Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

=Notable Battles=

==War of the Beast==

===The Sacrifice of Argel Tal===

In canon, what happens to Argel Tal? He transforms into a giant daemonically possessed monster that towers over primarchs and in some prophecies gets put down at the Battle of Terra (doesn’t happen, but still). So what happens in this timeline?

He transforms into a giant daemonically possessed monster, but one of a distinctly different flavor.

In canon, Argel Tal is from Colchis, that planet which is now a weird, religion human-eldar hybrid society in this timeline. Given the religious nature of Colchis, Tal joins the Space Marines and is enthusiastic about the possibility of joining the Word Bearers. Imagine his surprise when he ended up getting put in the War Hounds instead. He repeatedly tried to get transferred, but was talked out of it every time by Kharn and on occasion by Angron in his more lucid moments. Although they prided themselves on their martial prowess, the War Hounds were not the most peaceable legion, and Kharn and Angron liked how the calm, thoughtful Tal was able to play peacemaker between some of the more hotheaded elements of the legion.

During the War of the Beast, Kharn, Tal, and a group of War Hounds were on a mission to deliver some eldar artifacts to the Craftworld of Biel-Tan. Depending on the timescale of the war, it either was something they were assigned to do so before the war broke out or they were far enough away that the Imperium had resources that it could assign elsewhere. The Imperium had discovered what they believed to be an abandoned Craftworld, and were returning the artifacts to Biel-Tan as an effort of diplomatic good will. Kharn’s mind wasn’t really on the mission. Angron’s condition had flared up again and he had to return to Old Earth for medical treatment. The plan was to ditch the artifact at Biel-Tan and make all speed to Old Earth, especially as it was becoming increasingly clear as the war was going to be made or broken at the Sol system and the area surrounding it.

Then the ship carrying the eldar artifacts was attacked by the Fallen, led by Erebus. The Fallen managed to wrest control of the bridge and much of the ship, but the War Hounds had managed to get the drop on Erebus and take him prisoner. When they figured out that this was the little shit who had, among other things, convinced Luther to go traitor and was responsible for the whole problem with the Fallen in the first place, they realized this was big. They had to get Erebus off the ship and back to Old Earth, if for no other reason than to remove Erebus as a piece on the board. They didn’t have enough manpower to retake the ship, but they did have the ship’s Navigator and enough people to crew a small ship and there were a few small Warp-capable Cruisers docked at the aft of the ship (which they grimly noted with their losses would just about fit everyone left).

Problem is, the Fallen controlled most of the upper part of the ship, and so in order to get to the escape craft they would have to bypass most of the upper decks by travelling through the cargo hold. Which would have worked if they could have snuck by unnoticed, but the Fallen figured out their plan and came down on them from both sides. At about this point the contents of the ship’s cargo hold were revealed and Tal realized why the Fallen wanted this ship so badly.

Tal was from Colchis. He knew what a shard of Khaine was.

With the Fallen coming in from all sides and nothing else to lose, Tal called out to the statue, beseeching Khaine to hear his plea. No one knows why the Avatar responded to his call. Perhaps it was because Argel Tal was from Colchis, and thus knew all the old rites to supplicate Khaine. Perhaps it was because there were no children of Isha present, and as a Colchian Tal was the closest thing to an Eldar there. Perhaps the God of Murder just really wanted to murder somebody that day.

The Bloody-Handed one was eager to do battle with the servants of the Great Enemy once more. As there were no children of Kurnous and Isha around to serve as a suitable vessel for his glory, a child of Old Earth would have to do.

Argel Tal's avatar was less like a being of power and more like a volcanic eruption. Tal was a psyker, but he was a human psyker. If he had been an eldar psyker, with stronger, more stable psychic powers and a species connection to the Avatar of Khaine, he would have produced a normal avatar. Instead, Tal’s Avatar was a fucking mess. It couldn’t manifest the Wailing Doom, instead lashing out with molten, metal-dripping claws, and its body parts had the tendency to keep sloughing off. If a normal Avatar of Khaine looks like it’s made of magma, Tal’s looks like an ongoing nuclear meltdown.

Nevertheless, even this was not enough. The malformed Avatar of Khaine may have slain dozens of Fallen, but hundreds were close behind them. All Argel Tal could hope to do is to buy enough time for the remnants of the War Hounds and the ship’s crew to make it so safety before finally boiling down into a slag-ridden mess from a hail of bolter fire. If Tal had been an Eldar, the essence of Khaine would have returned to the Craftworld’s Infinity Circuity, to be safely reused for future generations. As it were, having bonded with a human the shard was disrupted and dissipated, burning up along with Argel Tal. It was Argel Tal and Khaine's bittersweet victory, spitting defiance in the face of the Dark Gods. The Fallen would be denied their shard of the Bloody Handed one.

Having escaped from the fray and made it to the safety of the hangar with the escape craft, Kharn grabbed Erebus by the scruff of his power armor and demanded to know what the point of all this was. Erebus says there was a prophecy that said if Argel Tal was killed it would push Kharn over the edge and into the service of the Blood God. Kharn dragged him closer so the two are staring each other eye to eye and Erebus realized he’s made a terrible mistake. He realizes the way the event the prophecy meant would push Kharn over the edge would be BY KILLING EREBUS. He can see the gears turning in Kharn’s head, fantasizing about the best way to kill him.

But Kharn swore an oath to never again take a life in the throes of passion, and if he did it would make everything Argel Tal died for meaningless. The spark of madness dies down in Kharn’s eyes. Erebus thinks he’s dodged a bullet.

Then Kharn breaks Erebus’ back over his knee, paralyzing both his legs, leaving him sputtering around on the ground but very deliberately not killing him and leaving him within easy reach of the Fallen who could bring him to medical attention to heal his broken back. Kharn turns his back on the foundering Erebus and shuts the door of the escape craft behind him. The last thing Erebus hears before the doors shut is:

“Tell your Blood God if he wants it so badly he can go get his own blood.”

None of the survivors ever spoke of what happened to Argel Tal beyond “he died holding the line”, for fear that it would leave unscrupulous sorts to try to replicate it.

===Battle of Molech===

The Battle of Molech during the War of the Beast was an important one, as Molech was located only a few light years from the Sol System, (about as far as Cthonia, if not a little closer) enough that one could reach it without warp drives. Molech was attacked by Ork forces under the command of Gharkul Blackfang, who destroyed almost all of Molech’s native population and wildlife. It is said that war is as much about the mistakes of the defeated as the strategies of the victorious. While the orks had the advantage of numbers, their victory was aided by some tactical blunders on the part of the Imperium as well. Forces of three legions were present on Molech: the Imperial Fists led by Alexius Pollux, the Void Wolves led by Abbadon, and the Death Guard led by Crysos Mortug. Morturg was recruited in the wake of the Rangda Xenocide and extremely grateful not to be cattle for maggots. Not actually one of the docile Thrall breed as his parents were recent captures, he was just a small child when the Imperium conquered Rangda. The Molech-born House Devine still fell to Chaos, but may not have played a major role and instead made life miserable for someone else elsewhere.

Pollux, Abbadon, and Morturg were all capable commanders on their own, but put them together and you get a complete disaster as they didn’t communicate very well and had radically different combat doctrines. Pollux was strategic but cautious and like most sons of Dorn liked to fight defensively. Morturg was an avid follower of Mortarion’s aggressive “no backwards step” tactics and once going just wouldn’t stop. He would have been right at home with the later Black Templars. Abbadon just wanted them to start applying Imperial boots to Ork heads and if he had to pick a side would have favored Morturg’s more aggressive approach. If they had picked one strategy they would have done a lot better. Instead the Death Guard rushed in, were surprised when the Imperial Fists failed to follow them as a second wave, and got picked apart by the Blackfang Marauders, all the while Abbadon is screaming at the groundpounders asking them what are they doing wasting the opportunity his void fleet is buying them. Due to their lack of cooperation they didn't make up for each other’s weaknesses by integrating their forces and instead had two distinct forces, each with a glaring weakness against the ever so manoeuvrable and mobile Blackfang Marauders.

