NationStates Jolt Archive

Jill’nais hadn’t ever expected to see a necron tomb world so green, of course, it wasn’t the natural, healthy green of foliage, but instead, the emerald shine of necron technology. So much of it. Seachmallshemash, was its eldarin name. She didn’t know the necrontyr name for it, but it was probably much more concise and much less elegant – the necrontyr language seemed to her rather like a machine language, which was fitting, she supposed, short, to the point, elegant, in its way, but efficient, rather than deep.

A spherical world orbited by a moon that was a good proportion of its own size. She knew that in the swelteringly hot deserts of that planet below, a large portion of the Yvressi aspect temples, around thirty million warriors in all, were busy training. They’d been going through there in shifts, as training for the mission they were planned to undertake soon.

The world was covered in devices akin to the ‘nightmare fields’ used by necron lords, and contained within the sepulchre of tomb ships. These however, were keyed to generate an interactive field that was experienced collectively by all of its victims.

From the surface, or to those not ‘logged in’ the world looked like what it was, a black desert spotted with great canyons containing tremendous walls of glowing arcing necron technology and bubbling lava that flowed like water. Compared to what the Yvressi being ‘trained’ saw, it was paradisiacal.

Somewhere in the heart of the world there lay the mind of a vicious sadist obsessed with creating sanity-challenging landscapes that really had no business being in existence. A crazed artist-machine whose present assignment was in creating the insanity inducing terrain and monsters that the Yvressi were ‘fighting’ their way through.

It was all for what was probably the most ambitious operation that the eldar had undertaken in – ever, really.

The buildings around the centre of the continent contained a massive web-gate, large enough to accommodate even a starship. Mostly they resembled a vast encampment of eldar buildings able to hold many millions of troops; the bonesingers had created far more buildings than were necessary yet, for in time, this place, surrounded by multi-layered shields and null-arrays and countless other defences that would take entire essays to describe in full, would serve as the staging point for the final strike.

Here and there, however, were the eye-straining buildings of the necrons, serving as control interfaces and monitor systems for the planet itself. Elsewhere, towering over the encampment, were titans and stranger monstrous necron creations, vast pyramids, flying temples, orbs of compacted stellar material suspended in fragile looking frames…

Nais turned as someone tapped her shoulder, having already, merely from the fact that she’d not felt the person approach, guessed who it was. The ‘Deceiver’s’ new form sat somewhat easier with her than his previous one. Though the Seer Council were still somewhat dubious about the veracity of the supposed change, ‘Ranisath’ was rather more personable than his predecessor, in that there was no longer an instinctive urge to run and hide from him. “Ah…” she said, “hello. I didn’t know you were here…”

“I thought I’d come by and see how you’re doing…” he said. It wasn’t too clear whether he meant her specifically, or the progress in general, so she decided to assume the latter, he saw enough of her to hardly need to visit her.

“Quite well…” she said, “the Avengers seem to be matching the record of The First Terra, even under these conditions,” she frowned, tapped a few spots on a floating glass panel, and brought up an image of various blue-armoured warriors whose tall white helms had the appearance of carved ivory around a lapis face plate, and whose ornamented appearance highlighted malevolent crimson eye slits.

Slanesshi cultists, for the most part human, streamed uphill towards the ragged line of crouching Avengers. The exarch of the two squads nodded in unison, one levelling a shuriken catapult and the other a pistol, as both squads opened fire. It was a test of tactics, based on the behaviours observed in countless engagements. Scatter laser pulses and shuriken downed dozens of the cultists, and true to form, they simply seemed enthused by the prospect of pain, charging with more fervour. One of the exarchs crouched as the leading human cultists, armed with a variety of weapons, ranging from bare fists to massive chainswords, reached the line of mines placed in the craggy rocks a few dozen paces behind them. A touch of a gem on his armour – normally, they’d be psychically controlled, but where they were going, that wasn’t easily reliable, set the weapons off.

A sequence of flashes followed, and the front lines began to dissolve messily as a wall of monofilament webbing flew over, into, and through, them. Without needing to be told, both squads took to their feet, deftly leaping from rock to rock and disappearing into the wave serpent transports that brought them there, which took off a moment later.

Vaul Engines followed, and more of the webbing – by far the favourite weapon of the Yvressi – fell like a perverse snow from the sky.

