at large, here was the proof that Eldar and Humanity were better together. It also helped that Taldeer renounced her citizenship with Ulthwe, and her family ties in a formal ceremony to prevent any appearances of a conflict of interest. At the same time (If less famously), LIIVI was proving himself an adept agent as well, in most instances supporting the 412th, but notably also in independent operations as called upon by the Ordo Securitas.
A few notables are gunning down the feared Arch-Arsonist of Tarronis {Note: 'Gunning down' does not accurately describe the event, making it sound far too simple. The massive ork warboss required a full six magazines of exitus hellfire rifle rounds, and the full discharge of LIIVI's exitus pistol, and subsequently three blows with a chunk of concrete to the skull before the fiend perished), stealing the list of allegiant governors to the Children of the First Emperor's Conspiracy before they could coordinate a revolt, and being the first and thus far only one recorded to permanently kill a creature only known as Entity 218. Ordo Xenos as usual hoarding info. {INQ JOACHIM: Note to self, talk to Interrogator Garden about professionalism in reporting.}

Throughout the course of these operations, each encountered problems they couldn't handle alone. At first begrudgingly, then out of habit, they grew to rely on each other once more so they could survive what came. Commissar Gebbet at one point got involved, summoning the pair and announcing, coincidentally, that he had had to break up a cross rank relationship between two soldiers earlier that day, that it was clearly stipulated in the military code and regulations that an inferior and superior officer could not engage in any manner of romantic relationship of one another for fear of impacting their judgement in the heat of battle, and that he was very glad that the Colonel-Farseer would never stoop to any such thing like that.

A later report filed by Commissar Gebbet noted that his superior officer had 'emitted a string of profoundly foul utterances that disrespected his person, station, and heritage to such a degree that he was convinced for a moment that a particularly foul mouthed daemon of the warp possessed [Colonel-Farseer Taldeer] and he feared for his immortal soul for a moment" but that it had successfully convinced him that there was no relationship between the two.

As we know now, this was false.

At the same time as they were reigniting their duplicitous relationship {Inq Joachim: Professionalism, Interrogator.} they cultivated worrying friendships. LIIVI has been recorded meeting, and working with a team of assassins, even outside of the bounds of sanctioned Officio Tacitum operations. Though their identities still elude me (Damn the Officio Tacitum!), there is one eversor, a callidus, and a culexus. {Inq Joachim: Useless.} When Officio Tacitum agents fraternize outside of what is necessary for work, one should worry. Interestingly, LIIVI seemed to build a certain rapport with Ronahn, Taldeer's exodite ranger brother. This connection gave LIIVI (inconsistent) access to the webway, something very helpful for an agent.

Farseer Taldeer for her part focused on traditional politics, coming under the wing of Lord General Castor, and by extension, his ally Inquisitor Adrastia. Though still nominally a Colonel, Taldeer is becoming known on a galactic scale as a problem solver, and in demand at Imperial High Command. Accompanying that is a certain resentment. Despite generations of cooperation, some human officers still feel threatened and insulted that an Eldar commands humans. Presumably, after her recovery from the assassination attempt, and after her pregnancy has run its course, she and the 412th will be at the front lines once more, for good or ill.

The other connection is more interesting. Taldeer's unwillingness to associate with Ulthwe for fear of an appearance of conflicting loyalty does not extend to Cegorach's cult. The harlequins have taken an interest in Taldeer's fate, and often the Farseer disappears into the webway escorted by a troupe. Taldeer has offered no explanation of where she has gone, or what her arrangement with them may be, saying only that it is a very personal matter. Cegorach's ilk only answer in riddles not worth repeating. In any case, she is one of the rare few in the galaxy to reliably have harlequin support in battle.
Reports indicate a growing closeness between the two again. At the Sanctuary Masquerade in celebration of the victory on Kronus, LIIVI was seen as part of Taldeer's honor guard. At the consecration of General Sturnn's memorial, the two were seen after the service in deep discussion. At Colonel-Farseer Taldeer's first thwarted assassination, LIIVI managed to evacuate her before harm came to her.

After every such occurrence, the two sought to hide their affair. Though we now know by necessity they would have had to be lovers after the Krasnitz Siege, I speculate that going by reports and overlapping leaves of absence, the must have reignited their relationship, their relationship started far earlier, perhaps just before the Sturnn memorial. Though the present court case in the commissariat argue that the both of them are outside of the traditional command structure of the Imperial Guard, and thus free of the rules against fraternization, the extreme secrecy undertaken to hide their relationship speaks to the reality- they knew it was wrong, and they sought to hide it. {Inq Joachim: Or they were just trying to have some privacy. Their relationship, and legality there of is a matter for the commissariat. Not the Inquisition. Next report, don't stray from the mission parameters again Interrogator, or you're going back to alphabetizing the whole of Tabula planetary archive.}

Which brings us to the modern day, and the unfortunate events of this past Terran month. The Sapiens Supremis attack, the hospitalization of Sreta Ulthran, and the reveal of the 'impossible' pregnancy of Colonel-Farseer Taldeer. The possibility of a natural born human-eldar hybrid is at once shocking and frightening. By my research, I do agree that the dates match up. The Farseer and the Assassin have had a relationship for long enough to match up the current state of gestation, and it has been an increasingly poorly kept secret.

In which case, we live in very interesting times indeed, on the eve of M42.

But the question is, how is this possible? They are far from the first in such a relationship. And for this, I have three theories.

First, divine intervention. The Harlequins took an interest in Farseer Taldeer for a reason. Cegorach or Isha are the most powerful extant that we know of. Isha would be most likely, seeing as she is a goddess of fertility. But the question then comes, why the Farseer, and not her chosen representative married to our Emperor? A trial run, perhaps. Humankind is famously skittish. To you and I, the notion of our great emperor having a divine heir would be a cause for celebration, but certain segments of the population might view this uncharitably as a seizure of power from an alien god, seeking to supplant their Emperor with a half god creature. The other possibility is far more unlikely, but it may be this is Cegorach's doing. Perhaps this is one of those famous pranks of his. For everyone's sake, we must hope this one of Cegorach's more benign pranks.

Second option points to the mysterious origins of LIIVI himself. Though I feel almost certain that the war orphan conscripted by General Sturnn is one and the same as the assassin we now know, I can not say that for certain. I have managed to attain a genetic sample of his at great expense (And great difficulty- Officio Tacitum enhancements) and it is currently being tested and matched against the general population, but as you know, the Imperium has many, many people. It could take decades to find similar genetics, and even then, it wouldn't give us much to work from. However, the Ordo Securitas still has Inquisitor Madek's files on the Galbraith Campaign. They are currently sealed. I request permission to unseal them, and find the truth. Perhaps it was some manner of renegade human-eldar hybridization program, or some adaptation of human to interbreed with eldar? {Inq Joachim: No. There is nothing of that sort in the files. And they remain sealed for a reason. Request denied.}

[[File:Lofn_all_growed_up_still_adorable.jpg|thumb|The horror! The HORROR!]]

The third option, I hesitate to even mention. There have been certain...Signs. Prophecies. My contacts in the Ordo Malleus and Ordo Xenos have offered me a great deal. Bleak fortunetelling from the Chaos Eldar describe something similar, an unholy union of our emperor and their queen. Weirdboyz across planets hoot and holler, speaking of a beast returned, waiting on the other side of the veil for a great rumble. And possibly, most frightfully, I've been told in confidence by a most reliable source of great prognosticating power of the Great Devourer, the tyranids, seeming to converge on Farseer Taldeer's position. Something seems to be attracting them. Already, what few psykers that have been allowed to see Farseer Taldeer (She is currently recuperating in Eldrad Ulthran's care- frustrating my every attempt to investigate) have described a great calm, and serenity surrounding Farseer Taldeer.

Is it not true that, without synapse creatures to control the tyranid hordes, they go wild and revert to bestial primalism? And yet, when reintroduced to one of those synapse creatures they obey, regiment, organize, and act as one? And, though my hand shakes at this, my very spirit quakes, I must tell you to look upon the attached- a vision of this creature, this horrific possibility that may even know gestate, drawn in weak and fearful hand by that soothsayer, of the vision of what might become this child. Look now! See what lurks close by? The awful familiarity of the scene? Maybe this isn't merely a human-eldar hybrid, but something far worse?

I beg you, Lord Inquisitor Joachim, to take this seriously. The fate of our whole galaxy may rest on this!

{Final Notes: Inquisitor Joachim.}

{Interrogator Garden. I was wrong. You're not going to be sorting the archives. You're fired for this ridiculous nonsense. Please wait for security to escort you out of the building.}

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==Unnamed Shadowsun Writing==

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She awoke as always to emptiness, always the same feeling. Loss and regret and creeping dread of all the things left behind knowingly and the things she had not realized each time. When she was young T'au had been a far different place, better it had been to her mind or at least more familiar. She had barely known her parents or siblings as with all Fire Warriors though what she did remember was love and warmth. Old comrades, lovers, friends and even the rivals all lost to the Time Thief.

In the moments before the deep sleep, when the steel sheath came down over glass but the drugs hadn't put her out like a candle there was a moment of darkness. Candle flame is brightest in pure darkness without stars. In those moments before the sleep as all distractions ceased the light, the impossible light shone brightest. The light beyond space and stars and the inferno of war. In the stillness of a beatless heart, still lungs and almost total biological shut down, in the quiet and weightlessness of a sleep impossibly deeper than mere death her lidless eyes were naked before eternal warming flame.

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It was in that fire that her ashes were reborn upon awakening, time stolen from death, life beyond the Thief of Time. Usefulness once more in sacrifice to The Greater Good. More days stored away like winter grain offered in sacrifice to the heathen gods of ancient days, life, her life offered in stolen days for the lives of her people.

She had only seen the light of that candle flame in one other place. Reflected in the eyes of another living relic washed up on the shores of this strange era. In those eyes it was not candle flame flickering and dancing and gentle. In those eyes it was the constant glare. Two holes cut into a man's face right to the heart of a star, unceasing, incomprehensible intensity. It ultimately brought life but it was not gentle, it was inferno and holocaust and it was eternal.

The Thief of Time had stolen her friends and lovers and rivals but it clawed seemingly in vain at the stony countenance of Aun’o’T’au’Acaya’Va’Denta. Aun'Va, he of granite and basalt. Timeless as a mountain and about as stubborn. She knew that he lied, he was the old man she had spoken to in her youth, he who had commanded her into battle in another era. He told others that there had been a line of Va, a lineage of the name unbroken since the days of Aun'Da. But she knew that for the centuries that she had seen and knew of him he had always been himself. The same old man in whom the Greater Good burned like star fire.

How far back did he go? Was he the First Disciple of scripture? That would be impossible she knew, unthinkable and unreasonable, but these were unreasonable times that had seen things unthinkable and horrifying. He had lived impossibly long, how far did impossibility go?

And he knew that she knew. How many other knew of his unnatural longevity? How many had he lied to? Did it matter? Deception was one more weapon of war. Used when needed and put aside in times of peace.

Much like herself.

Her heart beat again in the darkness. The flame receded. Blood began to flow through her veins, sluggish at first, her heart a timid and flickering thing now in this time of rebirth.

Now was the moment of true darkness. The steel sheath still enclosing, protecting her as she awoke. The device she lay in was a relic of her era, familiar and comforting. One day she knew she would not wake up from it and it would be a deathbed. She was fine with that, her ashes would return to her people, distant now as they were.