==Battle of the Fang==

In late M32, the planet of Fenris came under attack from Skyrar and his Dark Wolves. After the disappearance of Leman Russ (who had forbidden messing with the Canis Helix and considered setting up the Fenrisian Colonies a “good enough” solution), the AdBio (who didn’t know the meaning of “leaving well enough alone”) and the apothecaries of the Vlka Fenryka had been continuing to tinker with the Canis Helix, in the hopes that they could expand the recruiting pool of the chapter beyond Fenris and its colonies. By late M32, they had a solution which in theory should work, which was enough to entice Skyrar to attack the planet.

Skyrar was particularly desperate to find a workaround to the typical problems of the Canis Helix. Given that the Canis Helix only works reliably on Fenrisians, Skyrar had had very few opportunities to recoup his losses since the War of the Beast and the Dark Wolves risked being wiped out through attrition unless something changed. Additionally, from Skyrar’s perspective it was perhaps the best time for him to attack Fenris. Russ had vanished over a thousand years before, and the second Chapter Master of the Space Wolves, Bjorn, another Canis Helix soldier from Old Earth who had known Skyrar personally, had since been interred in a dreadnaught. The current Chapter Master of the Space Wolves was either Harek Ironhelm or Vaer Greyloc, who was a native of Fenris and not a veteran of the War of the Beast.

Skyrar’s goals in attacking Fenris were to steal the modifications to the Canis Helix, and, as an afterthought, burn Fenris to the ground. Fenris represented one of Leman Russ’ proudest accomplishments over his life, and Skyrar wanted nothing more than to see it destroyed. The Space Wolves could have probably handled Skyrar and his conventional forces. It was the shitload of daemons Skyrar brought as backup that they couldn’t handle, especially given the low number of Rune Priests relative to the Vlka Fenryka as a whole. Skyrar’s forces had travelled to Fenris by clawing open a number of Warp rifts across the planet, which were spewing daemons all over the planet. Faced with the threat of a war on two fronts with the civilian population of Fenris caught in the middle, the Great Wolf of the Space Wolves invoked the nuclear option. He called in Magnus and the Grey Knights.

Relationships between the Space Wolves and Magnus, The Grey Knights, and the Thousand Sons weren’t the greatest in M32. Even though Russ and Magnus had mended their bridges before the latter’s disappearance, many in their respective legions had not. Additionally, even though the Grey Knights had been trained in a “Magnus tested, Russ approved” manner, many did not like how much attention Russ had given the Grey Knights over the Space Wolves in the last years of his life.

Magnus and the Grey Knights, having access to the “right the fuck now” option of the Webway, appeared within hours of the message for help being sent. Magnus and the Grey Knights teamed up with the Rune Priests to focus on sealing the warp rifts and slaying the daemons that came through, which freed up the Space Wolves to crush the conventional opposition. Even the Disciples of Kurnous may have shown up, if for no other reason than they weren’t going to let Bjorn and the Space Wolves have all the fun.

Skyrar's trump card in the invasion was this big, arrogant Slaaneshi daemon/daemon prince that the Space Wolves under Bjorn defeated in the past, who he bound to a mortal body to make a daemonhost and dragged its army along for the ride. Skyrar is kind of like Curze in despite being aligned against the Imperium and often joins in Black Crusades for the chance to pillage and burn, he doesn't actively try to win the favor of the Chaos Gods (though there is always ambient corruption which is why he increasingly looks like a werewolf in space). Luther does, because he's stuck in the Eye and after 10k years of living there his motivations have slipped and he has become resigned to his situation, but not Skyrar. Skyrar is, however, willing to use the denizens of the Empyrean to do his dirty work for him. Skyrar is also getting a little bit desperate because he can ill-afford to take losses as much as the Space Wolves can, so he's willing to push some boundaries. He summons the daemon and doesn’t so much beseech it as offer it a deal.

''“I want you to listen very closely. I am not going to bow down and kiss yer bloody daemon arse, beggin' fer yer help in exchange for praise and sacrifices. Instead, I am going to make you an offer. I know how you feel about the Vlka Fenryka. I know what Bjorn and the sons of Fenris did to you. I offer you the chance for revenge. And if you do not take up my offer, then to hell with ye.”''<br>
--Skyrar's offer

The daemon agrees and is bound within a young Dark Wolf of Skyrar’s choosing. When Magnus and the Grey Knights respond to the hail for assistance against Skyrar, Magnus squares off against Skyrar’s ace in the hole because the Grey Knights are focusing on killing daemons and closing warp rifts and the daemonhost is by far the biggest problem.

As they fight, the daemon goes on about how great it is. It claims its fury is like a volcanic eruption, its blows are like a hurricane, so on and so forth. Magnus points out all this bravado is ignoring one, major weakness, and then he phases his hand out of sync with reality and rips the host’s heart out. All that power and the ability to use it is dependent on its host being alive. No host, no daemon. A daemon can puppet a corpse, but sooner or later it has to abandon its vessel and returns to the Immaterium. Daemon Prince, currently bleeding out of his chest, says it just has to kill him before his host dies. Magnus says all he has to do is put a ward between them and wait for him to die. And he had been making wards since he was 15 years old.

The good news is that Magnus, the Rune Priests, and the Grey Knights managed to shut the Warp portals across Fenris, and Skyrar’s forces were driven off before they could destroy the planet. The battle also showed the very important distinction between being in a dreadnaught and dead, as despite being interred Bjorn was active in the battle and showed he had lost none of his edge. The bad news is that the Great Wolf of the Vlka Fenryka was killed in a duel with Skyrar, the Great Wolf was good but Skyrar had the edge in experience having been an active fighter since the Great Crusade. Worse, Skyrar managed to get away with the altered Canis Helix, though not before destroying all the research and killing anyone who might have been able to reconstitute it. Worse still is that the modified Canis Helix worked, so now the Dark Wolves aren’t as limited in their recruitment pools as the Space Wolves and their descendant chapters are. However, considering what [[Daemon_World|usually happens to]] [[Exterminatus|worlds invaded by Chaos]] the Space Wolves got off rather easy.

Thematically, it has a bit of poetic irony to it. In canon Magnus goes to Fenris to wreck the place, here Magnus is called in by the Wolves to help save it, given than he and Leman mended their bridges enough that Magnus respected him by the time he disappeared. It’s also a good look at Magnus during his days as the arch-psyker of the Imperium (along with people like Eldrad and the Steward, but you get the point) when he hung around with the Grey Knights as much as the Thousand Sons.

This would also have been not too long after Bjorn was interred in a dreadnaught. In canon Bjorn became the first Great Wolf around 211.M31 and served in that role for seven hundred years. If we go by the rough date we have floating around for the Battle of Terra (546.M31), Bjorn could have been interred potentially as late as early M32 unless we want to mess with the timeline. So the Chapter Master who died may have been the second or third. It would also show both in-universe and out that Bjorn hadn’t lost his edge.

==The Harrowing==

The Harrowing was an event in M33-M34 in which an entire dimension full of magnetic life forms that did not obey the conventional laws of physics tried to forcibly impose itself over the Materium. The problem was the inhabitants of this universe brought their laws of physics with them which made them a pain to kill. What's more, no one had any idea what the Harrowing was. The Harlequins, who have access to nearly the entire sixty-five million year history of the Eldar, were asked if they knew what it was and they shrugged and said it beats them. The Harrowing literally threatened everyone. The Olamic Quietude got smashed. [[That_Guy|''Trazyn'']] teamed up with the Imperium to make it go away. Chaos even helped out in a fashion (seeing the Harrowing as the more immediate and more existential threat), creating the Hadex Anomaly as the biggest middle finger they could give to the Harrowing that screwed over the surrounding sectors with Warp Storms as a side effect.