Watching, Ranisath nodded, “What about the demon simulations though?”

Another tap brought up an image of Striking Scorpion aspect warriors and warlocks laying into perverse feminine cavalry. Here, demon claws met chainsword and scorpion’s claws, elsewhere, a warlock ducked as the incandescent blast of a prism cannon ionised the air above her, tearing into one of the larger forms, which writhed in ecstasy as it was torn into. She flipped her hold on her jagged witchblade and drove it into the demon’s leg, corrupt pseudo-flesh leaping and roaring into flames as she did so. Spinning the blade as she drew it back, she hacked higher on the creature’s flank, bringing it down…

Ranisath nodded a little, “We could still use more effective teaching there,” he said, examining the success rates.

———

Among this artificial chaos, a figure stood pensively, watching as its metaphorical-children skittered up and down one of the canyons, executing lethal attacks upon insubstantial prey. Salodath, the Teacher of Between, was one of the legendry Phoenix Lords of the Eldar, though far less famous than the others, due to around two thousand years of death, its armour held in one of the vaults where the Jackal God kept the things it thought would come in useful some day. Eventually that armour had been given to Tor Yvresse as a gift, and Salodath had lived again.

The consciousness that was the present incarnation of the phoenix lord rested precariously between bubbles that contained the personalities of the many exarchs consumed by it over the years.

The ‘personal’ experience of hundreds of lifetimes, of thousands of battles and hopes and fears swirled beneath the conscious awareness. Manoeuvres and tactics seemed to be quite good, but in truth, there was only so much that Warp Spiders could do against demons. Their makeup was the stuff of irrationality, and it did not succumb easily to death spinners. Therefore it seemed that they would need to concentrate on the elimination of the Mon-Keigh battle cattle. It would perhaps be seen as something of a less glorious role, but the phoenix lord could only think of effectiveness, and it struck Salodath as the most efficient use of the Warp Spiders.

A portion of the Phoenix’s mind came to the fore, and it remembered other data. Data that it had both forgotten, put aside, and misremembered.

———

Belial IV. It had another name back then of course. In the long-past Eldar Empire it had been called by another name, but it did not care to remember that name for the planet that it was now was best known by its Mon-Keigh name.

Belial IV. It had once been a place of music, lofty debate, courtly yet free love, and a thousand other virtues. But over time, the lifestyle that created such pinnacles of civility had become isolated from lesser races, and then callous, and finally depraved.

Yet among those who had foreseen that monstrous fall from Grace, there had been some who had intended to prevent it. On Belial IV they’d had the greatest success, managing to replicate to a large degree the sword of khaine, they had created the Deathsword, a weapon that even without its power source, destroyed the soul of any creature it touched up to and including lesser demons, a corruption spreading into them that was like a cancer of the soul – distilled death.

The Yvressi had acquired that dread weapon many years ago now, but with improved relations with the necrontyr, a means to effectively use it had finally presented itself…

Not all the coming struggles would be fought and won by strength of arms, a large part of the coming struggle would require knowledge, lost lore, long buried. The Powers of the Deathsword and the ‘generators’ on the fallen world of Belial IV would need much research to fully uncover and understand drawing as they did from before the fall. The Keigh had moved on as a race since then necessity had driven them to change, the past had used unshielded Warp-Engines for example, the current Keigh would never be so foolish. Yet it was unshielded they would find the generator’s.

The devices came from before the Fall, from before the Path system, which had permanently changed and altered the Keigh on a fundamental level, including their approach to using the Immaterium, the Farseers had not existed Pre-Fall the addiction to using the Immaterium had not existed, or rather the mental controls the Keigh used to force themselves to study only one aspect of themselves at a time, had not created the fundamental shift in the nature of the races approach to the Immaterium. This meant to fully unlock the weapons of that age, to fully regain control of the world, and to achieve the end goal of millennia of hope and dreams, the Kionash would need to relearn what had been forgotten.

Fortunately they had a way, while the things they needed to learn had not been used or needed in countless years, the knowledge had not been entirely lost. Deep within the twisted confusing corridors of the web lay a place, a place that was… both vast and tiny, existed in the now, the then and the to come. The Black Library was The the largest adiposity of knowledge about the Immaterium, and the manipulation of it. The tomes here covered everything you needed to know about Chaos the warp and many things you shouldn’t know. Mad men dream of this place believing the knowledge contained here could make them a god. They where not wrong in that dream, but it was madness to follow such a path. The guardians of this place would never allow it.