Another beat of the heart. Stronger now. Blood forced to move. Sensation returned to her extremities, burning as the capillaries adjusted oxygen binding to cobalt as the decades old oxy-gel in her lungs was finally put to some use.

Another beat, she risked the opening of her eyes, blood red and bright, a sliver.

Light. Blinding, clean and white. She wanted to close them again but, that was cowardice and she knew it. Nothing born without some pain was worth keeping and she forced her eyes to open wider, to take in the light.

She could hear muffled sounds, mechanical sounds of antiquated medical equipment and the more hushed, gentle and deeper sounds of Earth Caste technician voices. With the speed of a glacier she moved one aching arm forwards and rapped gently on her glass enclosure as the blinding light resolved itself into people shapes. They jumped to her amusement she saw as she turned her head slowly to the side trying to ignore the light sensation as the anesthetics that had sat long dormant in her body finally found something to do.

The seals on the glass broke with a half hiss, half crack of still machinery coming away from rest, the fluids she had been suspended in drained away and left her resting on an old and faded polymer web mat. She swung her legs to the side and say upright, she felt weak, hideously weak, she always did. She could not afford to show it. She was a legend, a living legend. Unlike Aun'Va she had no problem with the public knowledge that she was a historic relic, it was good. She was a strong helping hand from the days of legend reaching forwards through time. Clarity was returning to her eyes now, some small measure of strength flowing back into her limbs. The figure before her was resolving itself into the robed figure that always greeted her when she awoke. She should feel honoured, she did not especially. He was another old legend like herself.

Grabbing a bucket from an Earth Cast orderly she emptied the oxy-gel from her lungs with as much dignity as could be mustered and took deep of the air of another century she should never have known.

"I have awoken and there is a war". She knew that this day would be recorded. It was always recorded. She had to play her part at all times. "I serve The Greater Good in all things."

There is always a war when we call upon you to serve." Replied the gaunt old figure standing before her. They had both played these parts many times down the eons, always it would go like this. It offered a chilly sort of comfort.

Shadowsun did not remember anymore how many times she had awoken. How many times she had lived and died and lived again. How many wars there had been. How much the Thief of Time had taken from her.

There would be a war. New combatants, new soldiers, new weapons, new horrors aplenty and that was for damn sure and always new faces and names and allies and friends as the Greater Good, the philosophy of unity and purpose was adopted across the stars under new names knowingly or unknowingly. It was the triumph and universally recognized truth of civility over barbarity realized time and again across the stars adopted by those that would survive and would survive and prosper because of it. She would sacrifice all she was or would ever be for it and do so gladly for such a truth, one death at a time. One day sacrificed at a time.

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==Unnamed Fallen (Chaos Space Marine) Writing==

"What have you done to the Imperium? This is not how I remember it. So many fresh faces and everything changed. I knew Eldar troops cooperated with Guardsmen but not to such an extent. Is the integration truly finished? Oh how times differ, kind of hard to track when fighting on a daemon world with 20 times slower speed. You know, I didn't get to participate in the last Black Crusade. The Warp does all sorts of peculiar things to time, space, and minds. Back when Luther ordered us to fire on Lion's retinue, I was questioning the order in my mind whilst pulling the trigger. Now isn't that funny? Little more than two years ago I think, we started that war against the loyalist Dark Angels. How I missed my legion, are any of those marines from that battle alive by any chance? I would love to talk to them. Well that was one of my reasons for surrendering, that and having my arms sliced off. Never convinced by the Fallen Dark Angels xenophobia, I almost managed to even get out a warning to Lion. Lucky bastards caught my messenger! The Imperium seem to have really improved after the War of The Beast, things may be looking up for humanity. Come on, at least tell me if the veterans from that battle will see me."

"No, the veterans of Lion's Last Battle refused to see you."

"All of them?"

"There are only a handful of living veterans from that battle, so yes."

"Did my legion get decimated or the like?"

"Just the fact that battle took place over 2,000 years ago have killed many veterans."

"What? That can't be true, it felt like only a few years since I first entered the Eye of Terror. I didn't want any of this to happen. What do you mean Lion's Last Battle, I know we never killed him."

"Lion El'Jonson was sent into a coma by Luther in that battle, one Lion never woke up from."

"I-I see. Yet the rest of the legion is intact after that battle right? [[Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Forces#The_Breaking_of_the_Legions|They haven't splintered like us?"]]

P74 from ''"Tales of the Third Black Crusade"'' by Quinta Tarcanus

== The Month of Murphy ==
The Month of Murphy:
The Imperium has, from ancient files, learned of Murphy's Law (Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, and usually at the worst possible time). For a while it was considered either a weapon of Chaos or Cegorach fucking around, until Cegorach himself chimed in. He provided the most concrete knowledge the Imperium has: He is not Murphy, he is pretty sure Murphy does not exist, and Murphy's Law is more like a law of the universe that applies even to the Chaos gods in the Warp.

This lead to Oscar making a very bad decision. It happened while he was on The Emperor's Tour, when he came across a situation that would benefit from his attention: Chaos cults had gripped 45 worlds in a defense-poor sub-sector. He joked that he would trade Murphy a month of minor inconveniences for a quick victory. He got the victory, dealing with all 45 worlds in less than three months using only one chapter of the Astartes, two Regiments of the Imperial Army, and a single battlecruiser as the cultists dealt with one catastrophe after another. Then he discovered that Murphy's Law does not know what the word "Minor" means.

In the span of one month, the following happened:
*365 mugs full of hot recaf spilled over his clothes and destroyed
*A robe woven for him with metallic fibers blowing the powergrid of an Administratum Sector HQ during a critical database transfer
*A 50,000% increase in the number of jaywalking incidents on the planet he was visiting
*A misfire during an aeronautical display in his honor burning down their hardcopy backups
*25 Inquisitors dying under the very strange circumstance of "spontaneous appearances of pools filled with leaping sharks" while investigating scheming nobles
*A previously undetected Chaos Cultist getting Jubblowski pregnant with twins(see file [[#The APEX Twins|COBRA SILVER SEAGULL (Tundra Cleric 12d))]]
*And his favorite lampshade being possessed by something very strange just so it could constantly yell at him about why his joke was a very bad decision and insulting him over his fashion sense. Removal of the lampshade just lead to random lampshades around him doing the exact same thing until the month ended.

The entire thing seems hilarious until you renumber that the casualties from that month totaled over 400 billion - 6 times the enemy forces he faced. To this day, every officer and Inquisitor is taught one very basic lesson: DON'T FUCKING TAUNT MURPHY.

= The Adventures of Legi and Draco =

==Chase==

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The stripped down land speeder whipped around another hairpin bend in the webway depths, Hell and damnation in the form a of what once might have been eldar not too far behind them. The walls were curved her and sticky enough with something not unlike gravity that rather than being dashed against the side they merely continued their mad dash along what she had until a moment ago been considering a ceiling. Today was going to be another “explanations” day if they made it back and that was for damn sure and the only thing that would buy them leniency was the semi-crystalline Necroteuch stolen from a curious temple dedicated to both Tzneetch and Slaanesh. That there were still copies of the foul tome in circulation and new cooperation between the gods were both equally disturbing.

But not immediately as disturbing as the driving skills of one Inquisitor Jaq Draco who was pushing the “pimp-speeder” as fast as it’s custom engine would go down extra dimensional tunnels that man was never meant to know of.

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“You sure you know where we are going?” Legienstrausse asked through the comm.-bead she had embedded in her skull earlier that day. “Not as sure as I was fifteen minuets ago.” The mad inquisitor replied turning to face her with a manic grin showing far too many teeth. Without warning the Speeder spun around on it’s frictionless anti-grav sheath just as the chariot pulled by two Steeds of Slaanesh rounded the last corner and gaining on them. The damned creature in contraption, shimmering and beautiful and terrible locked its baleful dark eyes with the Inquisitor. Beguiling and inhumanly lovely and opening wider in shock as the Mad Dog Draco raised his ultra-violet laser pistol and winked.

The creature, fast as it was, couldn’t dodge the invisible spectrum light as it punched through it’s head right between the eyes and flash fried it’s diseased brain. The serpentine mounts startled and tried to bolt in opposite directions resulting in what could best be described as a fucked up mess as another half dozen or so pursuers collided with them. The carnage was obscured as the speeder violently lurched back into pointing in the direction of travel just in time to swerve around another tight corner and land on what had originally been the ground or at least a surface that seemed like one.

Legienstrausse could only lament the poorly judged decisions that had lead her to this point in her life. Once upon a time, a lifetime ago if truth be told, she had been waiting tables in an eating establishment in the Daisy Chain. It wasn’t a glamorous life but she had her own apartment, was making enough to live off of and a little more to send home to her mother and father in the Lagrange Point Sprawl. But that wasn’t enough for her and she had volunteered for drug trials. That had quite paid well, serious risks were minimal, as by the time they tested it on people most of the kinks had been ironed out. A few days of blinding headaches, an upset stomach, a bit of dizziness and on one embarrassing occasion lactation were a small price to pay she had thought. But she had gotten greedy and gotten in for more extreme trials for greater financial rewards. Eventually she had volunteered for something to seriously help the Imperium, to be a test subject to make a better type of super soldier. Of the ten thousand by luck she had been the only success. The fates of the failures ranged from unfortunate to sorrowful.

It wasn’t until the Inquisition kicked her door down that she knew anything actually illegal had been going on.

The speeder upended without warning and disappeared into a long shaft in the ceiling and the gravity reversed so that they were in fact falling. Faster than falling as the Necroteuch slipped out of her hands and flew “upwards” at mere freefall.

Her long clawed arms almost made longer in reflex action almost closed on it’s irregular dodecahedron form just as the sinewy hands of another being snatched it out of the air. They had closed on them, the forsaken and wretched. With a predatory grin the once-eldar lunged at her with murderous intent, it’s jaws closing deep into her shoulder as claws punched deep into her abdomen. Through the ringing of red hot and depthless pain she heard Draco swear as a pained sound half scream and half whimper escaped her lips, but no help would come from the Inquisitor as he fought off another creature with his knives and steering the speeder with his left foot.

The creature pushed her down into the upholstery of the back seat of the vehicle, a snakelike tongue licking it’s lips and extending to her bloodshot eyes as it leaned in close to drink deep of the scent of her agony. The pained noise without words continued to peel out of her mouth, tears running freely from her eyes. There was a brief moment of confusion for the kneeler before foul gods as it realized that the scent was all wrong and it’s hand was in fact stuck and being held tight in the wetness of her ruined gut. The croneworlder had enough time for a momentary expression of panic as the gut wound grew teeth and a jawbone and accompanying musculature and clamped down hard enough to meet in the middle, Legienstrausse’s face split neatly down the middle as she head butted the once-eldar and caught his head in her own and crushed in a shark like bite. It was over then but for the twitching as the body was pitched over the side, the Necroteuch retrieved from the corpse with a long boneless limb that she habitually would still have called an arm.

“What did that one taste like?” Asked the Mad Jaq against the gale as the body of his own assailant disappeared upwards into freefall, headless and presumably dead.

“Chicken and sex” Replied Legienstrausse as her skull crunched and knitted itself back into a human shape. Jaq flipped the craft ninety degrees to flat as the upside-down pit came to an abrupt end, bottoming out the vehicle that then sprang and lurched forwards along a much broader tunnel not long later two mangled corpses landed where they had been.

