Editing Quest:The Long Night:Volume One:Life in the Storm (section)

=Any chance for a break?=

Not really. Wouldn't be much to write about if nothing really happened. However, it's not all bad news. Well, actually, it's two pieces of good news and one of bad.

The first good news is; when Ynnead was born, the Craftworld Eldar have received a massive temporary power boost. In a rare display of reasonable thinking (which you honestly hope there will be more of, with the galaxy heading south), they decided to use that boost to, among other things, drive their [[Dark Eldar|dark relatives]] out of [[Commorragh]] and the [[Webway]]. And they succeeded.

The second piece of good news is; they managed to liberate a personal pet of [[Asdrubael Vect]] which he left behind. Namely, one [[Jagathai Khan]]. Loyalist [[Primarchs]] are rare and valuable in the setting, even if this one required quite a bit of therapy for obvious reasons.

The bad news? A Dark Eldar colony is right in our backyard.

A patrol had discovered that Fjol IV, a formerly lifeless planet near the Vanaheim system, now has an atmosphere, an orbital defence grid, and a Dark Eldar fleet presence. An emergency meeting of the High Council determined that it's very risky to attack them. However, it also determined that letting them dig in is even riskier, so it was decided to send everything the Trust can spare as soon as it can do some minimal upgrades and preparations (for you that means training your forces for the task, refitting your escorts with sensors and point defences from the Defence Cruiser, and hurrying up your construction of twenty [[Macharius Heavy Tank|Macharius]] regiments).

==The War of Fjol IV==

The battle in space is fierce, as can be expected when Imperium ships fight the Eldar. In fact, Freyr is forced to admit he's facing a superior commander. Fortunately, once you blast apart the biggest DE orbital stations, that part vanishes. Presumably, that's where the bastard was. Time to show those sadomasopirates what Avernites are like.

Three task forces land. One is the regular Trust Guard, one is a force of Avernites and Midgardians commanded by you, and one is the heavy hitter – an army of ten thousand veteran Imperial Guard Regiments under their old commander/Governor of Midgard, Aelfric Abingdon, supplemented by your heavy armour, Power Armour, and the best Psykers.

Turns out that, for all your successes, the Dark Eldar are still fully capable of killing more soldiers than they lose. Your task force is losing troops at a four to one ratio to constant raids, the regular Trust troops are really bogged down, and the heavy hitters are actually doing well and should soon reach their objective. You yourself get to your target city in about nine days. As befits the Dark Eldar, the outer walls are manned by slaves chained to their cannons. More cannons are firing at you from inside the city. Half a battery of [[Deathstrike Missile]]s and some artillery barrages later, your forces have a beachhead.

Then, your vanguard spends the night in a Dark Eldar city with enemies constantly popping out of the sewers. And with artillery firing on both sides. Proper Warhammer. At least you manage to block most of the sewers as your main force moves in. A few days later you take over much of the outer city, but the inner parts with DE elites are still behind yet another wall, although you take out their cannons (the [[Macrocannon]] sized pieces going last). The elite task force manages to take out the fortress blocking the path to their own objective, while the regular guard had to slow down to reduce casualties.

Three weeks after landing, you take over all the outer city. Then the enemy sends a few thousand night assassins. You lose two Lieutenant-Generals and thousands of lower level officers, the Guard loses about half of theirs, the veterans are barely touched.

On the fortieth day, you finally take over the central keep of the city. However, you don't find much due to failing to stop the reactor those losers set to overload. Would have been helpful if someone could actually tell where the “Any” key is located. Guess Xeno language lessons ''are'' needed from time to time.

The Guard, meanwhile, takes over their objective but is left in a somewhat lacking condition for now. The elites sneak into the keep of their own objective city, loot it, and rig the reactor to blow.

The last objective to be taken is a mysterious facility with lots of experiment labs. In the end, it's glassed from the orbit; apparently, the Dark Eldar decided to counterbalance their brothers' increased sanity by experimenting with the daemonic.

A hundred million dead, thirty million of them from Avernus. Such are the costs of the victory. Time to go home, lick your wounds, and check who gained a level.

==Aftermath==
The casualties naturally cause even more losses to Avernus wildlife. But, in one unrelated incident, a good portion of one of your island cities vanishes without a trace one night.

Investigations and divinations show it's nothing to really worry about. Just a member of some local [[Cthulhu]] species in the Alpha+ range waking up for its millennial meal. Fortunately, it seems to prefer cultists.

However, the Orders Dialogous sisters finish translating the records looted from the Dark Eldar. Now that's a bit more worrying.

Basically, it might have been about twenty years for you, but for the rest of the galaxy, well over a century had passed.

The status of the galaxy is about as one would expect. The Imperium had split into thousands of pieces, usually sector sized, a lot fell or are falling to Chaos, Forge Worlds and Astartes are holding their domains (Ultramar currently controlling a dozen sectors), Orks are rising, Abaddon is grinding his way through the [[Cadia|Cadian Gate]], and will likely be done in a century or so, [[Huron Blackheart]] holds a large domain already. Tyranids and Necrons aren't very active, although the former are currently fighting the Orks in your vicinity.