Still the Farseers had come, behind them marched rank upon rank of Seers. Never before had any Kionash brought so many Seer to the Library, it would be their role to practically tear the place apart, sorting through the myriad tomes of knowledge for even the smallest snippet of information, to find anything they could and when found to place the tomes aside for closer study.

While on Seachmallshemash the Aspect warriors trained here in the Library the seers made ready.

Their arrival was of course planned for, and waited upon and the Seers went to work with a passion, books where sorted, men where separated from the others. After merely a few hours the place took on a otherworldly tone even more severe than before their arrival. As countless numbers of Keigh walked around and through each other, slightly out of phase with each other. It was a strange sight to see so many people and realise they might all stand in the exact same place, and never once touch other. The same dream beat in the hearts of everyone of these people, freedom, freedom from the fear and certainty of death and she-who-Thirsts, and as much as the warriors who even now trained, it would be up to them to bring that dream to reality.

Still even with an army of researchers, if the Yvrese had came to this place and simply set them loose they might have found the information they needed in only a few hundred years, a thousand as a more likely prospect, the Black Library was larger than is almost possible to concieve of, filled as it was after all with books explaining that which was the stuff of chaos and change. To understand a realm of pure emotion without physical laws as we know them. This then was not the case, it was not a random search, they had a few pointers to go.

For instance the nature of the knowledge they sought, it was old knowledge, Pre-Fall, it would be recorded in only the oldest of books, an aid but a tiny one, none of the books in the Black Library could be called new works after all. They would be written by Keigh however, and Keigh works both pre and Post fall had a certain style about them that was unique. This did narrow the search a lot. Texts could be rejected by title alone.

Other pointers existed, much of what they sought was not about Chaos or the ruinous powers but about Keigh Society and Keigh approaches to the Immaterium, this would shorten the list of places to look greatly. In time, the intial hunt would provide more hints as to where to look, and so the hunters where split into two groups.

The first sought evidence of a texts usefulness in the hunt was found they passed on the actual study to others who would compile a target list, passing that list back to the hunters, wo would bring the Targets to the indepth study team. The indepth researchers would take those texts deemed useful in and off themselves and place them to the side. Occasionary, Galdern, Iyanna, Darvins or Badb could be seen heads buried in a text, to them would fall the most difficult part, understanding what was discovered. And so as the days went past always at least One of these Farseers was present in the Library.

((OOC this may be edited later to try and better catch the feel of the Black Libary.))

Belial IV

Freedom, so sought by the Yvressi, was dear to many peoples throughout the universe. Some were illiterate ranting lunatics, who’d adopted the ideas from wiser outsiders; elsewhere there were entities whose philosophies were subtle and incisive, sophisticated and vast in their scope of argumentation and refinement.

Some of those entities were observing Belial IV, now. Twinned rows of crimson eyes looked out over the planet, invisible to their inhabitants and far away, yet watching eagerly. The Ruinous Powers offended these entities deeply, because their philosophies were in no small part based around 'chaos' and 'change' and even held roles for sex and death and disease. They believed in chaos, and the good of it as a progressive force. Deeply. The 'Chaos' of the Ruinous Powers was a perversion that took their ideology, and made it into a means of trapping its victims into a pathetic cycle in which there was no progress, no good.

And it meant that their rivals had a good laugh at their expense and a pile of semi-fallacious evidence to beat them with. Which was possibly worse.

On the planet, daemons capered by the billions, and hordes of cultists engaged in every kind of depravity they could imagine to inflict upon themselves, or upon others of any age. The watchers watched this with a disdainful gaze from their dozen eyes.

Strange and debased lords preformed acts of debasement that would turn the minds of most any mortal creature due to their stomach turning, of course, the observers were far beyond such things.

---
Sector: X (49804.29) Y (020˚) Z (+20.95)

The winds of a nova from where a small white dwarf orbited a giant star, sucking matter from it, until it became sufficiently dense and blew off its outer layers in regular explosions billowed thorough space. Gasses rubbed against the living metal hull of a necron starship, a mile wide crescent that was framed against the glow of the star nearby, radiations making it barely possible to send a signal more than a kilometre before it was hopelessly garbled at any receiver.