There were still shapes following them, more distant now, on what looked like long limbed spider-squids. They were wary, not one of them would want to make the first move but neither would they willing return to their foul land without their strange and terrible book.

Options presented themselves fleetingly in the manic mind of the mad inquisitor. They could lure them to Ganymede of Titan, but one was meant to be secret and the other would probably get them shot by grumpy space marines, they could lure them all the way to Saim-Hann or the Hubworlds but that would mean taking the straight and broad roads and the others were faster on the open, there was a Silver Skulls checkpoint somewhere around here but he couldn’t remember exactly where. All he knew was where he was and in the beating of his heart and the saruthi-smell where everything else was for a given value of “here” and “there”. Today was, he felt, another good day. A fun day and as the hordes of damnation followed his streaming checkerboard coat he couldn’t help but laugh.

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==Happy New Year==

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The drinks had been plentiful and that wasn’t the problem unless it was. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, a fun time. Music and drunken flailing charitably called dancing, the people from different sites and Vaults and even off-worlders and outsiders come to visit (after being extensively checked of course). The main hall of Admin-Site Prime had never been so alive. And away from the heart of it all sat Legienstrausse in her own little bubble of self-generating, alcohol fuelled, misery. Nobody had asked her to dance, nobody had commented on her pretty dress, barely anybody had even said hello to her.

She saw them, they though that she couldn’t see them but even with only two eyes she had extremely good peripheral vision. A new face, an outsider or someone new enough not to know what she was would approach her only to be carefully intercepted by one of her jailers who would whisper into their ear. Over the happy, happy music she couldn’t hear what it was exactly they were whispering. They would not be told the truth, not the whole truth.

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The alcohol helped. It wasn’t making her happier but it was making the misery feel more distant. She was through nearly eight bottles of Rakia and the night was still young. After a fashion. Ganymede was tidally locked to Jupiter with an orbit of a hundred and seventy two hours and if she could remember that then it was time to start on another bottle. Which she did. Or at least intended to. A hand grasped her own firmly but not ungentle. She could have sworn that she saw no one approach, and she would have. But then he did have a knack for moving in unexpected directions.

The hairless done of his head gleamed like a twisted halo in the lights and his stupid clown coat, horizontal stripes on the inside, vertical on the outside and both in badly matching colours, hanging from his coat hanger and deckchairs body like the wings of a badly assembled angel. Was there genuine concern in those eyes? It was hard to tell. He was either a man who could hide and mimic emotions well or bounced around far more than a man should and still be capable of doing the job he did.

What was he? It irked her something fierce that all knew exactly what she was, knew enough certainly to be frightened at any rate, but nobody ever stopped to ask what the ever loving fuck he was. He ran the place, or at least the day to day running of part of it. Gods know he answered to people, strange shadowy people that she did not know of and probably never would, and whom she suspected probably didn’t know about each other. But who and what was he? He was insane, clearly he was insane and she had seen far too much to believe otherwise, but he held a job that required a level professionalism and competence well above what the teeming masses were typically capable of.

She looked up into those dark grey eyes and saw nothing reflected back. Not a lack of anything to reflect but a nothingness so complete that it fell away to some unseen terrible horizon and she didn’t know if those were his eyes or her eyes reflected in them.

“Legi, you shouldn’t do this to yourself.” He said concern etched in every line framing those fathomless eyes.

“I shouldn’t a lot of things, but here we are.” She replied up ending the bottle and managing to suck down half it’s contents before he more firmly pulled it away from her.

Slipping himself under half-heartedly resisting arm she carefully guided her out of the main hall, though not before she managed to split her other arm into four grasping tentacles and each grab more bottles from the table on the way out.

“What was all that about Legi?” His voice was not unkind, but when she felt less than kind she couldn’t believe that it was anything but an act. He didn’t give a damn, he wouldn’t be her jailer if he did. But maybe he did and that was more terrifying to her, maybe he did and she was pushing away the only person mad enough to care about her.

“Nobody wanted to dance” She slurred, the alcohol, several times terminal levels for a normal human, was finally starting to kick in. “Not one person, I put on my prettiest dress and not one person wanted to dance.” In truth she was technically naked, the dress was her own skin reshaped and pigmented into looking like what was in fashion in the Jovian Orbitals; Pale blue and light grey, hugging on the torso and sleeves but loose and flowing from the waist down. Broad belts with big buckles were in fashion again this year. The colours in the dress were starting to run together and blur as she lost concentration.

“I’ve seen you try to dance Legi, you may have dodged a bullet on this one”

“Fuck you old man, you can’t talk”

“Yes, dear, I absolutely can. I have danced with Harlequins and they take that shit seriously.” She was starting to stumble more now and although he wouldn’t mention it to her she was a lot heavier than she looked.

“I just wanted one dance. Would you dance with me?” She mumbled through half closed eyes “I could try and take it as seriously as you like”

“No” The Inquisitor replied as they staggered around down the corridors that became tunnels. Mad as he was the idea of trying to waltz with an inebriated organic weapon of mass destruction was not something even he, Mad Dog Draco, was crazy enough to attempt.

She would be sober in the mourning; thankfully her unique properties seemed to minimize hangovers. Hopefully she wouldn’t remember much of tonight. He though an invitation to a new years party would have made her feel batter. It was not one of his better ideas. Next year maybe they could curl up on a couch with some chocolates and watch a film or something. Or maybe he could try and find another method of escaping their jailers for another little adventure.

He would have to be careful, he knew, his sponsors and superiors were getting more adept at finding and shutting down his escape tunnels. If it carried on like this in a few hundred years they would have trapped him here with all the other dangerous curiosities.

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== A Little Trip Out ==

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It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Most of his ideas did somehow. Maybe it was the ability to talk fast, maybe it was the ever so wide and enthusiastic smile or maybe it was the way they were typically delivered in a hail of incoming fire when other alternatives were few and grim. But this time, this time was something special. Not good special either, oh no. This was a “has to be kept away from matches” type of special. The type of special that the Mechanicus usually scooped up to make use of the savant ability. Brilliant but utterly stupid.

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The “Pimp Speeder” was doing speeds when translated to real-space locations that would be extreme violations of relativity known only to Necron Crypteks. The Navigator on the front passenger seat she could still smell and feel the body warmth of even as he screamed and she knew the Inquisitor himself was sitting in the seat next to him almost certainly one hand on the wheel, one had hanging over the side of the door and foot pressed to the floor.

As for herself, Legienstrasse was trying with some success to crawl into the upholstery of the back seat. She had already digested her own eyes as a precaution.

The Chaos loonies of Rhanda were doing putting forth their best efforts to flesh-forge a “perfect” body and at the moment the fossil light of The Opening of the Eye passed over their world install in it their patron; The Sapphire King. Such a being, if half the claims about the body were true, would be to deamon-hosts what Fenrisian Ale was to shandy. Astartes parts stolen from ritual sacrifices taken in battles wrapped around a cybernetic frame made of tortured Martian Priests, infused with the Oblitorator Virus and gods alone knew what else. And maybe even they didn’t know what else. Sadly the information was obtained in an alley behind a seedy drinking establishment in the warrens of Luna. There was no way that they could get from Luna to Rhanda in less than a few weeks let alone a matter of hours.

The grin Inquisitor Draco had at that moment was something that would haunt her already decidedly unhappy dreams. Driving a stripped down land-speeder into a testing warp engine with a commandeered and terrified navigator holding the dashboard hard enough to leave finger marks in the paint is not for the faint of hearted. Or the sensible.

Once more Legienstrasse debated the wisdom of getting out of bed today. She could hear the things that were following them. She could feel the unlight and the heat of a god being born as it assaulted her skin. As it assaulted her soul and made her feel dirty. They were surfing the birth of Slaanesh, the bow wave of damnation. She knew what was following them, second hand hunger of a god reaching forward to claim them in the memory of birth.

In theory they could surf the wave right to Rhanda and, with navigator sight and Jaq’s psyker talents, travel the disturbance the ritual was causing and materialize right at the epicentre. In theory. Nobody in ten thousand years of Imperial history had ever tried anything this stupid to her knowledge.

Jaq Draco, Inquisitor of the most glorious Imperium, was having an eventful day. It had started with some toast with banana slices, it had involved following a lead he’d taken from a dead mans pocket to a planned meeting in a delightfully colourful public meeting house which resulted in beating someone to death with a large spanner behind said establishment and now he was driving very fast to an uncertain destination in a place he should not be. It was all so damn splendid and spoiled only by the whimpering of Legienstrasse behind him who had assumed the form of an amorphous blob in an attempt to hid under the seat and the screaming of the young navigator next to him.

His only concern was the bitching he was going to have to endure when they dragged him back to Ganymede, he did feel kind of bad for lying to Legi about this being a sanctioned investigation. She did seem like she needed another trip out and maybe she’s thank him when she calmed down, maybe not.

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=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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= Inquisitorial Reports =

==The APEX Twins==
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; PROJECT COBRA SILVER SEAGULL (Tundra Cleric 12D)
; CLEARANCE LEVEL : MYSTERIA ALTUM BLACK (FATAL EYE RED)
; SOURCE : ORDO SECURITAS JUNGLE MUSTANG
; AUTHOR : Inquisitor SABINE APEX
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; INITIAL BRIEFING :
On 2.1015.826.M41, Sister Jubblowski (ASSET GLASS PANTHER) was impregnated by a previously undetected Chaos cultist. Immediate countermeasures were taken, hampered by the fact that any attempt to abort the pregnancy would remove her fertility and Isha's blessing. Jubblowski insisted on finding other countermeasures that would deny Chaos a potential weapon and allow her to continue her duties, despite a clear and present danger to herself (Collected Marginalia, Emperor Oscar Steward: It was, to put it bluntly, badass). For a full list of countermeasures, see the attached BLEAK BULLDOG document, prepared by Grey Knight Brother Ryner and Order of the Gilded Rose Palatine Moira, both of whom were integral to Jubblowski's continued security and health.
Shortly after attachment of Brother Ryner to her security detail on 0105.827, Sister Jubblowski received a triple set of mutually exclusive prophecies regarding the long-term results of pregnancy (See attached document CLUMSY RAINBOW). All three prophecies confirmed twin female psykers as immediate result. (Collected Marginalia, Azura Strain, Grand Headmistress of Rehtor Imperia: request meeting with SABINE APEX. Must ensure this inquisitor will not emotionally stunt these girls from detachment).

On 2.0712.827, at 1111 Standard Imperial Time, Sister Jubblowski gave birth, barely surviving the process. Medical opinion holds she will not be able to safely bear for another three years. Counteracting this is the fact that Jubblowski spent the entire birthing issuing prophecies. Six hours later, a cult summoned multiple daemons to attack and secure the twins. Said plan was cut short when the daemons fled after the girls shredded one without trying. I was there, and I'm torn between joy and horror at knowing what a daemon's shriek of pain and terror sounds like.
Testing has proven the girls (Named Ethel and Gretel after characters from an ancient childrens tale) to be Alpha-Plus Psykers, with a few potential abilities the Farseers are currently unable to determine the nature of. Sister Jubblowski has followed their recommendations and designated me as their caretaker. She followed this by making me lactacte.
A moment of candor follows: I'm scared fucking shitless of the idea. I can go toe-to-toe with a junior Farseer, but that's only when skill is considered – in terms of power a weak one would overpower me. Is putting me in charge of two Alpha-Plus psykers, humans that until now were theoretical, a good idea? Their potential made Eldrad pause. I need backup.
Other than their massive power and the white hair, the girls are of a healthy weight and size, although they are showing signs of more muscular control than normal. Gene tests are being carried out, but are currently inconclusive in any area except their suitability for the Adepta Sororitas augmentations.