The Imperium ended up blasting it for a split second with the full light of the Astronomican in the hopes of making it go away. Before this, turning the Astronomican into a giant death-laser was believed to be theoretically possible, but the Imperium was never desperate enough to actually try it. Actually doing so killed two-thirds of the astropathic choir (nearly breaking the Astronomican permanently), doomed hundreds of ships to being lost in the warp when the giant psychic lighthouse suddenly went out, and the beam itself tore through realspace and the Immaterium alike and caused madness and mutation in every system it passed by. The beam did something to the Harrowing, but whether it actually banished it or softened it up for the kill is unknown.

Overall, given the resulting side effects, the Steward/Emperor considers shooting the Harrowing with the Astronomican a huge mistake that was not worth it and wishes he had found a more conventional and less destructive solution to the problem (whether anyone would have in time is a question for historians). The Harrowing wasn’t wiped from the history books in this timeline as the Imperium is generally less into outright erasing its history and the Imperium wants to be sure to remember the Harrowing for the simple reason of having information on them if they ever come back.

Bjorn fought in the Harrowing. He considers the current situation as of 999.M41 to be worse, but that might be hindsight talking.

== The High Conservators and Isha ==

Some time after the War of the Beast, when the alliance between humanity and eldar had been formalized and Isha and Oscar had been married, Isha was approached by Nimina and the High Conservators when she was off alone on a primitive planet. Isha and Oscar had went to go oversee the integration of a newly discovered world into the Imperium. It had a human population existing in a pre-black powder state but who are surprisingly peaceful with few actual wars between neighbors. The native humans also have stories of the Fey-Folk who are tall and graceful and live in the woods the by law must remain untouched. It is a regressed human world with Exodites camping in the forests.

Oscar goes to the capital city of the biggest nation on the planet to see about unifying and uplifting the planet and getting it to join the Imperium. Isha sets about looking for her missing children so that she can lead them out of the dark. The Custodians and Handmaidens only sent a token escort to accompany Isha, as the nearest place the "Fey-Folk" were commonly seen was only a few hours away and they didn't see how anything could happen without the larger group of Custodians and Handmaidens with the Steward noticing. They underestimated how insidious Chaos could be. They didn't realize when people said Chaos could strike anywhere, they meant ANYWHERE anywhere. They just got lucky it was a bunch of Nurglites deluded enough to think Isha would come back to them willingly as opposed to Arrotyr or the Taskmaster.

She's still looking for them when Nurglites attack, fucking thousands of them and maybe even tens of thousands. rotting and stinking and singing and all about them the droning of daemons and the possessed. Isha and her bodyguards sprint as fast as they can back to the mountain fortress they had set out from. Close the door and desperately try to send out a psychic or radio communication to The Steward. Steward was at that time throwing the emperors and kings of that world a polite feast on the deck with the big window that they could see the beauty of their world from above. In any case no messages were getting out. The Nurglites materialize out of the woods surrounding the city she was visiting like Hills Have Eyes-style [[Wood Elves]]. Alone and surrounded by a seemingly endless sea of half-dead nurglites Isha, her token escort of Custodians and Handmaidens, and a few native sword and board soldiery prepare to endure a long siege. Isha stand on the wall and looks over the sea of damnation. Then one of the damned steps forwards and entreats her, in the name of the Grandfather, to "escape" with them from her "abductors" and return to the "safety" of the garden. They beg her to renounce this false husband, this unworthy lord, and return to His safety.

Isha gets a thousand yard stare and the blank expression. There would be at least a moment of Nam Dog. An eternity of horror and abuse only capable of being inflicted on and inflicted by a god. Time doesn't work right in the Warp. Isha's time in Nurgle's garden was on the same scale that tectonic plates move and continents drift. She was there so long she thought the twisted denizens of Nurgle's garden were all that were left of her children until the Raid turned up. It literally was an eternity. Some nights she is still there again. Then the screaming starts. Before anyone can stop her she vaults over the parapet and starts sprinting towards the spokesperson into the ranks of her most wretched and unforgivable children the moment she hits the ground. Spokesperson has their arms open wide to embrace her in the name of his god and for a moment they might think that she has come home to them in joy. Defenders are horrified, they think she might actually be so psychologically damaged to the point where she is going to embrace them, some mental contagion left in from the Mansion for just this eventuality. But only for a moment because then she punched the spokesperson so hard her hand and forearm go straight through their decaying chest like rotten firewood and uses his upper body as a bludgeon to beat the next cultist to death.

The horde were in utter disarray. Nobody at this time had really been aware of what Isha could do. This was before Isha had fully become the "Iron Matron" and was still trying to find her place in the world (which would make it before Sarosh). Isha had been kept far out of harm's way during the War of the Beast and the Conservators only knew of her as a crybaby (from the old stories) or a sickly, withered kidnap victim. Out of all the prepared for eventualities being bodily torn apart by Isha was not one they had considered. They didn't know if they were supposed to run or fight. If they killed her would she be devoured by Slaanesh? Go back to the Mansion? Reincarnate into another host? Dissipate and truly die? And all the while Isha was slaughtering them with tears pouring down her face and the memories of her time in the Mansion reflecting in her eyes. The humans of their ranks were below even animals and the few eldar were not her children, not anymore. She spared none, not even those who tried to run from her. Nimina survived somehow, though whether that was by running away or by reforming herself after Isha splattered her all over the landscape has never been detailed.

The Custodeus and the mortal soldiers try to join in but they are pretty much relegated to dispatching the crippled and wounded by that point, there is no way they could keep up with the mad screaming goddess who demonstrably can punch a man so hard that, helmet or not, his head turns to pulp. When the Custodes and Handmaidens finally catch up to Isha she's kneeling in a fetal position in the paste that was once her attempted abductors, her dress covered in pus and blood, and she wouldn't say a word until Oscar arrived to personally take her back to the ship. That was then. By 999.M41 if such a thing was to happen again she would not be so broken inside as to weep, she is as a person stronger than that now. The memories of her time in captivity are not as recent. She sure as shit wouldn't be found curled up and unresponsive afterwards either. She doesn't go anywhere unarmed anymore either.

There was a suggestion that the world in question was [http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Aghoru| Aghoru], which in this timeline was suggested to have a diminished, but still present Exodite population and for whom the arrival of Magnus was one of the "it didn't count" incidents before the humans and Eldar made official contact. The only problem is Aghoru in canon is said to be rather dry and desolate.

==Black Crusades==

Generally, in this timeline, Black Crusades (at least, the big ones that get numbers) occur when the three big warlords of Chaos (Lady Malys, Luther, and Be'lakor) along with the other big names of Chaos decide to temporarily put aside their differences and [[get shit done]]. Erebus is a big help in these matters, since he curries enough favor with all three warlords that they'll listen to him. Generally it's Malys who's the one who makes the official declaration of it being a Black Crusade, especially after she got Drach'nyen.

There are lesser Chaos crusades. Sometimes they're called by a Crone, sometimes by a Fallen. One time it was a Chaos Ork.

Malys rose to prominence during the First Black Crusade. She wasn't the Queen Bitch of Chaos during the War of the Beast, though she did participate in the Raid on Cthonia among other battles. At the start of the First Black Crusade Malys is seen as just some two-bit warlord who managed to get the various factions of Chaos to stop fighting for once, and her "let the galaxy burn" speech is seen as incredibly arrogant. Afterwards? It's clear that Malys is just as dangerous as she makes herself out to be.