Space rippled and shifted, and another ship emerged at this clandestine rendezvous, of the type so beloved of melodramas over the years. It too was made of a homogenous living material, though this blended minerals and metals in a different way. The second ship was spindly, two layers of spikes one atop the other, outwards in a semicircle. The lower layer was twisted ‘down’ to curl outwards a little way. Three kilometres wide, it was one of the largest of its kind in existence.

Aboard the crescent ship, Ranisath waited in a relatively unaccustomed form, eight limbed, with two forelimbs, and six spiked for locomotion. Spikes were everywhere, knees, wrists, shoulders, ankles and fingers. Even the head was spiked, or at least, came to a shape with distinct edges, like a cheese wedge of darkness.

With the distinctive pop of a teleporter, another creature similar, outwardly identical, to this black form appeared. To creatures that could see in infrared, they looked rather more unique.

Ranisath spoke to the visitor, this arms, and even legs, moving in subtle gestures that accompanied the speech in the visitor’s language, limbs of such creatures frequently conveyed even more meaning about tone and mood than they did in human languages. Even more when the aural language was as compressed as theirs, which compressed hundreds of characters into what would be one symbol or morpheme in most languages.

Ranisath questioned, the visitor answered.

The question translated loosely as ‘The Eye has looked into the eye?’ – not exactly, but it was far more poetic in english, anyway.

The answer was affirmative. A spiked hand presented a small gem of seeming glass. The C’tan took it, and nodded its wedge shaped head.

Assurances were offered, and requests made. The two ships departed, both seeming to fade, and be gone. The visitor did not leave the necron ship, however, but remained on board the crescent shaped vessel. Rather than arranging a meeting, if something changed, it would know. Its spiked form was able to communicate with those of its own kind at home, and if the Eye noted any changes upon the daemon world, it would be informed, and pass the information on.

Meanwhile, Ranisath would be passing on the recently recorded images of the hidden vaults and corrupted warp-taps of Belial IV, and the troop movements upon its surface.

Hundreds of ships orbited Mitnal. The nightingale fleet made up a hundred, a dozen smaller patrol boats, and one hundred and fifty or so larger necron ships. It was as many as could be moved around without a drop in Solarian presence, though the fleet’s evasive policies on just how numerous it was made for difficult divining of that fact. A few ships remained in orbit of Duat and Garm, too, along with flotillas of patrol boats.

The throne room of the Reaper of Light was a large chamber with a ‘window’ at the front that allowed it to look on on the space beyond. The window was actually an illusion produced with holography, for the chamber was buried deep inside the ship.

Jill’nais bowed slightly as she entered the chamber, and the C’tan there smiled. “Ah good,” he said, “You’ve arrived,” he said.

There was a large circular table there, apparently made of obsidian, or something similar to it. A number of chairs were around it, including one wrought of twisted iron and obsidian, and one of gold and ithilmar, an alloy used by ancient Eldar.

The C’tan was speaking with an elf that appeared as a being of light more than of flesh, perhaps only to those with a certain kind of sight, which Jill’nais had, he was almost intolerably bright to look at, though his physical form was somewhat less radiant. He was one of the more reclusive members of the Menelmacari elite, it’s oldest warlord, indeed, some speculated that he was actually ‘older’ than the Elentári herself.

Ranisath nodded to him, “Excellent, good…” he said, “Might want to move some of them on to thirty five…”

The elf nodded, made his goodbyes, and left, leaving Ranisath alone with Jill’nais.

“You wanted to see me, Ranah?” she asked.

He smiled at her apparent practice of necrontyr, “Yes. Good. We’re ready to prepare our plan… How would you like to see the sepulchre, while you’re here?”


The chamber was vast, somewhat reminiscent of the inside of a gothic cathedral’s tower but instead of devotional imagery, roof bore vast metal stalegtites that played with strange energies that flickered and crackled into the visible spectrum here and there, with all the colours of the rainbow, and brilliant white flashes. Concentric rings of instrumentation and bizarre linkages to aspects of the ship and beyond made up the floor.

