Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Glasians (section)

===Migration History===

The Glasians do not select their targets, Tzeentch does.  The Mutant Liege selects the criteria by a method so arcane that the Inquisition has given up on trying analysis.  The one fact the Inquisition has determined beyond doubt is that Tzeentch views the Septiim system as a sort of control group for his enigmatic experiment.

The systems Tzeentch has targeted are listed below, in chronological order by Migration.

[[File:Glasians.png|The history and targets of the Glasian Migrations.]]


====Migration One====
The initial invasion caught the Imperium quite unprepared.  The Sector had a low number of psykers, whose dreams and forecasting might have granted more warning.  No active-duty military personnel in the Sector alive today remember the horrors of the first invasion, but the marks it left on Septiim and Maskos remain to this day.

When the Glasians arrived, they did so in far smaller force than they do in the present.  The invasion consisted of three large vessels, retroactively identified as the Glasians’ rough equivalent to the Apocaypse-class Battleships – very large, slow, and armed with the longest-ranged weapons possible.  Each was supported by a small flotilla of Escorts and a squadron of troopships.  The vessels simply appeared at the edges of the Drimmerzole, Maskos, and Septiim defense perimeters with no Warp signature, and promptly began shelling the living hell out of the startled Imperial defenders.

Even in the pre-Blue Daggers era of the Sector, however, its defenses and alliances of trust and mutual defense with other regions were not inconsiderable.  Five Astartes Chapters, Inquisitorial assets, and multiple Imperial Guard regiments mobilized to defend the region.  The Carcharadons were first to arrive, and took the fight to the Maskos fleet, while the Red Templars, the Angels of Fury, the Novamarines, and the Celestial Knights arrived piecemeal and in smaller numbers.  However, the unique nature of the Glasian technology proved a stumbling block for the Imperial retaliation force, which had distinct difficulty with the hovercraft and murderous plasma of the invaders.  Every Astartes Chapter that sent Marines took losses, with the Celestial Knights even losing a Strike Cruiser to the battleship over Septiim.

When the troopships arrived and began disgorging these strange vehicles and packs of howling-mad bird people on the planets below, the fighting grew even more disorganized.  The forces of Lord General Eustace Fowler took the invasion head-on, and eventually triumphed against the ground invasions, but an entire city on Drimmerzole Secundus was lost, with hundreds of thousands of civilians still in it, before the last of the aliens on the ground were slaughtered.

Finally, after grueling fights in orbit and on the ground, the aliens were defeated.  It did not take long for Librarians of the Angels of Fury to realize that the entire enemy force was contaminated from first to last with Warp energies and the powers of Chaos.

====Migration Two====
Before the second Glasian Migration arrived, there had been quite some time to prepare.  After decades of waiting for something to happen, the Exigent Task Unit Cloudburst was seriously considering disbanding when a new, larger fleet of aliens suddenly arrived.  Heralded by a sudden disruption of local psychic telemetry and communication, a massive Colony Control Cylinder of the Glasian flotilla emerged at the edge of the Septiim system.  While the Exigent Task Unit mobilized to counter it, terrified Astropathic messages from Chlorit, Celeste, and Clegran arrived as well, declaring the arrival of smaller Cylinders or battleships.

The Task Force quickly split their forces, and moved to aid the local defenders in the destruction of the Glasian fleets.  However, in no cases save Septiim’s own invasion did the Task Force actually manage to arrive before ground troops committed to the fight.

In Septiim, the Task Force took the worst losses.  The Control Cylinder flew straight past the asteroid base on the way in towards the inner worlds of the Septiim system.  The Exigent Task Unit managed to affect a boarding of the huge Control Cylinder, at the cost of forty percent of their remaining Marines.  The team sabotaged the Cylinder, but it was too late.  Millions of Glasians reached the surface of Septiim Secundus, Septiim Primus, and several asteroid and moon bases of the outer gas giants.  The few Marines who escaped the corrupted Control Cylinder’s ballistic hulk flew to Septiim Primus to aid in the defense of the population.  Meanwhile, the Marines of the rest of the Task Force undertook similar measures against the aliens in the other systems, save Chlorit.  Chlorit was overrun before the Marines could even arrive, and to the shock and horror of the Imperium, the Glasians destroyed Chlorit completely.

After a year of fighting in the systems hit by the Migration, the Glasians were finally exterminated.  Coriolis suffered the least damage, as they faced only the alien survivors of the Chlorit purge, but even they were not entirely unscathed by the fighting.  After the second Migration, the Inquisition formally began the process of establishing the new Chapter, albeit after decades of debate, first.  The Inquisition has never lost their distrust of Space Marines after the Horus Heresy.

====Migration Three====
After the Founding of the Blue Daggers as Chapter 0983 of the Imperial Space Marines, the Glasian invasions continued escalating.  Even as the number of Glasians in each wave increased, however, the composition of space assets seemed almost entirely random.  While the Second Migration consisted of five heavy capital ships and a few Escorts, the Third Migration had only four heavy capital ships and hundreds of smaller vessels that still constituted a roughly ten percent increase in the firepower of the previous.