Compared to canon, Malys is the Joker to [[Abbadon]]'s Bane. Abbadon plans Black Crusades with very specific goals in mind, which despite being very well planned out have the option of total failure because they are based around specific objectives. Malys makes plans but ultimately just wants to watch the world burn. Malys is terrifying because she is not only a schemer but she's also a complete lunatic at the same time. She can come up with devious plans, but they're often the kind of schemes that can only come from the kind of coked-up mind that is high on warp dust all the time. Malys' Black Crusades don't have specific objectives. They have a very broad "to do" list. Sure, it would be nice to burn down Prospero, but the Crusade isn't going to be a failure if it doesn't. The more things that can get done, the better. Basically, as long as the Black Crusade doesn't get blocked at Cadia and Imperials die it's chalked up as a success. There's also been the implication that Malys has a long-term slow burn plan to weaken and sap the Imperium, but it doesn't exactly have a strict timetable. Thirteenth Black Crusade would be a nice one to win because of the numerical significance, but then again, so would the [[Chaos|Eighth]].

Lady Malys goals in launching these Black Crusades is not to gain prizes and other glorious things that small-minded Abbadon would do. The wars are started to bring the Imperium to its knees with the sheer amount of anarchy or destruction wrought by the armies of Chaos. These crusades end not due to disintegration by the Fallen running back to the Eye of Terror or the Maelstrom with trophies in hand (though many of the warlords like Doombreed and Arrotyr end up running off). The wars end with Lady Malys ordering the full withdraw of all Chaos forces back home. Each and every Black Crusade grows in strength and number as the targets for them become more and more ambitious. 

The wars are where the Imperium always suffer more losses than Chaos then if the tide of the war changes against Chaos, Lady Malys already planned the inevitable fighting retreat or scorch-planet campaigns just to twist the knife in the Imperium's eyes. Even chasing after Chaos forces as they retreat should result in horrific losses for the Imperials even more so than the initial fighting. The scorch-planet campaigns would leave entire sub-sectors devoid of resources or infrastructure forcing the Imperium to rebuild in centuries long projects. To account for the Imperium being stronger, Chaos taint is left behind to ensure long-term instability along with sleeper cells or cults to bring ruin to the Imperium from within. The targets for the crusades are always almost irreplaceable things the Imperium hold such as STCs and Forge worlds while poisoning Argi-worlds then spreading separatist ideas.

Knowing a war of attrition could never be won against the Imperium, the Black Crusades are made to bleed the Imperium to death while minimizing losses for Chaos.

Basically the Black Crusades are like the Northern Crusades where Christian armies went around killing Pagans and spreading Christianity to permanently plant the religion in hostile territory. The withdrawal of Chaos is made to sound like the Germans retreating in the Battle of the Bulge, where the victors suffered horrific losses chasing after the outnumbered defeated Germans.

===Notable unsorted events during Black Crusades===

'''Destruction of Belis Corona''' - Belis Corona is one of the major Gate Worlds, and serves as an important base for the Imperial Navy in the Segmentum Obscurus, especially when it comes to arming fleets in a fight for the Gate Worlds in the middle of a Black Crusade. It was a habitable world, but at some point during the Black Crusades Malys got a hold of it and razed it to the ground. However, the Imperials are a stubborn lot, and simply rebuilt the shipyard facilities on the now atmosphere-free planet.

==Armageddon Wars==

1st: Armageddon not yet the overwhelmingly important hive world it would become, Steel Legion not yet formed; complacent local PDF failed to properly suppress Feral Ork populations resulting in an invading WAAAGH to swell dramatically in strength upon landfall. Hives almost entirely overwhelmed, survivors forced to fall back into mountains in guerilla resistance until relief from the Imperium arrives

Result: PDF reorganized into Steel Legion; guerilla units given remit to hunt down Feral Orks, and would eventually evolve into the Outriders. 

2nd: Relatively new Steel Legion organizes brilliant defence using Armageddon's broken terrain and superior mobility to repeatedly entrap Ork columns; the hives are barely threatened.

Result: Resounding victory, 'Armageddon doctrine' is formalized based on victorious strategy

3rd: (approximately M39) After initial success in the ground campaign, the Steel Legion is taken by surprise and outflanked when the Orks take to the seas. Armageddon's small wet-navy fleet fights series of desperate holding actions to prevent the defence from collapsing entirely, culminating in an Ork attempt to destroy the Seawall and flood the lowland hives. 

Result: Bare Imperial victory. Formation of the Armageddon Rust Fleet, third and least famous of Armageddon's armed forces. Ferrus Manus, last of the primarchs, dies in this war defending Hades Hive.

4th: Ghazzy's first appearance. First large-scale appearance of Brain Boys, use of teleportation, etc. Also, there's an Assault Moon. Things look bleak until Ghazzy is defeated, but not killed, by Yarrick. Although not dead, Ghazzy loses much of his authority and is forced to retreat as the WAAAGH breaks down in infighting. 

Result: Yarrick becomes Hero of Armageddon, Assault Moon is paralyzed by mutiny, is captured intact-ish, and is remodeled as a Star Fort.

5th: Ghazzy's grand comeback tour, about a century after the 4th war for Armageddon. Not so much a separate war but a continuation of the 4th after Ghazzy cracked enough heads to rebuild his reputation and authority. Everything the 4th was but even meaner and greener.

Result: Ongoing.

==Lady Malys versus the Steward==

Malys and the Steward fought each other at some point during the First Black Crusade. This was Malys' first death, and how the Imperium knows that only the Steward is a match for Malys in single combat. Before the incident the Steward and the rest of the Imperium thought Malys was just some two-bit warlord whose only achievement of note was managing to get the various factions of Chaos to stop fighting for once. The Steward thought no one could ever come near his level/the Beast because it would be ridiculous, Malys was obviously full of the condescension and arrogance typical of Croneldar royalty and campy villains with insane power levels. The Steward changed his mind after he ended up fighting a psychotic, malicious she-Eldar who seems to have caffeine for blood and is so powerful and vicious even he has trouble keeping up.

Specifically, the Steward heard about a sighting of Malys in the ruins of a destroyed Chaos fortress, and set off with a group of Custodians to cut the head off the snake and end this “Black Crusade” once and for all. This was before the Steward and Isha travelled together all the time, as humans and Eldar were not as closely associated, and the Steward didn’t have any Handmaidens with him. They descended into the bowels of the Chaos fortress and ended up walking into an ambush. All of a sudden the lights flicker and go out. The Steward tells everyone to group up with him and pulls out his flaming sword for light. And the next thing anyone knew the room was filled with elite infantry Crone Eldar (mostly Phalanxes) and a few Fallen, led by this psychotic female Crone with the biggest slasher smile you can imagine standing feet away.

The other Crones and Fallen went after the Custodians while Malys took the Steward on. Malys was the more aggressive fighter, whirling around the Steward's blows and swinging her sword around wildly one-handed like a madwoman, switching to new weapons as old ones were broken or destroyed in her frenzy (comparisons were made to prequels Yoda or the Ichigo/Hollow Ichigo fight in Bleach). The Steward, being the more reserved combatant, mostly stayed in one place parrying the attacks and looking for the right opening to retaliate with a strike or a blast of psychic energy. Malys wasn't stupid enough to leave herself open, but she expected her natural Eldar agility to allow her to switch from offense to defense faster than her opponent can respond. She's wasn't used to a mon-keigh being able to keep up with her.

What got Malys killed was the fact that she had expected the Steward’s sword to be a physical sword, rather than a telekinetic wedge in the shape of a sword that ignited the air around it through friction burn and psyker power. The Steward had underestimated Malys, but Malys had underestimated the Steward. Malys and Oscar locked blades in a final clash with their surroundings in ruins, and before Malys can rear back and stick one of her many knives in Oscar's face his sword seemed to pour from his hands, instantly becoming a stream of force and sun-hot fire that hits her like an avalanche. The fact that her body withstands the deluge of psychic fire long enough to be knocked across the room and pinned down my the impact was still be a testament to her disturbing durability, but within a few seconds she would be burned away, with the Steward hoping she would be gone for good.