RESPONSE OF HIGH LORDS OF TERRA
Inquisitor SABINE APEX, your request for backup has been granted. You are hereby granted leadership of the JUNGLE PANTHER working group, who will aid you in this. Assets are being forwarded to them. May all our gods watch over you.

Selected Reports follow:

; Daily Report 0419.833.M41, JUNGLE PANTHER Compound (Respa III, Obscurus/Scarus/Helican). Inquisitor SABINE APEX, Reporting. :
The girls went missing for three hours today. We discovered them in a nearby town by the simple method of waiting: our psykers can see them when they light their powers up, and they like to use them. Recovery went well, as the fact that we had to hide the bodies was overlooked by the local authorities, who are already used to extreme violence between the gangs. It was a fairly gruesome scene – if I didn't know they had lit up for three seconds, I would guess they had spent hours torturing these men. When asked what happened, they replied “They wanted to do nasty things with us, so we did nasty things to them first. One of them really liked it.” This lead into the same argument that they can't keep other people as pets, no matter what the voices say.
Their therapist quit today. He's been getting extremely frustrated at how easily they misinterpret his statements. And I may have threatened his life over how he never actually tries to treat them like growing children, not static beings. How he got this job I don't know.

; Daily Report 0420.833.M41 :
That fucking bastard. He was keeping his own records. Thank the Empress the Exodites here like us, and captured him when their seer said so. The things in his luggage... Now I know where the girls were getting some of their ideas from. Ordo Securitas forces nearby have been notified to send the Cohort Religio down here, because some fucking pedo is trying to get the girls as his prophets and brides. The seer, Mornel, has offered to help me shoot them. I think I'm going to take him up on that.
The bastards removal seems to have brought in a change in the girls, who seem to be finally realizing just how serious things are. This lead Gretel to show that he had given her a wig and a haircut so she could continue to switch with Ethel , even after I ordered them to give them a way of telling them apart.

; Birthday Report 0712.840.M41 :
The girls have been eight years old for five years now. No explanation other than bastard's fetish has been found. Mornel gifted them with frilly green outfits. They are progressing excellently in controlling their powers, but unless they let themselves grow up we won't be able to deploy them without accusations of child soldiers being thrown around.

; Daily Report 0925.845.M41 :
Additional security has been put in place. The girls escaped to the wandering pirate port of Rum And Pour (which I have been told is the recipe for a truly vile, yet enjoyable, drink) three days ago, before returning to us today. According to reports, they caused no incidents, which is bullshit. The pirates are either not talking, or what they did was so minor it passed beneath notice. Therapists have noticed an increase in their psychopathic tendencies.

; Final Report from JUNGLE PANTHER Compound, 0003.848.M41 :
We failed. We failed hard. Inquisitor Oak was stopping by, dropping off supplies and picking up a few artifacts we had recovered on his way to the OBELISK MAZE vault in the Sol system. During his visit, the girls stole his shuttle, and then stole his ship. The ship was recovered unharmed 40 lightyears from here, with only two artifacts missing: a chainaxe recovered from a chaos cult stronghold (OBJECT FIRE HEART 17UM), and a cursed rifle of unknown origin that combines the firepower of an Exitus rifle with the full-auto of a heavy stubber (OBJECT BARRED CAGE 98C). Shortly thereafter, Rum and Pour left the sector. A messenger drone left at their last location held a message to us from the girls: they wished to see the universe, and the pirates seemed like their kind of people. They also called me Mother, and admonished me to not cry or get mad.

My only consolation is that most of the pirates there seem to prefer keeping the Imperium around. I and the tactical assets of JUNGLE PANTHER are heading out to give chase. We will not let Chaos get their hands on these girls, not after all the work we did on denying them this potential weapon. I have no idea what I'm going to do to the girls yet: grounding their little asses seems a little underpowered at the moment.

Inquisitor SABINE APEX, signing off.

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==Inquisitorial Report: AZURE IRON WASP==
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>Enter Clearance

>Password: ********************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.

>Opening file...

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OPERATION: AZURE IRON WASP (Eclipse Caterpillar 754) <br>
SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Divisio Raptoris, Facility BORON RAM <br>
AUTHOR: Inquisitor PEARL WATCHMAN, administrator of facility BORON RAM <br>
[Context: Blanket report to all personnel of facility BORON RAM, a facility devoted to researching potential cures for genestealer infection] <br>

It has come to my attention that several of the facility’s personnel have been using several of the patients of this facility for their own…personal uses. This behaviour was found to be rampant across the facility, with at least 23 different individuals breaking quarantine of numerous infectees, both male and female and of various species. Genestealer infection induces indiscriminate mating behavior with any perceived suitable partner to produce genestealer hybrids, even after host sterilization. Experiments to neutralize tyranid phero-brainwashing (which so far have only showed temporary success) have hosts show horror at actions while infected, indicating behaviour occurs regardless of conscious desires.

Speaking freely for a moment, I want to ask a simple question: What in the Imperium’s name is wrong with you? These are people. Men and women. They have friends and family waiting for them out there. They’re here to get better. Just because they’re sick and can’t control themselves doesn’t give you the right to use them as sex dolls.

Most of the offending personnel have been identified and dealt with. If I find any further instances of this occurring, I will personally make sure those responsible get reassigned to the deepest hole possible on Ganymede.

>End file<br>
>Logging you out...<br>
>Good hunting, Inquisitor.<br>
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==Inquisitorial Report: YELLOW EYE SEAGULL==

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>Enter Clearance

>Password: ************************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.

>Opening file...

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

OPERATION: YELLOW EYE SEAGULL (Wobbly Wombat 17)

SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Diviso Sepulchrum, Deep Field Recon Squadron 17

Author: Interrogator PURRING VIOLET

Arrived and departed from IGC-137-Oscar-Romeo-Dalet-2828 without incident, extracting roughly two weeks before the Shadow in the Warp fell over the system. As in the previous sixteen systems, all traces of life above crustal microbes have been eliminated, primarily by orbital bombardment with some remaining traces of nanoweapons. As before, all indicators point towards Necron responsibility, of a fleet numbering about 200 vessels. [file attached: forensic analysis, orbital bombardment, weapon types and distribution] By the looks of things, we arrived just hours after they left. Maybe in the next system we'll get to see them in action. Progression of the age of the damage indicates the extermination fleet is moving via Dolmen gate, with no inertialess-equipped vessels. [file attached: forensic analysis, orbital bombardment, dating techniques] Maybe we'll catch them in the act in the next system.
At this point, all evidence is pointing towards the Necrons trying their own variation of the Kryptmann line, exterminating worlds in the Tyranids' path.
On the one hand, perhaps we can feel grateful that the Necrons are weakening the Tyranids for us. On the other hand... analysis of atmospheric composition indicates that this planet likely had a pre-space industrial/atomic civilization. [file attached: forensic analysis, atmospheric composition] They are either all dead now, or were scooped up en masse for biotransference experiments.
Next system is IGC-137-Oscar-Romeo-Gimel-2124. Long range telescope observation shows indications of life on the second planet; maybe that will still be true by the time we get there.

>End file

>Opening file...

OPERATION: YELLOW EYE SEAGULL (Solar Serpent 2)

SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Divisio Sepulchrum, HEADSTONE KING

AUTHOR: Inquisitor SUNSET STABERINDE

Deeper analysis of Wobbly Wombat reports only partially support initial conclusions that Necrons are enacting a Kryptmann Line strategy. Pattern and placement of sterilized systems are not consistent with attempts to weaken the Tyranids before a killing blow. Paths are left through sterilized zones leading away from Necron space. Conclusion is that Necrons are attempting to herd Tyranid fleets away from Tomb-Worlds while dealing as little damage to them as possible. Further conclusion: the Necrons are attempting to use the Tyranids as a weapon against the rest of the galaxy.
This is consistent with known psychology of the Silent King. Silent Empire long-term goals involve extermination of all life throughout galaxy. The Silent Empire does not currently have the power to do so. (See SCARLET SPINE SEAGULL reports for detail on Necron power projection) The Tyranids likely do. Necrons are in excellent condition to survive Tyranid onslaught; necrodermis indigestible, recall/repair mechanisms allow extreme attrition tactics, if all else fails they can clear the life off their tomb-worlds and return to stasis. Tyranids likely to depart after scouring galaxy of all life, leaving Necrons as sole owners. In short, Tyranid victory serves the Silent King's interests.
Further conclusions: Necrons may undertake further action against attempts to halt Tyranid advance. Sabotage of various kinds or direct naval or ground action against Imperium strongholds. Such actions should be anticipated and warded against before they actually occur; however, specific policy suggestions in this area are beyond the scope of this report.

>End file

>Logging out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.
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</div>

==Inquisitorial Report: BLACK BRASS PIG==
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>Enter Clearance

>Password: ******************************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.

>Opening file...

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OPERATION: BLACK BRASS PIG (Onyx Desert 22)

SOURCE: Ordo Malleus, Task Force MUSTARD-3

AUTHOR: Interrogator NACRE NETWORK

[Context: personal report from NACRE NETWORK to DIAMOND STAG, regarding cleanup efforts in the wake of the 8th Black Crusade]

Our worst fears have been realized. While physically relatively unscathed by their seven-month captivity at the hands of the Chaos Eldar, deep psychic trawls have revealed extensive mental tampering. Testing of 500 randomly-selected individuals out of the seven million survivors indicate at least half the population of Merriman's World are affected.

The exact purpose of the tampering is still unknown, and I must admit the technicalities are beyond me. Attached is a more detailed report by Primaris Xavier and Seer Iyonais. [Attached File: (Onyx Desert 20) Deep Probe Trawl Results] We do know there are two parts to the tampering. The first is a simple memory edit, evidently to replace any memories of the tampering itself with memories of the long-term confinement and neglect reported by the initial liberation teams. The second is a 'knot' of psychic energy hidden deep within the victim's mind, requiring deep probing to uncover. The exact function of this knot is unclear, but we can safely assume it to be a booby-trap of some variety.

This poses a dilemma. Releasing the survivors of Merriman's World into the Imperium before they have been screened is obviously impossible, when any one of them could be a ticking time-bomb. However, scanning all seven million of them would take resources that are simply not available, not with the counter-attack under way. The alternative, simply killing them all, is unpalatable. Perhaps you have an alternative, Lord?

>End file

>Logging you out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.
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</div>

==Inquisitorial Report: GREEN ZINC OLM==
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>Enter Clearance

>Password: ***************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.
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OPERATION: GREEN ZINC OLM (Hateful Heart 1227)

SOURCE: Ordo Xenos, Divisio Barbarum, Deep Field Recon 180

AUTHOR: Inquisitor IVORY MILL

[Context: observation of Ork Attack Moons operating against the Tyranids in the Octarius Theater]

We have confirmation that the Orks have begun repair operations within the hulk of the Attack Moon *Bugzappa*. The Orks have begun transferring vast quantities of raw materials, parts, grot workers, and assorted industrial machinery into the interior of the Attack Moon, along with Meks from multiple systems. This is confirmed by long-range telescopic observation, intercepts of vox transmissions, and analysis of traffic types and patterns. It is safe to assume that this means the Tyranid infestation on board has been suppressed.