This time, the Glasians hit the worlds Septiim Tertius, Cognomen, Hangonne, and Delving.  The Glasians were unable to gain much headway against the rapidly-expanding Imperial Navy of the Sector, but they were still able to offload hundreds of thousands of their mutant soldiers on the worlds of Delving, Cognomen, and Septiim Tertius.  The Hangonne defense was purely accidental, as the ship the aliens were using to transport their troops exploded before reaching it.

The Cognomen invasion was a tragic one for the aliens, who were promptly stomped into the dirt by the Legio Congelatio.  The other two invasions were more problematic for the Imperium, as the Daggers did not yet have enough Battle Brothers to defend both Septiim and Delving without heavy aid from mortal soldiery in both systems.  However, the battles were still over in under thirty days, as the Delving Field Guard and Mechanized Toxic Environment Troopers were able to rout the Glasians, who found it difficult to operate their fast, delicate machinery in the corrosive soil and air of Delving.  The Septiim battles were rendered more difficult by the fact that several Glasian ships were able to maneuver into position to fire on the surface, and their unique Ruin Gun plasma weapons had the range to make the hits.  The resultant damage from the plasma weapons being used in atmosphere killed tens of millions of citizens.  However, the Daggers sent a team of teleporting Terminator Techmarines into the huge Control Cylinder over Septiim and destroyed it with powerful explosives, ending the threat.

The Glasian force was eventually overcome, and the Blue Daggers began rapid expansion to their eventual full size.

====Migration Four====
As the Blue Daggers grew, they wetted their blades on non-Chaotic targets.  Centuries of careful practice, fierce combat, and military expansion allowed them to be better prepared for the arrival of the Fourth Glasian Migration.  When the time came, the Glasians assaulted the Sector with their usual unreasoning ferocity.  However, the targets they picked had had ample time to prepare, thanks to early warning from the Tarot and the Ordo Xenos.  This time, the Glasians hit Thimble, Septiim Secundus and Primus, Nauphry IV and VII, and Combine.  The Daggers devoted the majority of their space assets to the Septiim and Combine defense, and left Nauphry and Thimble largely to their own end.  This nearly backfired when the aliens concentrated most of their firepower on the less-defended planet Nauphry VII.  Only the last-minute ramming of the Cylinder there by the Overlord-class battlecruiser Scourge of Monsters prevented the loss of the Agri-world.  However, all four Cylinders were still defeated, and in record time, by the expanding Blue Daggers and local Basilikon Astra, with help from the Navy and several Rogue Traders.

====Migration Five====
The Fifth Glasian Migration was a turbulent mess of conflict and confusion.  The Emperor’s Tarot had been singularly unhelpful in predicting which worlds would be hit by the Glasians in the invasion, and so the Daggers had been forced to spread out their attention unevenly over many planets.  The Chapter, now approaching their full numbers of strength, was still not quite able to divert enough of their Marines to grant proper protection to each world that fearfully requested it.  However, when the Cylinders came, the reason for the confusion came clear in a flash of realization.  The psychic Inquisitors that had been performing the Tarot readings had been assuming that more worlds would be hit in the Fifth Migration than the preceeding ones; when the Glasians arrived, they only hit three systems.  Septiim, as always, then Hapster and Mendic.

Hapster’s archaeotech defenses and mighty Bronze Legions were able to see off their attackers beneath the size of the Cylinder itself.  A single flight of twelve First Company Terminators was more than enough to destroy the Cylinder, which had left itself all but defenseless after disgorging nearly everybody aboard to attack the surface.  The planet Letrione withstood the Glasians much worse, and suffered nine million casualties before the Daggers and their Skitarii allies were finally able to sink its own Cylinder.

====Migration Six====
At the beginning of the Sixth Glasian Migration, the Glasians hit three targets they had hit before, and the planet Lordarine.  Because Maskos and Grendel, the Septiims, and Hapster had weathered assault before, those worlds were able to defend themselves valiantly.  Lordarine, however, had never faced armed conflict before.  The Skitarii on that world were entirely overrun within days.  The Tech-Adepts of the world shepherded the populace into the caves and defended them frantically while warships dueled in orbit.  After four days of the conflict teetering on a knife’s-edge, the Blue Daggers teleported Terminators and a Prize Team of Techmarines into the ship to detonate a warhead in the ship’s power core, bringing a sudden end to the invasion.  The forces of Solstice participated in this conflict for the first time, although the low levels of preparedness of their forces meant they were unable to lend significant assets to the defense of the Septiim Economic Zone.

====Migration Seven====
Imperial Ordo Xenos Inquisitors were terrified to learn that the looming Seventh Migration would include no fewer than six Cylinders, which would constitute a potentially fatal thinning of the Terminator-equipped forces of the Sector to board and destroy using conventional boarding tactics.  To the discomfort of the Blue Daggers and Inquisition, but in acknowledgement of the scarcity of appropriate resources, the entire First Company and its associated specialists were authorized to partake of the boarding, even if they lacked enough Terminator Armor to do so safely.  With Septiim, Dawn-break, Gorum's Folly, Hapster, Rampart, and Forender threatened, the forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus would also be put under strain, since they had to defend Dawn-Break and Foraldshold as well as their jeopardized Agri-world project of Forender.  Desperate pleas for aid from the Deathwatch and Celestial Knights were answered swiftly, but until they arrive, the Sector must batten down the hatches and await a miracle.