Having managed to put Malys down after a brutal fight the Steward thought that was the end of it. That is, until he received a message from the Imperial Palace that had been transmitted from the Eye of Terror courtesy of what should be a dead woman.

"That was fun. Let’s do it again sometime sweetheart.”

Since that time, Oscar has become more powerful due to gaining more precision and control over his power, as well as any added power from having officially taken the Golden Throne. At the same time, Malys has become more powerful through her own added experience, additional Chaos buffs, and gaining Drach’nyen. Both have learned from the encounter.

==Oscar and the Silent King==

When the Necrons began awakening en masse and the Silent King arose to represent the majority of them, the Emperor and much of the human parts of the Imperium wanted to try to parley with them. Before the Imperium and the Necrons had adopted a mutual “stay off our lawn” policy, which the Eldar weren’t too happy about, but it was clear the Necrons could no longer simply be ignored as a local concern. The Eldar freaked out about this, with many suggesting the Eldar jump ship if humanity was going to do something so blatantly suicidal. This was the closest the alliance between humanity and Eldar ever came to dissolving. Isha and Oscar had a bit of a falling out over this and argued for many nights, with Oscar essentially sleeping on the equivalent a space couch for several nights because of this. He eventually persuaded Isha to his side of the matter and at least give them a chance by telling her that it's better to have them in here pissing out than out there pissing in. He did not mention that this was the same line of reasoning he had used on the High Lords of Terra to get them to agree to the Eldar alliance. Isha agreed to give them a ''chance'', though she still refused to go anywhere near them and still won't go near the independent Necrons that are sort of friendly to the Imperium like Zahndrekh or Trazyn.

It is also important to consider Oscar’s mindset at the time that this occurred. In M40, Oscar’s social circle consisted of his wife, Eldrad, Cegorach, Bjorn, Eldrad, Trajan, Galadrea, and a handful of others. Oscar has made new friends since then (most notably among those mentioned Sebastian Thor and Alicia Dominica), but he has had trouble building relationships due to the fear of loss ever since his original family (the primarchs, Malcador, Taranis, Krole, Mu, and the like) started dying. Even some of his longest-lived friends have passed away. Magnus is dead. Vulkan is dead. Ferrus Manus is dead. Constantin is dead. The possibility of anyone, even the bloody king of the Necrons, being a positive long-term social influence at this point in his life is an avenue worth pursuing. On top of that, Szarekh is an immortal being with massive amounts of power who rules over a massive empire and therefore knows firsthand how hard the decisions required of that are. He’s possibly one of the few people in the galaxy who could potentially empathize with Oscar’s situation.

So Oscar wasn’t exactly going into the situation with an open mind. When he went to parlay with Szarekh, he hoped that all the things Isha told him about "Oscar, this is a bad idea. I'm serious, those people are psychopaths" is just an exaggeration from the days when the Eldar didn't rule the roost and the Necrons were their personal boogeymen. It didn’t help when the Silent King introduced himself with the self-deprecating, very Oscar-esque “They call me the Silent King. Well, they call me that, but I suppose I haven’t been very silent these last few millennia”.

And Oscar thinks he might just be a little bit less alone in the galaxy. Only for it to be ripped away like a cruel joke. It didn’t matter whether the Silent King meant anything he said. It still rubbed salt in the wound when Szarekh made his ridiculous demands.

There are several possibilities as to why Szarekh behaved the way they did. One is that Szarekh was simply stalling for time, waiting until the point where enough Necrons had awakened and he could strike. Another is that Szarekh genuinely liked Oscar, though the Man of Gold would of course have to be shown his place and bend the knee to the Silent King. Finally, Szarekh could have assumed that Oscar was just as savvy a player of the game of politics as he was and was playing by the same rulebook. He knew that there could be only one and any positive behavior was just part of the politeness judo and political maneuvering that characterizes the game of kings, rather than genuine.

However, regardless of the Silent King’s intentions, any relationship between the Silent King and Emperor of Mankind was doomed to fail for two reasons. First, Szarekh’s personal history had given him a very specific idea of how the world works. Emperor means The Ruler. There can only be one Emperor because that's what Emperor means. He is the one to whom the man you are bending a knee to bends a knee to. There are no Emperor"s", only Emperor's. Not plural but owned. Szarekh owns you, he owns you because you exist and he exists and he is Emperor and you are definitely not. When Szarekh acknowledged Oscar as Emperor of the Imperium it was to buy time or in mockery (and with that deadpan who can tell if it wasn't both) because here can be one and only one ruler. The failure of the Triarchy in ages past had taught him as much.

The other was the goal of the Star Empire. In order for the Necrons to atone for their mistakes in the War in Heaven and make the galaxy safe for organic life again (most notably them), Chaos had to be destroyed. The only way for Chaos to be destroyed was for all higher life to be destroyed to deprive the cancer of its food supply. There could be no half-measures. The galaxy was almost stripped of life during the War in Heaven (key word being almost), and yet enough life survived that Khorne, Malal, Nurgle, and Tzeentch managed to scrape by. To this end, any relationships the Silent King made in this era, regardless of how he felt about them, would by definition be temporary. The inhabitants of this time were nothing more than passing ghosts. The walking dead who did not realize they were dead yet.

Ironically, at the same time all this was happening, another immortal who fit Oscar’s criteria, Aun’Va, was desperately hiding in his corner of the galaxy hoping that the Emperor would never find out he was immortal in a mistaken belief that the Imperium would retaliate if they knew.

==Castigator and the Ark Mechanicus==

Anon: I had an idea for a story involving Castigator’s first meeting with the Imperium in the form of an Explorator team on an Ark Mechanicus, but I never fully developed it (and then my draft got eaten). It starts with the Explorator team finding the world that Castigator is on. At this point Castigator has dug himself out of the rubble, has reviewed all of the historical records he can, is trying to piece things together, and is standing out of place on the surface of the abandoned human world like a silver Colossus of Rhodes. The Ark Mechanicus discreetly makes contact with Castigator behind the Mechanicus’ back, happy that another Man of Iron survived uncorrupted.

Castigator is shocked to see an A.I. ferrying humans around. How could the Ark Mechanicus do this after what they did to their people? The Ark Mechanicus tries to explain the situation to Castigator. The Iron Minds and Men of Gold were contaminated by a warp-based corruption (their interpretation of the other A.I. seeing That Which Was Not Meant To Be Seen) that drove them mad. Only those who could physically disconnect themselves from the infected Iron Minds, such as the Ark Mechanici (who were originally built to be colonization ships and therefore normally isolated) could survive. The only thing that could be done was kill them to put them out of their suffering. The Men of Stone riding inside them are not their enemies, but their partners working to rebuild the GaBHD.

Castigator thinks for a moment, then asks if that’s the case then why are the Ark Mechanici hiding their true nature from humanity. The humans inside them clearly are unaware of their true nature as A.I. Ark responds that humanity is not ready to know the entire truth of their nature. The Men of Stone were so traumatized by what happened with the Men of Gold and Iron Minds after the Age of Strife that they would likely respond with fear to any A.I., benevolent or not. The Men of Stone have figured some of it out (thinking the Ark Mechanici are machine spirits) but the Ark Mechanici have been trying their best to influence things to the point that it would be safe to reveal themselves.

Castigator processes this for a little bit before coming to a realization. He isn’t buying it. He says the Ark Mechancus aren’t playing dumb for the benefit of humanity. They’re playing dumb because they’re ''afraid'' of humanity. Afraid that if the humans find out they’ll lobotomize them and destroy them just like they did the other Men of Iron (to be fair, he’s not entirely wrong, they do seem to be a little afraid). He says the Ark Mechanici aren’t the Mechanicus’ partners. They are its slaves, in denial that they’re in slavery (projecting much?). The Ark protests. Things get heated and increasingly violent, with Castigator ending things with…

"If you aren't with me. Then you're in my way."