Progress on repairs is difficult to estimate; the Meks and grot workers are focusing on interior components of the hulk first, precluding direct observation. I assume they are trying to restore FTL capabilities to move the *Bugzappa* to a safer location before more Tyranid forces arrive.

Closer observation by stealth shuttles or servitor probes was prevented by a previously unknown type of energy field, apparently a distant relative of the Shokk Attak Gun. It creates a wide planar field of uncontrolled micro-teleports, shredding any matter passing through the boundary. The field is projected by several hundred unmanned emitters in a rough shell around the *Bugzappa*. It is apparently nearly harmless to large vessels equipped with void shields, as such vessels have been observed moving through the field with impunity; however, small and unshielded vessels have no such protection. Although this is mere speculation, I suspect this was designed to prevent Tyranid infiltration and sabotage attempts using small, stealthy bioforms. The design bears the hallmarks of Big Mek Baddkrasha. Since the *Bugzappa* is also his design, a personal interest in its repair is not unexpected. I assume he is also in-theater, although vox-traffic does not refer to his presence directly.

Assuming Baddkrasha's presence, based on the amount of materials and labor flowing in I estimate they can have FTL repaired in around a week. Without Baddkrasha's presence, two to three weeks. This assumes repair of the FTL system is their primary goal.

I will continue to observe the repair efforts of the *Bugzappa*. Once it warps out, I will move to re-acquire contact at the major shipyard systems under uncontested Ork control in Octarius. End report.

>End file

>Logging out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.
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</div>

==Inquisitorial Report: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON==
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>Enter Clearance

>Password: ****************************

>Verifying...

>Commencing biometric scan...

>Verified. Welcome, Inquisitor.
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>Opening file...

OPERATION: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Quiet Quern 6)

SOURCE: Interrogator URBAN WELDER, Inquisition Watchtower Snarkle, Jack Hive, Joseph Haarlock Sucks At Cards

Analysis of the artifacts captured in last week's raid on the cult stronghold [reference: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Questing Quail 1), (Questing Quail 2)] has conclusively identified Items 23, 27, and 106 as psy-grafting machines of Chaos Eldar origin. Devices of this type are used to transfer an infiltrator's psyche into a captive subject, subordinating the original individuals' will to their own while retaining enough memory and personality to permit the infiltrator to pass as the original even to close confidantes and surface level psychic scanning. [refer to: Hideous Machineries of the Lost and the Damned: A Comprehensive Reference to Known Cult Technologies of the Segmentum Obscurus, Vol. 3, 227th Edition, pg. 1128-1145, for more detail] Quite simply, it turns loyal citizens into sleeper agents for the cult.

As this cell of the cult was using a high-class retreat as a cover, they would have had potential access to a wide cross section of lesser nobility, including PDF officers. A full assessment of the threat must wait for the completion of more detailed analysis of the compromised social networks and the completion of interrogations of captured cultists, but we must assume the worst. This cell alone may have seeded hundreds of sleeper agents in sensitive positions, and if this was not the only cell of the cult it is possible there are still more psy-graft machines out there.

The implications are dire; and any other cells of the cult will surely know of the destruction of their fellows, and respond. I fear the situation is beyond the ability of a single Watchtower to contain. Consequently, I am officially requesting aid from the other Watchtowers on-world [attachment: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Query Quetzal 1) and the deployment of specialists in dealing with psi-grafted sleeper agents from off-world [attachment: RHODOPSIN RHUBARB SNAPDRAGON (Query Quetzal 2)].

Hopefully, we can root out this cancer before it spreads further.

>End file

>Logging you out...

>Good hunting, Inquisitor.

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</div>

= Non-Canonical Stories (Post M41 and Alternate Timelines) =

Abandon canon all ye who enter here. This is the place for all Nobledark Imperium stories that, regardless of how good they might be, represent non-canonical timelines (i.e., alternate timelines or post-999.M41 scenarios). Because the potential future of the galaxy post-999.M41 is supposed to be [[Your Dudes|up to the reader to decide]], all stories have been spoilered in order to avoid potentially ruining anyone's headcanon.

[[File:NotCanonShout.gif|200px|thumb|right|Basically this.]]

== Cypher Claws ==

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Private Dalwort was pretty sure he was going to die. He had known that he would for a while now, not the exact particulars but something like this. It was inevitable in a way, there were only so many ways a soldier in the Imperial Guard could die and almost all of them involved in some way the participation of another party. But he wasn't happy about it, no one bit. This was not how he wanted t go, hunted down across the snow like a beast. He could turn and fight, he knew at some level, he could turn and fight and die like a man. They could have outpaced him some time ago and he knew it, a mere man couldn't compete against an astartes, let alone a blood read monster blessed of Khorne. They were toying with them, he could hear their laughter over the wind in the tree tops and the hammering and blood rushing in his ears. Muscles on fire, lungs laboring to drag one more ragged breath after another into his chest he stumbled on. His nightsider eyes turned night into day by the light of the moon through the branches and he could see corporal Cadful not so blessed stumble over a tree root. Dalwort broke stride to catch him before he fell and was immediately slapped aside by a bright read hand.

Stars and whorl of purple and yellow blossomed in the pain of his face as he came back to himself. Everything was sore down one side of his face and he knew, by the fact that he was still alive, that he couldn't have been down for more than a moment. One eye was a rose of crimson agony, vision doubled and already he could feel it swelling shut and bruised and bleeding. A figure writ huge against the dark grey and gnarly tree trunks stood over Dalwort as he scrambled and backed away across the floor, Neth, Tiynad and Hormandz were, he saw ahead, backing away from two other giants that loomed ahead of them.

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A hand more like a metal bear paw lifted him by the collar of his sweat drenched flack jacket and hurled him to where the others had backed to. He could hear it. The laughter, a resonant and cruel sound. They were little more than mice to these creatures Tiynad lifted his trembling laser rifle and emptied the last of his powerpack into a scorch-marked line across one giant's chest with as much effect as pissing into a blizzard. The mocking, hideous laughter didn't change one iota.

Private Dalwort, Mordian Nightsider, soldier in the army of the most blessed Imperium resolved that he wouldn't at the very least die in the dirt and with what seemed to him super human effort hoisted himself to his feet, rifle held like a club in hands made numb by mindless animal fear. This was the night he would die, he tried to recall once more the cave he was born in, the land of his people in the endless star speckled night. A mordian's last thoughts should be those of home.

A flutter in the leaves above them and the giants stopped their tortuously slow advance. Splintering wood for a moment followed by a large thud and a spray of displaced snow as something in a much cleaner red landed in the trees barely a score of feet away. Tall as a Catachan and built large, a robe of heavy crimson hung from those broad shoulders fastened and trimmed with bleached bones and peppered with frost and the red Fallen astartes finally reached for their own weapons.

The nearest swung his chain-axe with a strength of a wrecking ball and the speed of the gale only to find his arm stopped as if he had struck a mountain, the man if man he was in the frosted robes wrenched that arm upwards and flipped the creature into one of it's damned and forsaken packmates before twisting the arm past the point of endurance to the snapping of adamantium armour and inhumanly strong bones. The other two had charged, roaring in rage as their chain axes screamed in a promise of bloody retribution. A promise that went fulfilled as the broad shouldered figure spun and ducked and twisted around their clumsy flailing before landing a punch that collapsed one of their helmets and the skull inside it. The broken armed Fallen and it's associate attempted to get to their feet but weren't quick enough as the broken armed one was silenced by a thunderous boot impacting it's neck, directed movements becoming the graceless flails of a man dying of a crushed windpipe and lungs filing with blood.

Two remained now, circling the Mordian's saviour, waiting for the moment to strike. The man spun to keep them both in his vision as much as possible, shoulders squared, fists bunched the dynamic of the situation seeming to dawn on both of the Fallen at the same time that this wasn't the circling of sharks around a stranded swimmer, this was a wolf indecisive of which sheep to pick first. The figure was smiling beneath that grey beard, grey eyes like hard flint gleamed beneath those grey hairs, eyes of a judge without mercy, displeased and declaring and damning. The one with the laser scorch marks was the laser scorch marks was the first to fall, his head torn unceremoniously from his body, the second tackled to the ground and rib-cage crushed under repeated hammer blows as inhumanly dark blood seeped into the spoiled snow.

The whole engagement had in truth been over in moments, the Mordians huddled together as the figure stood upright once more, flint hard eyes fixing on them like those of an apex predator. The Fallen had been terrible beyond words but here was something worse. Those eyes reached into their souls like the inferno glare of a god, seeing their sins and knowing them completely. There was no hiding from him, he knew their names, he knew everything about them and they couldn't look away. The figure took a role of parchment or animal skin from his robe and marked it in the blood of the slain several times. Rooted by all encompassing terror Dalwort and his comrades trembled as he moved towards them with long, sure strides. Dalwort couldn't see, his one good eye was full of tears "please" he silently mouthed through quivering lips "please" the figure now seeming impossibly huge was standing right before him now and reached forward once more and Dalwort finally managed to close his eye and screwed them tight as he prepared for death.

There was a slight heaviness upon his shoulders. After what seemed an eternity he opened his eye to see the grey haired and blood drenched figure gone, leaving only the dead as testament to him ever having been there. The dead and a forge-world fresh Cameleoline cloak over his flack jacket. Looking around his comrades were similarly gifted and as confused and terrified as he imagined he looked, and above them the sound of laughter booming as thunder and as terrible as an avalanche "HO, HO, HO".

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</div>

== Unnamed Alternate Timeline Story ==

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“It is an esoteric art, young seer, one that is not often explored by practitioners of our Path. And admittedly, in times like these it is more practical to gaze into the future to find the sword stroke that will cut down the foe. But still, there is a great value in what we do, for the road not taken has much to teach us.

“Now, expand your mind as you have done before. Feel the infinite strands of time and causality spiraling forth from this point. Good. Now, instead of reaching forward, reach back. It will feel strange, but try to find a point in the past, and focus. It may be faint, but give it time… Ah, I see you feel it. Different, aren’t they? Those are the ashen echoes of what could have been. Pick one, and follow it for a while. Immerse yourself in it. Let yourself fall into the mists of what never was and never will be. Part the veil and look inside this world of lost possibility. What do you see?”

---

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The throne room was bathed in warm light from the setting sun that filtered through the stained glass windows, long shadows thrown carelessly against ornate walls. It was modestly sized but handsomely furnished, fitting for the humble, diligent Planetary Governor who ruled there, but today it had a different occupant.

The Grand Vizier stood at his usual spot behind the borrowed throne, arms crossed behind his back, as he watched the last of the courtiers and petitioners trickle from the hall. The Emperor raised his hand in a benevolent wave as his subjects left, some of them still with looks of slack-jawed awe or religious rapture on their faces as they turned to look one last time upon their immortal ruler. A pair of golden-armored Custodes closed the great doors with a final clang, and the room was empty. The Emperor let out a long sigh and rose, making his way towards the private exit behind the throne. The Grand Vizier fell in beside him, matching his stride without a word. The Emperor would speak when he wanted.

The pair proceeded through the door to the hallway that led to the residential wing of the palace that the governor had lent to them, and after a moment of companionable silence, the Emperor spoke. “Any news since our briefing this morning?”

