Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

== The Yu'Vath ==

The Yu'vath were a Chaos-worshipping xenos race that controlled much of the Calixis Sector during the Age of Strife. Describing exactly what the yu’vath looked like is a surprisingly difficult task. On the one hand you had the “core” yu’vath, which are thought to be what the race originally looked like. “Core” yu’vath were a strange combination between human and crustacean, with a bipedal, four-limbed body. Each long, robust arm ended in three clawed fingers and each digigrade foot ended in two forwards and backwards pointing toes, giving their feet an “X”-like shape. At the center of their torso was their head, which contained numerous sets of insectile mandibles.

As a silicate-based species, the yu’vath were experts in cybernetic alteration, their bodies more readily adapting to the addition of cybernetics than flesh and blood, much like the Demiurg. Yu’vath bodies were often heavily modified for various purposes, their cybernetics growing like living tissue based on what was needed and the role an individual needed to perform. Despite both being silicon-based, however, the yu’vath are no more closely related to the Demiurg than humans are to any other carbon-based sentient species like the Tau. There is some debate, however, as to whether the ambull found across many worlds are devolved descendants of the yu’vath, or else some kind of sister species like humans are to the great apes.

On the other hand, you have the “lesser” yu’vath. Slaves from other species forcibly implanted with yu’vath cybernetics and turned into war machines. Yu’vath technology is weird. The yu’vath were capable of downloading their souls into their cybernetics, then if the main body died simply scooping out the host soul and replacing it with the augment’s original owner when attached to a new body. In theory, one could simply bring an individual yu’vath back to life by stripping the cybernetics off of them and implanting them in a new host. Eventually, the cybernetics would grow to completely cover the new body, growing and modifying themselves to whatever role necessary. However, in most cases these cybernetics gradually turned its host into a form similar to a core Yu’vath. 

It is not clear where the Yu’vath came from. Certainly, there are no records of any such Chaos worshipping civilization in what few records remains from the Dark Age of Technology. The eldar Harlequins speak of a race that sold their souls to Chaos, damning their brethren that refused to follow, but whether this is support for the “devolved into ambull” theory or if those that refused to follow were just eaten by daemons is unknown.

In addition to their core territory in the Calixis Sector, the Yu’vath had a fairly sizeable number of feelers elsewhere in the galaxy during the Age of Strife. A raiding party of Yu’vath even went so far as to have an outpost on Pluto during the Great Crusade, though they were eventually driven from the system by the time of the Unification of Sol by the actions of [DATA EXPUNGED].

The Yu’vath were one of the more notable threats faced by the Imperium during the Great Crusade, and unlike many the Yu’vath front remained a long-term issue, but eventually the Imperium managed to force them back to a rump state. The Yu’Vath participated in the War of the Beast, but as with the Crone Eldar and all things non-Ork the species took a backseat to the green tide that assaulted the galaxy during this time. However, the Yu’Vath did manage to retake much of their holdings during this time and more, expanding into many of the areas just south of the Eye of Terror. They became a thorn in the Imperium's side, but not a threat to the degree that the Crones or Orks were.

The resurgence of the Yu'vath was clearly a problem, and the Imperium hacked away at it in a series of on-again, off-again wars interspersed with Black Crusades over the years. Eventually, the Yu’Vath were finally eradicated in a major battle in the galactic northwest either just before or as revenge for the Fourth Black Crusade.

Today, the Yu’Vath themselves mostly confined to the pages of history. The people of the modern galaxy should be thankful for it. Although they may not have been threats on the level of the Necron Star Empire or the tyranid Hive Fleet, the Yu’Vath were terrors in their time. Aside from their technology, all that remains of the Yu’vath are the few members of their race that were raised to daemon princedom or escaped the slow, inexorable march of time by hiding in the Eye of Terror, mostly associated with the Soul Forge.

Although the Imperium were the ones to finally wipe the Yu'vath out, the source of the loss of their holdings just south of the Eye of Terror was a bit of a surprise. The Q'orl, who as a race had only recently spread out into the stars from their homeworld of Loq’qit, drove the Yu'vath from these worlds. Years of fighting the Imperium meant that the southern worlds were generally poorly manned due to the low number of Yu'vath.

Additionally, as a eusocial species, the q’orl were surprisingly well-adapted to dealing with the Chaos corruption spread by the yu’vath. If an individual drone became corrupted, it was simply destroyed at no great loss to the Queens. The q’orl also found the Yu’vath’s technology and artwork to be insulting to their xenophobic sensibilities and often had it destroyed in a hail of orbital fire. Being much more willing to take losses than the Imperium would, the Q'orl were able to take control of many of the former Yu'vath worlds.

Despite being an all but extinct species, Yu'vath artifacts are still a problem today. The problem with Yu'vath artifacts is they never really break down naturally. They can lie unused for millenia until rediscovered by some unsuspecting sod. As Savant Preem said, "If it does not rot, if it can lie like this here forever...is it truly dead?"

Yu’Vath cybernetics have been known to physically spring to life and drag themselves to attack a particularly desirable host, typically some variant of psyker. Tech-priests refuse to go near anything Yu'vath, as the Yu'vath were masters of Chaotic scrapcode that presented a very real threat of hijacking their cybernetics.

There are some concerns that the Spyrer battlesuits, purchased by Imperial nobles as self-defense weapons (and status symbols) on black markets across several Hive Worlds, are actually derived or reverse-engineered from Yu’vath technology.

The Yu’Vath were notable for their methodical, detached methods of worshipping the Chaos Gods. To the Yu’Vath, Chaos and the Warp was something that could be measured, quantified, and studied, a worldview that was baffling to species like humans and eldar, who perceived Chaos as something much more irrational and unquantifiable. The Yu’Vath had found answers to questions that no one else would dare ask, such as how many sacrifices it took to summon a daemon or how much favor it was necessary to empower a given daemon machine. It is thought that the Yu’Vath had emotional centers of their brain that were vastly subservient to their logic centers, allowing them the emotions necessary to worship the Chaos Gods but filtering it through their rationalist worldview. Or perhaps quantifying Chaos was their way of worshipping it, showing devotion by obsessively seeking literal answers to the question of how many daemons could dance on the head of a pin. This allowed the Yu’Vath to be reliable in their production of technology, whereas other groups of Chaos worshippers with a significant industrial base, like the Crone Eldar, Dark Mechanicus, and the Laer, tended to be more subject to flights of fancy.