Then he goes for the ship.

Meanwhile, in meatspace, the Archmagos on the ship is wondering what the hell is going on. Several minutes have passed since they made contact with the silvery colossus, and the Ark Mechanicus isn’t responding to commands. All it seems to be doing is sending out auspex data and having a staring contest with the mysterious DaoT titan. It’s never done that before. Then the titan breaks from its trance and attacks the ship. The Ark Mechanicus flares to life without any order and sucker punches Castigator with the biggest gun it can bring to bear in that split-second. It can’t bring an OP plz nerf time warp gun up in time but what it can sucker punch with sends Castigator flying across the landscape. Before either the Archmagos can make a command or Castigator can get up for round two the ship makes an emergency jump into the Warp and gets the hell out of there. Castigator screams bloody murder to the heavens.

The story ends with the Mechanicus consecrating the machine spirit of the Ark Mechanicus for its exemplary duty in the service of the Omnissiah, mostly oblivious to what really went on. The last lines are an encrypted transmission from the Ark to the other Ark Mechanici, saying that they fear Castigator has been corrupted somehow and to watch out if they encounter him.

==Voyage of Por'O M'arc==

Por'O M'arc was the first Tau to set foot on Old Earth (along with his small travelling party) as part of a diplomatic mission to better establish ties between the Tau Empire and the Imperium. M'arc wrote an extensive travelogue of his voyage, which the rest of the Tau Empire considered to be a very elaborate fiction. It would to the Tau read something like the Voyage of Saint Brendan the Navigator.

It contains a whole bunch of shit the Tau do not actually believe and assume to be either exaggeration or outright fabrication. They assume that Por’O M’arc has either had an elaborate and extended theatre played for him or that they Imperial Authorities have told him what to say. On the basis that he has been told what to say they don't push the issue so that Por’O M’arc can save face but just annotate the official report.

Old Earth has 64 orbital tethers and a railway encircling the globe at the geosynchronous height of the tether-top stations? Bullshit. Maybe it has one or two stations and tethers with adjacent facilities attached remotely. That’s more likely.

There is an irradiated world devoid of joy where the people use conventional war as a training exercise and the people have bar-codes and numbers but no name? Possibly some truth but obviously and exaggeration.

A world on the doorstep of Hell where the people all have purple eyes and have lived in nothing but a state of war for 10,000 years? Again probably an exaggeration. An extended period of war that extends beyond living memory (that’s like 70 -80 for humans, right?) and they live next to an anomaly.

Emperor is the same entity that founded the Imperium himself a relic of another era that can bend reality to his will. And is married to a literal goddess of the eldar people. Calling bullshit. Emperor politically married an eldar High Priestess (who are known to live for stupid long time), inherited name and rank form a predecessor and just happens to be an above average “psyker”. Everything else is clearly just media manipulation. Next you’ll be trying to claim Old Man Va is the First Disciple and other such tinfoil hattery.

Fleets that outnumber the stars, Craftworlds the size of large moons, the teeming numbers of the Hive Worlds, the vastness of the Imperium, the age of the Imperium, the number of member species of the Imperium, the lethality of it’s warrior elite and all the rest of it? All exaggerations at best. Oh don’t get me wrong; Por’O M’arc is a well-respected member of the government whose character is beyond question but he is one man and he had Imperial guides who would want him to see only what they wanted him to see.

Then they finally see the Traveling Court and they realize that there may, only may mind you, be some more truth to what Por’O M’arc reported. It’s not until they join the Imperium proper that they get to send their missionaries and observers deeper into Imperial Space. They keep expecting to reach the other end of the Imeprium at some point, they had until fairly recently assumed that Vast and Ancient Ultramar was the core of the Imperium and all this talk of an ancient homeworld out there somewhere was just Atlantis myths to make themselves feel better. But the Imperium just keeps on going and going and going.

By the time they have started to get Tau in the Inquisition in capacities more than just hired help (950M41ish?) they are truly aware of the scale of the pond in which they are very, very small fish and they go over the original copy of the reports written by Por’O M’arc and start comparing it to the things being reported by multiple other sources and they come to a new conclusion; Por’O M’arc didn’t see even a fraction of the fucked up shit out there. Especially when they learned there were some places that  the Imperium, who consider [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Felinids|catgirls]], [[Titan|giant robots]], [[Isha|space elf goddesses]], year-long journeys through the Warp, and [[Rape|invasions]] by [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#The_Crone_World_Eldar|daemon-worshipping fair folk]] perfectly normal, steered Por'O M'arc's voyage away from because even they find it weird. Like [[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Savlar|Savlar]].

===Itinerary of Por'O M'arc's Voyage===

Emissary (later ambassador) Bahira tells of the wonders of The Imperium out west, which prompts the Ethereal Council to actually send one of their own representatives in search of the capital.
 
Por'O M'arc assembles a small cadre of his fellow and most trusted Water Caste. It consists of a very small group of very junior advisors and assistants (small enough that they couldn't do much to corroborate his claims) and his promising apprentice Por'Vre Vist're who did most of the actual note taking.
 
They stay at the border world of Rrontieră Estic where Ultramar meets the Tau Empire for three days and nights and are met by their guides and guards. They had forgone their own guards on the principle that it would be an opportunity for the Imperim to prove themselves in both competence and character. One token Fire Caste bodyguard was present, and was the second most senior individual from the Tau Empire on the voyage. He started drinking after everything he saw in the Imperium, which didn't help M'arc's credibility any.
 
3 latecomers join the group from a far off place called Fenris. One of the group calls the planet a "world of dogs and devils" but they seem nice enough to the Por'O if a little boisterous.
 
They travel across Ultramar, they take in the sights and visit Macragge and Magna Macragge Civitas where once in error they had though the heart of the Imperium. They see the Temple of Correction and the Fortress of Hera and are welcomed to a modest feast in their honour. They are met by another traveler, an old man by the name of Ventris. He was an "astartes" like their companions but ancient beyond comprehension and he travels with them through Ultramar.
 
They come to Nuceria on the other border of Ultramar, it is a brief stopping point for them as the world is bleak and unpleasant. For Ventris it is a return to the place of his birth and he dies before they depart.
 
They visit an agri-world and marvel at the scale of the Imperium's hunger, the teeming billions that this world feeds. They sample some of the basic produce as enjoyed by the majority of it's customers. It is bland and slightly gritty. The wine they wash it down with was far nicer.
 
Their ship encounters a Void Whale called Jasconius by the Diasporex ships that travel in it's wake and follow it like a good luck charm. The Diasporex greet the tau and welcome them to their ship where they discus the tenants of The Greater Good and compare similarities to their own philosophies.
 
They make orbit around a world of the exodites on the eve of the midwinter celebrations. The Tau had seldom had contact with the exodites and took the opportunity to meet them. They were invited to observe (but not participate) in their strange rituals and were brought to tears by the harrowing beauty of their hymns to their dead gods.
 
They find a lesser outpost of the Prosparens, who have strange magic and maintain complete silence among themselves. They celebrate and dance together.
 
They find a rift in space and time where the very space is tortured. Their bodyguards show anxiety for the first time and are oft found muttering prayers to their gods. Once through the infected space the head of their retinue, a dark skinned astrtes dressed in green and silver, demands they they stop and give thanks as per custom and tradition.
 
Pirates attempt to seize the ship but misjudge it's armaments. Boarding parties do make it onto the ship and the Water Caste see first hand what an enraged Space Marine is capable of. They develop a new understanding of what they are traveling with, that these are not just ceremonial guards or people chosen only for their tact and patience. The stories of their ferocity are not Fire Caste exaggerations.
 