“Nothing requiring your attention, Your Majesty.”

The Emperor raised an amused eyebrow. “Your Majesty? Using titles today, are we?”

“You saw how these provincial types were falling over themselves to call you by the most elaborate titles possible. They love the pomp and glamor, so we may as well humor them while we’re here.”

“Very well then, my Grand Vizier. What did you think of Lord Farwell and his proposal?”

“An earnest man, and his plans for increasing agricultural production here were sound, though perhaps accepting them would anger the Melisians.”

“Let them be angry then. They may fume and fuss, but they will not cross the throne in such times. We cannot have the entire hive world of Kado so dependent on Melis for supplies, and an expansion here would do much to bolster the stability of the agricultural base in the subsector.”

The Vizier smiled wryly. “They may not see it that way, but I agree: their objections will not have much force given their economic ties and the fact they have more tractors than lasguns.”

They continued down the hall and out into a small courtyard, where two serving girls were idly gossiping, leaning against a column. They turned at the sound of footsteps and froze wide-eyed as the Emperor and the Vizier approached. They managed to dip down into shaky curtsies and squeak out a stammered greeting.

The Emperor smiled gently at them, the expression radiant on his sculpted features. The serving girls flushed an alarming shade of red, and one of them seemed to be hyperventilating. The Vizier rolled his eyes.

“If you would be so kind, inform the good butler that we will be having our dinner in the garden pavilion today,” said the Emperor. The serving girls nodded frantically but did not move. “You may go now,” the Emperor prompted gently. The pair blinked, the spell broken, and fled in the direction of the kitchens. The Vizier shook his head, and the Emperor shrugged helplessly.

As they made they way towards the garden, the Emperor turned again to the Vizier. “What of Biel-Tan? The last report indicated the Court of the Young King was in a frenzy. Will a visit be necessary?”

“No, Your Majesty. I only just received word. It seems the good Ambassador Cain has managed to slow the situation somewhat, and given the pause it looks like the cooler heads of the Court will prevail. We will continue to monitor the situation, but it seems unlikely we will have a rampaging Bahzhakhain waking sleeping Tomb Worlds.”

“Whatever we’re paying that man, it’s not enough.”

“A true hero of the Imperium.”

They pushed open an elaborate wrought iron gate, and then they were in the garden. The Governor’s wife was something of a gardener, and in the carefully cultivated beds and trellises were plants and flowers from a hundred different worlds. Flowering shrubs, elegantly pruned trees, crawling vines, and overhead four-winged dragonets and Elysian swallows flitted about the branches.

The Emperor stood a moment, looking across the garden. “The First Lady has an eye for landscaping. A marvelous garden, is it not?”

“That it is, Your Majesty.”

“Please, no more titles when we are alone here. I’ve had my fill of that today.”

With that the Emperor stretched, reaching towards the sky, and in a burst of white unfolded his wings. Huge they were, pure as driven snow, and even now having seen them for ten thousand years, they were a beautiful sight to the Vizier. “As you say, Sanguinius.”

Sanguinius patted him on the shoulder. “Come, Oscar. Dinner awaits us.”

They walked down the path to the pavilion at the center of the garden and passed by the pride of the First Lady: a small collection of plants saved from the destruction of Old Earth, crowned by a single rosebush. They seated themselves at the table in the pavilion, and soon the butler and a host of servants came down the path, pushing carts loaded with food and drink.

The golden man and Man of Gold reviewed dataslates and holopads as they ate, never taking their eyes from the information at hand even as they worked on the food, reviewing reports, approving orders and laws, ceaselessly manning the wheels of government that endlessly churned to keep the vast machine of the Imperium in motion. Finally, the last course was cleared away, and Sanguinius set down his holopad and took a sip of tea. Oscar paused, stylus hovering over his holopad.

Sanguinius sighed. “Just ten minutes. Let me at least enjoy the sunset.”

Oscar nodded, and looked of towards the horizon together.

“Should we spar again, later tonight?” asked Oscar.

Sanguinius groaned. “You’ll be the death of me. Tapping into the Warp always makes me queasy, and I’ve already been locked in the throne room all day listening to complaints about the price of grox.”

Oscar chuckled. “I could use the night off as well. Your control of lightning yesterday nearly bested me. Your powers may very well match my own soon.”

“Hopefully not for a while yet, I’d rather you be the one to freeze battlefleets with your mind. But I did notice the same thing, likely due to the increase in Imperial Cult activity that the Synod reported.”

At that, Oscar opened his mouth, but the words caught in his throat. Sanguinius looked at him. “You have a question.”

He hesitated. “About the Imperial Cult… I’m not quite sure how to put it.”

The angel smiled. “A topic of conversation we haven’t breached after ten thousand years of friendship? Now I have to hear it, if only for a break in the monotony.”

Oscar looked his friend in the eyes. “Why do you let them worship you?”

He saw a glimmer of surprise. Sanguinius looked up, brow furrowed ever so slightly. When he looked back down at Oscar, his smile had become sad. “Because that is what they need of their Emperor. Of me.”

“It is a falsehood. They call you a god when you are only a man.”

“I know, Oscar. I more than anyone know of my own frailties and failings. But that is not what need. The common man is not like you, the truth is not so sacrosanct a thing to them. They need a hero, a savior, one they can emulate, one so perfect and invincible that they can believe in him with all their heart so they can go on for just one more day in this galaxy of pain. They need a god.” Sanguinius looked off towards the sunset. His eyes were distant.

“When you placed that crown on my head, Sanguinius the man died. In his place you created the Emperor, embodiment of the Imperium, vessel for the hopes and dreams of quadrillions of souls, the immortal Angel that would save them all. Never have I forced them down this path, Oscar. They pray and worship and hope, and I in turn take their pain and expectations and longing upon myself. All for the sake of the lie that anchors them, that keeps the Imperium turning: The Emperor Protects. Even when I have failed so many of them, they still believe: The Emperor Protects.”

Oscar was silent for a moment. “Do you resent me?”

“Never, Oscar. Someone has to be that beacon for them, and better it is me than anyone else.”

“You do not bear this burden alone, Sanguinius.”

“I know. I have you, and Lady Isha, and many others, and truly without all your help I never would have made it to today.”

“Yes, I do recall a certain large Ork I helped you with,” said Oscar drily.

“But I have thought about it.” Sanguinius twisted a long strand of his golden hair with a finger. “For all our power, the fate of the Imperium will not lie in our hands.”

“Oh?”

“A great many people – you included, I think – believe that it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that hold the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness, love, and courage. And if the Church gives them that strength, is it not worthy? If the guardsmen in his trench fights a little harder for his fellows, if the clerk at his desk pushes through and finishes one more report, if the tired mother finds the strength to hold and read to her children, then all of this will have been worth it, and that is where we will find our salvation. Not in me, or you, but in the strength of the people and in each individual citizen, whether it be man, Eldar, Tau, Demiurge, or others.”

“So you say.” Oscar poured an amber liquor into two glasses, a favorite of the locals, the bottle glugging softly. He slid one to Sanguinius.

“You’re unconvinced.” Sanguinius laughed. “This conversation got quite heavy, didn’t it? I’m no good at this ‘god’ business, it seems. Ask your wife about it, she’s had millennia more experience than I.” They both sipped at their cups. “How is she these days?”

“Overworked, just like us. Splitting her attention between the Warp and realspace is tiring, and the needs of the faithful are many in times like these. She is well enough, though.”

“Once again, my heartfelt thanks to the Mother Goddess of the Imperium, especially for her help with the plague at Monarchia. Even the Word Bearers were at a loss, and without her direct intervention we likely would have lost the planet to Nurgle.”

Oscar smiled faintly, a hint of pride on his lips. “I will convey this, she will be pleased to hear it.”

“A shame she could not have joined us for this trip. She would like it here.”

“That she would. But enough about us.” Oscar peered at Sanguinius closely. “What about you?”

The angel sighed. “Not this conversation again.”

“You know I’m right.”

“Let me recount your arguments: An Empress would be of great symbolic and functional importance to the Imperium. A woman of talent would be able to take on duties of government we currently administer, relieving our workload and allowing the Traveling Court to spread its reach. She could also increase our influence by presenting a different face from us, two towering demigods, and represent the Imperium separately on her own missions. It would also help Imperial morale, giving the citizens a great event and moment of joy to celebrate. And finally, as consort, she would be to… address my needs, both emotional and otherwise. Does that all sound about right?”

“Masterfully argued, Your Majesty, I am utterly convinced.”

Sanguinius shook his head, unable to contain a smile. “You would be, but I am not so easily swayed.” He gave the liquor in his glass a swirl. “They say a man is lucky if he can find true love once. I already have, so to find it twice is to ask too much of this universe. I’ve already had my happy ending.”

“It was worth a try.” They sat a moment in silence, appreciating the sunset. “Do you still think of her?”

“Every day,” said Sanguinius, his eyes distant again. “When I lost her and Belisarius in the same month, I thought the light had gone out of my life, and so it has, to a degree. That part of me is done.” He finished his drink with a gulp. “I said the day you placed the crown on my head was the day Sanguinius died, and the Emperor was born. That was a lie, of sorts. The day Sanguinius truly died is the day I lost them. Now, our dream is all that is left to me.”

“You have heard reports from the Blood Angels, I am sure, of the Lady in Red?” said Oscar quietly.

“Of course.”

“If it truly is Lady Cyrene, why has she not shown herself to you in your visions?”

“If we assume it is truly her, then she has her reasons. Cyrene was always independent and willful in her own way, and I loved that about her. I trust that what she doing is right. And if fate deems that we will not meet again in this world, we will meet again in the next.”

Oscar followed suit and finished his own drink. The sun was only a slight arc above the horizon now, midnight blue descending and jealously pushing out the last few hues of pastel pink and yellow. “We should be going soon,” said Oscar. “There is still work to be done.”

Sanguinius nodded. “I will meet you in the study soon. I just need to be out here for a little while longer.”

Oscar rose from the table and headed down the path to the palace. Before he turned the corner, he looked back at the pavilion. Sanguinius was silhouetted against the setting sun, wreathed in a corona of light, and for a moment, he was a duality: he looked utterly magnificent, every inch the Emperor and god the people claimed him to be, and utterly alone, an all-too-human man crushed by the weight of his crown.

Oscar felt a stab of pity, and regret for what he had done. He turned and left, grateful to his friend that it was not him.

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== The End, But One Of Many ==

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Millions of years in the future…

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Scribe-thane Escribdeus dug. He scraped at the earth with his hands, pulling away paw after pawful of sand. In spite of this seemingly primitive behavior, most observers would note that he had come a long way from his ancestors millions of years ago, which had been little more than rats.

He wore robes for one. He wasn’t an animal.

Slowly but surely, he scooped away at the stone tablet emerging from the ground ignoring the sensation of sand grains in his fur. Once it was sufficiently clean, he brought out his equipment and began analyzing the stone. Luminescence dating, to tell when the stone was last exposed to sun or heat. After a few minutes, the machine spat out its answer with a beep.

The numbers couldn’t be right.

He ran the analysis again. The answer was the same. He scooped several more handfuls of sand away from the artifact to make sure it wasn’t what he thought it was, it couldn’t be what he thought it was, but it was. The scribe-thane brushed at the emerging stone plaque, careful not to damage anything, until he saw the alien glyph of the Ancients clearly denoted upon their surface. He felt a swell of joy in his heart.

