Editing Nobledark Imperium Drafts (section)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their prodigious psychic powers failing them, the Cognoscynths turned to words. They scoffed at the idea of the Shepherd bringing judgement up