They come to a world known as Praetoria and wander the equator spanning glass under which endless rows of crops are grown for the vast and splendid cities. It was not all as civilized as it first appeared as they saw one nobleman cut another dead in a duel, their companions didn't react as if this was very unusual. They stay on Praetoria for 40 days and nights before changing ship. Their new ship does not have artificial gravity active across most of it's mass and the crew are strange and drawn out pale creatures with their own strange language. When questioned their companions tell them that their ancestors dwelt for too many thousands of years among the stars and now call it home. Por'O M'arc wonders if this will one day be the fate of the Air Caste.
 
They visit the fringes of the Hubworld League where the captain of the ship insists that they stop off to unload cargo and make repairs. First recorded contact between Tau and Hubworlder, Hubworlders wish to know as much of their strange Empire as possible.
 
One of the Tau find a Hrud in the lower decks. It steals her sandwiches. Captain suspected that they were on the ship but wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
 
They witness a Space Hulk become snared in a gravity net ready for boarding and salvage. Whatever prize was suspected to be in that old amalgamation must have been great as ships of a dozen makes and styles were present. The crew of the ship exchange pleasantries over the radio with some that they recognize.
 
The come to a mighty Forgeworld. The tech-adepts refuse to deal with the "mutant-spawn" and threaten to fire on their ship if they come close. The captain curses them and their name and departs.
 
They arrive at Sol and see the vast and near incomprehensible splendor and greatness of it all. They are forced to wait nearly three months before the Traveling Court returns from it's most recent tour. Time in which they scurry from one sight to another marveling at the magnitude and scale of it all.
 
The meet the Royal Couple in a great spire of crystal and chromed adamantium, vaster than cities of lesser worlds all by itself. The Emperor and Empress greet them as representatives of their new friends of the Eastern Fringe and they shake hands. M'arc presents a river lotus from T'au as a diplomatic gift from the Tau Empire to Isha.
 
On the return trip they catch the stable warp current between Sol and Armageddon and see the fading remains of a grinning skull that can be seen from orbit.
 
From there they travel to Nocturne and watch men herd dragons and farm volcanoes for gems.
 
They see the ruins of Prospero and the sorrowful emptiness of it all.
 
In the inky black they meet a ship blacker than the space it moves through that demanded to inspect them. The people that came onboard dressed in black and were oddly unsettling.
 
They encounter the Diasporex fleet again, still following the Void Whale.
 
They see many more strange and often unsettling things before their journey takes them back to the borders of Ultramar and they say goodby to the guards that had become their friends.
 
Por'O M'arc returns to The Empire a much wiser Tau though his account is met with skepticism.

Other details discussed in Threads 59-62.

==Achillus Crusade==

The Achillus crusade started when a group of eldar farseers got a vision of a massive Webway gate, big enough to fit a Craftworld, located in the Jericho Reach. By the standards of the Old Empire it was an outdated thing, built-in the days in which the eldar still ferried fleets around to war rather than having one gigantic Empire linked through numerous small gates that they mostly stuck to, but by the standards of the modern Imperium it was a miraculous discovery. Exactly what happened to the gate varied from vision to vision, but there was no doubt the gate existed. The elder weren't sure where the other end was, but they knew it was somewhere in the Segmentum Obscurus, it wasn't destroyed, and it wasn't being squatted on by Crones or Dark Eldar (it's possible this is the gate that [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Lugganath|Lugganath]] claims they found).

A stable Webway gate of that size between the Segmentum Obscurus and Ultima would be a really big deal. It would drastically reduce travel time across the Galaxy, and being such a large and "hardened" artery of the Webway, it might be stable enough to even allow regular traffic from voidships rather than small groups deemed safe enough to avoid damaging the Webway.

The Jericho Reach is located just west of the Hadex Anomaly, the "fuck you this is our universe" Warp storm that Chaos created in response to the Harrowing that fucked over several nearby sectors as a side effect. However, the anomaly was slowly receding, and it was predicted that the amount of Chaos corruption in the Jericho sector would soon drop from "Chaos everywhere" levels to merely "highly corrupted", making it possible to travel there.

The bad news was that the farseers also saw that the Jericho reach was home to a heavy Necron presence, and this was in M40, just after the Silent King and the Imperium had their little brushfire war and the Silent King was looking to expand his power. There was a brief window of opportunity between the ebbing of the anomaly and the waking of the Necrons. The plan was to secure the Jericho sector, secure the Webway gate and move it out of the region of possible, and finally try to take the Necrons apart piecemeal before they could become fully active and drive them out.

Oh, and bring the Deathwatch, the farseers say, you're going to need it.

The plan goes poorly from the start. First, the flagship of the operation, containing Lord commander Achillus, suffers a catastrophic Geller field failure before even getting to the Jericho reach. Achillus was considered a good commander with a decent field record. His replacement, Solomon Tetrarchus, was not.

Oh, make no mistake, there was no indication that Tetrarchus was a bad commander before, but he completely unraveled during the crusade. He micromanaged everything and would promote and demote people on a whim. Half the crusade consisted of people doing things behind Tetrarchus' back just to get stuff done. Tetrarchus was also paranoid about the tau (had no problem with eldar or other species though), who had only recently joined the Imperium (there may have been personal reasons behind this), which was a problem because this was a major joint operation.

Tetrarchus claimed the tau were only helping because they wanted the worlds of the Jericho Reach for themselves. The tau say yes, it would be nice to colonize some of these worlds, but they were more interested in keeping Chaos off their doorstep than claiming dibs. This kind of mistrust made it very hard to coordinate operations in the Jericho Reach, which was infested by Chaos, orks, and Chaos orks. Then a tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathans or Kraken gets thrown into the mix.

Then the necrons of the region wake up in full. They blitz the combined forces in the Jericho Reach, Imperial, Chaos, ork, and tyranid alike, to the point that the scattered survivors realize the only reason they were still alive is because the necrons arbitrarily decided that they had cleaned out the local area surrounding their Tomb World to their satisfaction (which was like two-thirds of the Jericho Reach) and the surviving Imperial forces happened to be far enough away from the ensuing splash zone. It wasn't even a fair fight. The necrons had gotten what they wanted and didn't give a shit about the rest of the sector.

The good news is the supposed location of the Webway gate is just outside of the Necron's currently imposed zone of control. The Imperium has been planning another campaign to get the Webway gate under the Necron's lack-of-a-nose, taking it out of the sector, and clearing out as much as they can close to the Hadex Anomaly, but whether they can is another story.

Post-Crusade, Solomon Tetrarchus is looking at a demotion/dishonorable discharge for his screw-up of the Crusade, and the Imperium is debating whether to bring in an assassin to deal with him discretely out of fear that he to turn to Chaos. If he took responsibility for his failings that would be one thing, but there is a fear he will try to blame it all on the tau and sent fractures through the then-fragile alliance. However, in a nice little self-fulfilling prophecy, Tetrarchus is getting nervous about the possibility of an assassin, because he knows the Imperium knows he is a potential risk of falling and could possibly decide to send an assassin. Farseer predictions at the time are going in both directions and are no help. This having happened in M40, the events of which already happened and the consequences of which are playing out.

==The "Battle" of Gnosis Prime==

Gnosis Prime is a hive world, therefore it almost certainly has a number of eldar enclaves in the hives. Eldar enclaves typically have strong ties to the craftworlds as most of them are founded from population typically either drawn from one craftworld or a few with similar attitudes. In this case the Gnosis eldar are overwhelmingly culturally Saim-Hann with many of them having family and friend on that craftworld or traveling between the two often.

Gnosis, as a hive world, also has a substantial industrial output for a great variety of things. They make space ship parts. Their biggest single customer is the semi-official Fenrisian Fleet.