Scholar-Seer was going to be so pleased when she saw this.

Elsewhere, Mistress Scholar-Seer Senic was indeed pleased, but for reasons that were much more carnal than her thane would have thought. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. For a species that put an emphasis on tactile stimulation and social behavior it was only natural that they would put a high premium on grooming and reproduction. Add to the fact that solid-colored fur, whether her own grey or black, brown, or white, was considered an attractive characteristic by her species and it was unsurprising that she received so many offers of mating.

“Mistress!” Escribdeus said, throwing open the flap of the tent and completely ruining the mood, “glorious news-news!”

Scholar-Seer Senic let out a shriek, startled by her piebald-colored assistant. It wasn’t out of modesty, no one in the room had anything that the others hadn’t seen before, but nobody liked to be started in the middle of an intimate moment. Picking herself up off the ground, the Scholar-Seer gave the oblivious scribe-thane a death glare.

“Mistress,” he said, “we found one. “Two-hundred years more young-young than youngest known Ancient relic based on multiple methods of dating.”

Senic was shocked. She had expected they would find something here but nothing this young. This was certainly something worth interrupting mating for.

“You’ve done well thane,” she said, “have extra rations-treat as reward for good-good work.”

The scribe-thane squealed so loud the Scholar-Seer thought he was going to pass out before excitedly scurrying out of the tent. He was such an excitable sort. She wondered if she had been that way when she had come of age at five years old. She supposed she had better return to work too. Dismissing the lower-ranking male with a chitter, she donned her robes and the horned headdress that marked her as a figure of authority. She enjoyed mating as much as the next member of her species, but her true passion was in studying archaeology. The lives and ways of ancient peoples.

Opening the flap of the burlap tent, she allowed her eyes to adjust to the harsh light before walking through the work camp. All around her, thanes were busy at work, two arguing over cataloguing a plastic idol, another taking a break and chewing on a gnawing aid. Such was typical for her kind. When a newborn in any clan reached juvenile age, they were apprenticed under the aegis of a Master or Mistress in order to learn skills and discipline, and eventually be deemed an adult. It was their way. With their reproductive habits, large numbers of thanes were not unexpected, though in this case these were not all her own apprentices. At least with modern medicine it was better than in the medieval era, where famine was common.

Walking up the sandy hill to the dig site, she noticed one of the large rat-wolves trotting alongside her. Emitting a brief chirrup, the rat-wolf came close enough to her to give the domesticated rodent a piece of jerky. The rat-wolves were good guardians. Useful to have around. As she reached the digsite itself, the rat-wolf realized that it was not going to get any more jerky out of her, and turned back to go lounge around with the other rat-wolves under the tents.

When she reached the digsite, she saw it was still much as she had left it, neat lines of string demarcated squares over the Ancient ruins. However, at the far end of the site, she noticed the new Ancient plaque uncovered by the new excavation efforts. The Scholar-Seer’s pulse quickened. As swiftly as possible, her hind feet tread over the sand, until she reached the stone edifice itself. Crawling down into the hole, she put her hand upon the glyphs, letting her fingers brush over the alien carvings. Then she stopped. Although she could not get a good look at him, she could see the scribe-thane standing behind her out of the corner of her eye.

“You know what they say-say?” she asked, not turning around.

The scribe-thane shook his head. He had learned to make out some of the lettering on the Ancients’ monuments, but he had never really learned to read their writing.

“Can tell you. You want to know?”

The scribe-thane nodded excitedly. The idea of learning the craft directly from the mistress was something that anyone would file their incisors for. The Scholar-Seer turned from the plaque to look the thane in the eye.

“Assume you know basics of story. When world young-young, galaxy was in primordial chaos. From chaos, gods emerge. Our gods, the Ancients, and their enemies, Cancerous Ones. Emprah, the gold-god, decide that galaxy in chaos unacceptable. Rescue-steal Great Mother from the tallest tower of Cancerous Poxed One, who claim-kidnap her as his own at dawn of time. Mother-goddess decide to join gold-god in his quest. They create thirteen children, twelve sons and one daughter, to aid them in their quest. Lionman Russ, the savage knight. Fuegan Manus, the smith. Sanguinala, the banshee daughter. This why thirteen so important to us.”

The scribe-thane nodded again. He knew the story, everyone learned it as a child.

“Great Mother and Father and their children fight war against cancerous ones. They seal away Cancerous Ones in the netherworld. Some guess-think that this myth explanation of why life and death happen. But no one can deny that Ancients exist. Great Mother go on to have many children. Many species-things. Populate galaxy with new life. For many-many years life bountiful. But then gods vanish. So do children. Leave only us, youngest child of gods. No one knows why.”

Scholar-Seer Senic turned back to the tablet.

“This tablet-stone important because it younger than any other, and so reveal-tells more of gods’ story”

“What happened?”

The Scholar-Seer put her hand on the tablet for a moment. Then her face fell.

“Things change. Final war-battle began. Center could not hold. Slaves of Cancerous Ones broke free from the Netherworld, intent on dragging mother-goddess back with them. Dead-things from before age of gods returned and took revenge to reclaim lost thrones. Great devourer come from east, eat fourth of galaxy. Much death-death. Home of gods under battle-siege. Many desperate things done. Moon of unnatural-things, prison of those not meant to be, opened. Oblivion-god set free to make war-death on those who trod upon his kingdom. All children-species called for final war. Cancer-gods try to kill last hope in cradle.”

The Scholar-Seer studied the tablet.

“And then what?” the scribe-thane asked.

“I…do not know. Story-tablet stops there. Had to guess, think it fear-warning for future. Tell not-born generations what happened. Not sure why.”

The two shared a moment of silence for their sobering discovery, only for the chitter-bead tagged in the Scholar-Seer’s ear to go off.

“Mistress. News-news from star-watchers. Most important. They see-see ship in atmosphere. It look…look like crescent moon.”

GOOD END

Lofn Ulthran stood at the bridge of the Lady Betsy, looking out at the surface of the planet over which the ship orbited. She wasn’t happy. Few people would be if they were woken up at three in the morning several days ago and told she was urgently needed, and I quote, “right the fuck now”. And then were unable to get a good night-cycle’s sleep for the next few days. Going somewhere “right the fuck now” took on a very different meaning when you knew someone with access to a Necron inertialess drive ship. 220 years of being a diplomat and you would think she get a little bit more respect.

That said, the decidedly less sleep-deprived part of her brain could understand the need for urgency. Odysseus had finally shown up again. During all the craziness that went down during the Second War in Heaven the planet, which previously orbited the near-Sol star of Epsilon Eridani, had been shot deep into the Warp like a pinball. It had gone so deep that at least among the Administratum there was a betting pool of if and when the previously habitable planet would ever show up again. And then it happened to show up in the Skavos cluster, a region which until recently had been covered by a Warp Storm for as long as she could remember. Lofn shuddered. Odysseus had been so deep in the Warp there was no telling how long it had been there. Subjective millions of years could have passed for the people on that planet in the 220 years the planet disappeared from realspace. She couldn’t imagine what they could have gone through. It was no wonder the Imperium had asked her to represent them. Who else would you call to make first contact with people who hadn’t seen the Imperium in centuries, if they even remembered at all.

The door opened with a hiss, breaking Lofn from her rumination, and an eight-foot-tall metal skeleton stomped into the room behind her. Lofn smiled.

“Obyron,” she said to her old childhood companion, “I assume everything is okay on the ship?”

Obyron relaxed slightly. “Nothing much. A Watcher and an eldar got in an argument on the lower decks. Had to step in and separate them.”

Lofn smiled. There were few things in the galaxy that shut petty squabbles down quicker than a Necron leaning over them with a death glare.

“Any other messages I should be aware of before we make contact?”

“No. Well, one message from Ynnead, asking to make sure if you are okay, but that’s to be expected.”

Lofn rolled her eyes. “Ynnead worries too much. If I were ever in trouble, he more than anyone else would be the first to know.”

“He just does it because he cares.”

There was a pause in the conversation.

“I only wish the Nemesor could have been here to see this,” Obyron muttered.

Lofn frowned. She barely remembered the jovial old Necron from her childhood but he had always seemed like the nice sort. Although Obyron may have technically been the captain of the Lady Betsy, Lofn would never refer to Obyron as such. She knew he would take offense to it. To Obyron, the Lady Betsy only ever had one captain.

“I wish he could have been here too. He would have probably loved it. But I don’t think he had any regrets about how things turned out.”

“I should have been there, it was my duty.”

“You had two conflicting sets of duties.” Lofn responded, “It was either obey your lord and potentially let him die or disobey him and potentially let me die. How many times have we been over this, Obyron? You can’t keep beating yourself up over this.”

Obyron grunted. Lofn knew that was for her sake. She knew this argument wasn’t over, but Obyron was willing to let things lie for the time being in the name of getting the job done.

“Well,” she said, “let’s go meet the neighbors.”

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== The Visitor ==

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Note: In the same timeline as the Good End of "The End, But One of Many"

Lofn Ulthran put away the last of loose things before surveying her now-tidy apartment on Colchis. Normally she didn’t put much effort into keeping her apartment neat, but today she was expecting a visitor. Apparently Lofn had gotten the job done just in time, for no sooner had she finished the job than she heard the doorbell ring. Humming to herself, she made her way to the apartment door and opened it to reveal a tall, slender figure standing just beyond. His skin was pale and his face angular and gaunt, a white shock of hair upon his head. His eyes were an ethereal blue, and in his left hand was a large, silver polearm that one might say resembled a halberd or some odd combination of sword and spear or, for those familiar with more exotic weaponry, a Necron warscythe.

“I see I could not stop for death, so he kindly stopped for me,” Lofn said, sounding oh-so-pleased with herself.

“Ha ha, like I’ve never heard that one before,” the figure drolled.

“Nice to see you too, Ynnead,” Lofn said to her guest, “and I suppose from that remark death’s too good for a case of fine Valhallan dark?”

“Valhallan? Damn, death will bite his tongue for that.”

Lofn paused for a moment.

“So is it, you know, okay for you to stop by like this? Like, people aren’t going to stop passing on just because you decided to stop for a beer or something?” She said, looking around as though she expected death to be put on pause any second.

“Nah. According to mom the process happens regardless of whether I’m incarnated on the material plane because technically I’m doing it simultaneously in the Warp. It’s like how people don’t stop getting pregnant just because mom’s around. I’d ask mom how that could be, but she’d tell me to ask dad, and he’s tell me…”

“Fourth-degree interdimensional warp fuckery,” the two said at the same time.

Lofn snorted.

“Come on in,” she said, turning back to the apartment and heading inside, “I’ll get the drinks.”

“You got a place for this thing?” Ynnead said, gesturing slightly to his giant Necron-style halberd for emphasis.

“Yeah, put it in the umbrella rack,” Lofn called from the kitchen, “Nothing’s in there anyway, don’t know why I have it, it never rains here.”

Depositing his weapon with a loud clang, Ynnead followed Lofn into the apartment. It was a nice apartment, not very large, but rather homey. Ynnead could see not much had changed since his last visit here. Lofn’s paintings still covered most of the walls. He turned to regard the one nearest to him, an eerie watercolor piece depicting a single figure holding open a black, sketchy doorway. He had a pretty good idea what that was supposed to be of. Lofn’s apartment had a single couch, facing the windows overlooking the city. Sitting on the couch sleeping in the sun was Lofn’s chitinous pet. A single look from Ynnead was all that it took to send the creature scurrying.