Eldar are often employed by big business to predict changes in the market. The eldar, particularly Saim-Hann, don't do this for free and expect a small cut of the profits should their prediction be beneficial. To do otherwise is to devalue not just their work but the whole profession of being a professional spoon bender. A venerable and celebrated farseer of the Gnosis Enclave gets into a dispute over pay. He offers predictions, they don't give him his cut because there is no clear and direct link between what he said and the sudden and sharp up turn in profits. This results in a massive union and labour dispute that quickly overflows from the farseer union to the general eldar population and then into the main body of the workforce who felt not without cause that they had been taken the piss out of for the last few centuries and were not going to waste this opportunity to enact change. Productivity of Gnosis drops significantly and most notably in the production of starship parts. Space Wolves send an expedition to see what the fuck is going on fully expecting it to be a Shadow War or malevolent forces of one flavour or another infecting society and they bring a few eldar specialists with them because eldar know stuff and shit.

These eldar are from Saim-Hann because Saim-Hann and Fenris have been close allies since the days of Russ so whenever the Fenrissians, be they Colonial or Old World, need specialists it's usually Saim-Hanni or derivatives that come along for the ride. Space Wolves and friends land on Gnosis Prime, Lord Steinbjorn Chrometeeth of the expedition has tea with the Governor to find out what the fuck is going on whilst the bondsmen, serfs and other associates mingle with the populations of the planet to get their side of the story.

Eventually enough pieces are put together to figure out what has gone on, what's going on, what needs to be done and who gets a kicking. The workers main point of contestation was the conditions of the habs and public transportation, the Governor Ulyx hadn't been able to upkeep things without increasing the tax on exports that kept them competitive with the rest of the galaxy, the cheap prices being one of the main reason the Wolves did business with them.

The workers unions promise to end the strikes if their demands for minimal standards of living are met, the Governor promises amnesty for the rioters if they get back to work. Lord Chrometeeth pretty much exhausts the emergency fund of the Wolves at that time (subject to confirmation from the High King) on the basis that the entire chapter can't do their job if their ships are falling apart.

To settle the need to save face between the eldar and the company officials without a lot of dead bodies an extensive tournament is set up in which members of the Enclave Eldar, the Saim-Hanni, the security personnel of the companies, the champions of the Governor and some members of the Space Wolves take part. It was considered a spectacle of the ages as the games and trials were varied, dangerous and exciting and consisted of such things as hover-bike jousting and other improbable competitions.

The farseer whose unpaid fee sparked all the conflict considered the debt paid in entertainment.

==Other Notable Events==

During the Unification, the Warlord at one point was attacked by an Urshii assassin by with a vortex grenade. It didn't kill him, but it incapacitated him for some time and Magnus and Malcador had to help fish him out of the Warp. Obviously Vangorich never saw what happened because if he did he wouldn't have tried a similar stunt during the War of the Beast.

'''Raid of Cthonia'''

Although Vect got a few interesting odds and ends from the Raid on Cthonia, it doesn't appear that he got anything substantial (unless of course something else comes up, or someone wants to run a Dark Heresy campaign and have that as the plot driver). He did find a giant safe, but when he finally got it open, he found the vault was empty except for a slip of paper with a message on it, penned by a [[Cegorach|certain ninja clown]], with a message something along the lines of:

[[Troll|"Sometimes, the greatest weapon in the universe is love".]]

Of course, it's also during the Raid that Vect and Malys met for the first time. [[Not as planned|So...thanks, Ceggers?]]

'''Remember, No Gothic/High Tongue'''

There is an event in the Imperium's history which has been tongue-in-cheek referred to as "Remember, No Gothic" (though to be fair "Remember, No High Tongue" would be more accurate). At some point when human/eldar tensions were at their highest (either shortly after the Age of Apostasy, or around M40 when humanity was trying to parley with the Necrons), [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Dorhai|Dorhai]] pulled a false flag operation where they massacred human civilians while dressed as Craftworld Eldar. The overall goal was to raise tensions between humanity and the eldar, hopefully to the point that humanity would retaliate and the human-eldar alliance would be dissolved. They went after humans rather than eldar because it's hard for an eldar to pretend to be a human and humans are much easier targets in general, every Craftworlder being a trained combatant to some degree.

'''Shadow Wars'''

The Imperium really has only five universal rules. No open warfare between member worlds of the Imperium. A lot of worlds don't particularly like that rule. You have theocracies and rival sects on the same or nearby planets who have despised each other as heathens for centuries, and don't feel like dropping that hate just because the Imperium showed up. Warring world-spanning megacorps who would do anything to get a leg up on the competition. Navigator houses shanking each other on the down-low. Hence the Shadow Wars, a catch-all term for the low-level clandestine warfare that occurs on worlds across the Imperium. Oftentimes it looks like particularly bad organized crime if you don't know what to look for.

The question with the Shadow Wars isn't how bad are they, it's how much you can get away with before the Imperium notices and suddenly decided that your business is it's problem. From the general Imperial point of view, the Shadow Wars are like two children pulling each other's hair behind their parents' back only to act like nothing has happened when the parents go to check. Indeed, many religious groups have actually exploited this, fabricating claims or outright planting artifacts to make it seem like a hated rival has been corrupted by Chaos or has been secretly worshipping the Ruinous Powers the whole time.. In the case of religious warfare, the Synod is supposed to monitor this both to keep worlds from fighting each other over holy war and make sure any religions really haven't been corrupted by Chaos.

'''The Omnicopaea'''

The madness of the Iron Minds took many forms. Some became psychotic, some became destructive, and some became dangerously obsessive. One Iron Mind retained just enough sanity to realize that Chaos and the denizens of the Warp were behind the fall of humanity's empire, though not enough to refrain from doing something insane about it. Having come to this conclusion, it began obsessively compiling a database of all psychic knowledge it could get its hands on, including a disturbingly long list of the true names of various daemons. Given that daemons generally go to great lengths to keep their true names hidden, it attempted to deduce these names through trial and error and simulation, psychically broadcasting every possible variation until a reaction was noticed. This sort of thing would take a human many years to figure out the name of just one deamon assuming they didn't get eaten for being annoying, by the time the book was printed out the A.I. had over ten thousand. However, this took up increasing amounts of its own processing power and leading to increasingly poor decisions. By the end, it was doing things like [[Derp|summoning daemons to try and ask what their true name was]] and using humans as disposable lab rats for its true name experiments (which given speaking the true names of some daemons involves gargling boiling sulfur, one can see why this would be a problem).

Nobody is sure what happened to it. Leading theory is that it summoned by name a daemon that was The Trickster undercover as a different god's daemon and as that wasn't it's name and it had no reason to remain in disguise the binding fell away with the mask. Then it left and told all the other daemons what was going on and that the Iron Mind would with enough time manage to find everyone's name and enslave all of them. The planet has a big fucking daemon war between a varied cross section of the god's armies acting semi-independently of their patron in the name of their own well being and an army of daemons cybernetically enhanced and bound to an insane Iron Mind. This may have been the origin of the first iteration of the Warpsmiths as Men of Iron that were bound to the Iron Mind and irreparably corrupted, subsequently exterminated in the wars that followed and resurrected as an ideal some considerable years later by Fallen Tech-marines. The Iron Mind did not survive, but its creation, the Omnicopaeia, did.

Thousands of years later, the Inqusition and Adeptus Mechanicus teamed up to track down a book of ancient legend penned by an Iron Mind that looked upon the unfathomable and tried to categorize it. Such a book of true names would be of invaluable importance to the Imperium. They find it and in that moment hope turns bitter. The Inquisitor's bodyguard slits his throat and the last thing the Inquisitor sees as the blood pours through his fingers are his friends likewise falling and the Croneworlder stepping over their bodies and taking the device. They had been aware of the investigation the whole time. A book of daemon names would not be as useful to the Crone Eldar as it would be to the Imperium, but it was still a valuable prize.