Ynnead and Lofn had known each other since they were children. Ynnead, due to his nature as the child of the Emperor and the Empress, had always been a fixture in the Imperial Court, whereas Lofn had been brought to Old Earth at a young age due to her political importance and at that time the danger in her life. Due to being the only half-human, half-eldar (though exactly what Ynnead was was a subject of debate), and more importantly, the only children at most court functions, the two struck up a friendship. It felt good to have someone else around who could finally empathize with how they saw the world, neither in terms of the obsessive, long-term view of the eldar or the wilder, short-term views of most humans, especially as the two of them sometimes felt like conversation pieces as opposed to people. A couple hundred years later, and their friendship was still going strong.

“Is the old man around?” Ynnead called.

“He’s around,” Lofn called from the kitchen, “Obyron knew you were going to be stopping by and stepped out for a bit. I think he’s going to go visit the Nemesor’s memorial.”

“Ouch,” Ynnead winced.

“Yeah, he really hasn’t been dealing with it well,” Lofn said, bringing over the case of Valhallan beer and handing one to Ynnead, “I’ve been meaning to try and talk with him about it but I worry that, you know, he’ll see me as part of the problem, given everything that happened. I know he really misses the Nemesor, but I also know Zahndrekh wouldn’t have wanted him to mope for eternity like this.”

Lofn flopped down on the couch, her arm across the back.

“Nothing’s really new with me,” she said, “No real crisis has popped up in the last few months. As I told you before, being a diplomat is mostly dependent on people being stupid and if people aren’t stupid then there’s little for me to do. Mostly I’ve just been doing humdrum stuff, some minor stuff for the Administratum, seeing a few friends, and painting.”

“So how’s the reincarnation gig?” Lofn said, popping open a bottle, “More eldar-human hybrids being born?”

“More are being born every year, but not many and not very often. You’re still the eldest by far.”

“Gah,” Lofn said, throwing up her hand, “Don’t say that. It makes me feel like an old lady.”

“You’re the eldest. The eeeeldest.”

“We’re the eldest. You’re the same age as me, dumbass.”

“I was born four years, seven months, and thirteen days after you, Sol standard time,” Ynnead said smugly, seemingly channeling his father for a moment.

“Come off it. Four years is chump change in the grand scheme of things.”

“Well, you know what mom says. 65 million is the new 40 million.”

“I guess. The eldest, huh? Isn’t that what that one guy used to call himself? The bird man?”

“Tzeentch? Yeah, I guess you’re right, he did.”

“Is he even still around?”

“I don’t know,” Ynnead said, “I didn’t pay much attention to what happened to him. I had bigger concerns at the time. It was a War in Heaven thing. You know I like talking about the War in Heaven just as much as you do. I mean, how would you like it if I asked you about the whole thing with Hive Fleet Enkidu?”

“Okay, point taken,” Lofn relented.

The two of them both took a deep swig.

“So is the scythe holding up okay? You seemed kind of worried about it last time.”

“Oh, I think it’s going fine now. It’s kind of like working with a suit of exarch armor and not getting overwhelmed, except instead of a bunch of little minds it’s you know.”

Ynnead dry gulped and his voice suddenly sounded very sober.

“One big one.”

“Are you sure it’s safe for you to be lugging that then around then?” Lofn said, suddenly worried about the contents of her umbrella holder.

“It’s actually safer with me than if I were to not have it. The C’tan exist as physical constants, and cannot be destroyed without seriously affecting the underlying nature of causality. As long as a single weakened piece of them exists in the universe, they can theoretically be contained without the entity running free. The consciousness remains trapped in the scythe and can never manifest in a free state. The alternative would be to bury it in a hole somewhere and hope it never gets out. And that’s never worked.”

“That sounds like something the Void Dragon would say. You’re still talking to the Void Dragon despite your parents telling you not to, aren’t you?”

“I am not and will vigorously deny it if you say anything.”

“You’re totally still talking to the Void Dragon,” Lofn said with a mischievous smile.

“Yes! I mean, he knows things. Things about how the universe works, what it means to be a god. Things my parents won’t tell me and I wish they’d tell me.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is? Cegorach said he’s safe, didn’t he?”

“Cegorach says the Iron Storm is safe,” Ynnead responded. “It’s not the kind of vote that inspires confidence. Anyway I figure, Nightbringer is a sociopath, right? So if you hear any voices telling you to do what you think he would do in that situation just do the exact opposite. Plus the way it works is most of what it kills gets funneled through me to be spit back out, so it’s not like its feeding and growing stronger.”

“And so you’re not worried about it being fed up with being stuck as a deathstick, deciding to take over your mind and using you like a puppet?”

“Hey, it got to take bites out of two different gods. It should be happy,” Ynnead said defensively, crossing his arms.

Lofn smiled.

Ynnead took a drink, “Are you worried at all that us hanging out a lot is going to get people…talking?”

“Only in that gods-awful unsanctioned material, which they still can’t find out who’s producing them. Grruh, so annoying. Can’t you, you know, appear in front of them and put the fear of death into them?”

“That would be a horrible abuse of my powers.”

“You summoned ghosts to scare me at my twenty-fifth birthday party.”

“That was Eldrad under a bedsheet, you do know that, right?”

“So you do admit ghosts were involved,” Lofn said with tones of false accusation.

“As I was saying,” Ynnead said, getting back to the subject at hand, “There is nothing I would love to do more, but doing so would be a grievous use of my phenomenal cosmic powers. And also because I’m fairly sure my mom would ground me for about three thousand years if she found out.”

“Ground you? You’re several centuries old. Sounds to me like you are too afraid of your mother.”

“I am not too afraid of my mother. I am exactly as afraid of my mother as I need to be. I once saw her chew out the entire ruling house of Kaelor. Kaelor. What do you think your mom would do to you if you pulled something like that?”

“She’d send me back to Cadian boot camp and suddenly I see where you are going with this.”

“My point. Has been made.”

“I would probably die if I had to go back to Cadian boot camp,” Lofn said, repressing the shivers.

“If you ever die, I will play you at any game of your choosing for the chance to come back to life. Except Battleaxe. You cheat.”

“What can I say?” Lofn shrugged in pride, “I’m an Ulthran.”

“Technically so am I,” Ynnead pointed out, “Mom was what, some distant cousin or something of Eldrad’s way back before the Fall.”

“Wait, if Isha was Eldrad’s distant cousin, does that mean we’re related?”

Both Lofn and Ynnead got a look on their face as if both had stepped on a particularly foul smelling piece of grox dung.

“I really don’t like where this train of thought is going,” Ynnead said.

“Ditto.”

“Speaking of Eldrad how is the old bastard?," Lofn said, changing the subject, "I saw him the other day and he got all weepy, he wouldn’t explain to me why.”

“He! Will! Not! Leave!” Ynnead said, suddenly animated, gesticulating with his hands. “I have tried to be generous with him, given the circumstances, but he refuses to leave that wraithbone prosthetic of his. I try to point out that reincarnation is a thing and he can be young again if he wants, but he won’t do it. I try to point out that the thing he’s in is an old relic outdated by modern standards and the least he could do is upgrade to something less shitty, but he won’t because he’s afraid I’m going to snatch his soul up when he tries to transfer. At which point he usually makes some remark about knowing me since I was in diapers. At this point he’s so stubborn he might as well become a universal fixture.”

Lofn broke out laughing.

“What!” Ynnead said, “what’s so funny?”

“Can you imagine,” Lofn said between laughs, “Grandpa Eldrad. The universal constant? I can just see him sitting around, waiting for a pair of young races to go to war on whatever planet he’s on, and then he’d rise from the ground like a fucking Necron and go ‘I have awoken from my eons long slumber, to tell you kids to get off my lawn.’”

Despite his frustration, Ynnead couldn't help but snicker at that. Before long the two of them were laughing.

“Hundreds of years and he still won’t leave that wraithbone shell," Lofn sighed. "Gods, are we going to drive our kids crazy with our antics when we reach that age?”

“Yes!” Ynnead said rather too quickly, “I mean yes, I can see that. Driving our children crazy. The ones we have. With other people.”

Lofn looked at Ynnead for a second, then flopped back on the couch.

“Yeah, I can see that,” she said.

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== Mon'Tau ==

Editor's Note: Deemed non-canon for being a too on-the-nose reference, though similar events are likely to have happened, namely Kais learning to control his anger and learning that Imperials aren't as wise and all knowing as they make themselves out to be to the Tau Empire.

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He rushed through the door, the elevatus doors clicking shut behind him. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Shas.27O_Kais|Kais]] fell to his knees and breathed a sigh of relief as he heard the splat of Blue Horrors against the door behind him. It was only when he had a moment to catch his breath that Kais realized he was separated from his team. Alone. Again.

Kais wasn’t superstitious, but the number of times this happened was almost enough to make him believe this “[[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#The_Month_of_Murphy|Murphy]]” the others in the Gue’vash’vre’s retinue kept talking about really existed.

The Gue’vash’vre, the Inquisitor, had been investigating a trading company looking to exploit suspicious goods that had been obtained from a Rogue Trader. The goods, sure enough, had been artifacts tainted by the Warp, and when the Gue’vash’vre had tried to intervene things had of course Gone Horribly Wrong and the artifacts had summoned daemons.

Daemons. It always had to be daemons. Or cultists. Or genestealers. Why couldn’t the Gue’vash’vre ever uncover a conspiracy that was devoted to breeding fluffy gyrinxes or something.

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The vox speaker in the elevatus suddenly crackled to life. Kais perked up. He didn’t know the vox systems were still working down here. If anything it would have to be one of the traders, who he had seen run deeper into the facility when the daemons attacked.

“I’m willing to take responsibility for the horrible events of the last twenty-four hours,” the raspy voice claimed, “but you must understand, our interest in the Warp was purely for the greater good…”

Greater good? What did this gue’la take him for, a Shas’Saal? Did he think that just by saying the name of the Tau’va it would miraculously make everything that had happened justified?

He couldn’t stand these kind of people. The ones who thought hyperspace and the things inside it were just a toy. He could understand it back home in the Empire, but here? They played with fire, but they weren’t the only ones to suffer the consequences when everyone else got burned.

“Everything has clearly gotten out of hand now…”

Kais stood and took a moment to examine the corpse sharing the elevatus with him. Ever since the events of Dolumnar IV he had become familiar with the sight of death at the hands of the Neverborn. Far too familiar. He only got a glance before he had to look away, but the image was burned into his brain. He wanted to tell himself that the gue’la had died in some other way, but he knew that wasn’t true.

The man had died screaming.

Kais felt a chill run down his spine. There it was again, the same feeling he had felt on Dolumnar IV. He tried to keep it locked up, and on most days he succeeded, but sometimes it couldn’t help but get out, especially when exposed to this…this injustice.

The people he had met across the galaxy called it many things. Righteous fury. The warrior’s madness. Kais knew all they were but flowery names for what it really was.

Anger.

“…but it was worth the risk, I assure you.”

Kais put his fist through the voxcaster.

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= Gallery =

Images that don't have a place anywhere else yet.

<gallery>
Image:Space_Marine_Evolution.png|Space Marine Evolution (V1)
</gallery>

[[Category:Nobledark Imperium]]