Stepping into the centre of this, Ranisath waved a hand over one panel, and then another. An image of the surrounding space didn’t so much appear as transpose itself onto Nais’ mind.

Ranisath made another little gesture, and the fleet departed. In an instant, they were elsewhere, about a light minute from the Tor Yvresse craftworld…

The sight of so many Necrontyr vessels appearing so close to the mammoth hull of Yvresse was not one that sat well with any of the inhabitants confusion and fear was the general response, rapidly the forms of the Ishar’s fleet turned to face towards the unsettling sight. Yet the reactions of the living where not the matter of true concern as the as yet still unknown fleet appeared countless billions of souls cried out in terror.

Deep within the smooth angles and graceful, if mammoth form of yvresse itself they stirred. A part of the world ship, the gathered dead of Yvresse for many Millennia Souls that had forgotten their names, and become a part of the greater whole, normally most of these souls where passive and still, happy to act as a part of the whole, yet now… now they Screamed every Keigh onboard Yvresse could feel it, the fear of almost certain death, of the gathering force coming towards them. Deep within the dome that scream caused tears to run down the faces of the gathered Farseers.

Even more unnerving was the way it stirred the dead, the silent now they raced to seize control of the many defensive weapons scattered around Yvresse itself. They would not allow this fate to take them without a fight, and even as they did so the seers of Yvresse raced to calm them, to beg them to stop. It took hours and yet mere seconds, for the realm of the Infinity circuit was not that of the material world, and time held it’s rules there. So while little could have been seen outside of the Circuit of the struggle ongoing within it, the faces of the seers as they emerged from that struggle where haggard and exhausted, not a one of them had found the job easy nor pleasant.

On board Shicaraissatel Cala Drian the fear and panic of the Yvresse Infinity circuit could be felt by the Yvresse Ambassador Nais, it was likely any psychic soul for several Light Days would pick up that much terror. Yet unable to reach her people over the general feelings of fear pervading the area all she cold do was watch and hope the situation was brought under control before things got out of hand. Within a deep hidden part of her through she had to worry if they where already out of control, had this all been an elaborate plot by the Yngir before her, as quickly as the thought arose she shut it away and banished it. It would do her no good to suspect such a thing, it would do her people no good now. So she had to simply have faith in the man before her, trust him, even if a part of her feared he had abused that trust in the past.

Eventually, relatively, the Seer council was faced with a simple choice sit in silence and wait or contact the Necrontyr and Ranisath. Since sitting in silence simply agitated the Souls of the infinity circuit a channel was opened.

As much as we appreciate the visit, a little warning next time would be appreciated, especially when you show up in those vessels. Iyannas voice was strained and carried hints as to her exhaustion. It might also explain hr manner, simply put even now a part of her was reassuring the Infinity Circuit of the Yvresse Craftworld that all would be well, even as a part of her secretly feared she was lying.

Ranisath meshed his fingers, pressing his forefingers together, and they assumed a slightly stony aspect, as though becoming a stalagmite pointed at the jagged ceiling high above. “Excellent,” he said, “prepare to be boarded…” he smiled, a little, “Or you could come over here, of course… That was probably in poor taste, I suppose, apologies, some old habits aren’t entirely displaced by new ones.

“In any case, we are here because here is the place we belong, for now. The time grows near, and we must meet to finalise our plans. As such, we request permission to approach for this vessel, in order to facilitate your transfer, unless you’d rather put up with longer journey times.

“I would request the presence of a delegation from the seer council, any autarchs, senior exarches and admirals you are willing to send, and of course, anyone else you find it desirable to bring.”

The active power outputs of the ships dropped to near zero as they ceased manoeuvring entirely, but for the flagship itself, and returned their weapons to an idling mode as they drifted. They did however, seem very obvious to scanners, for necron ships, as though they were at their maximum-density, prepared to be shot…

‘It is acceptable for your vessel to approach, it will give us the time necessary to gather the people requested, I feel that the need to keep the number of planners to a minimum should limit the size of my group to roughly Twenty individuals at this stage.’

Signing off temporary she had much to do, Admirals to gather, most of the Yvresse Fleet Admirals where on posting, commanding the various wings of the Khaine’s and Asuryan fleets, Yvresse but a few where gathered in the sector not least due o the presence of the Ishar’s fleet, the most important grouping at anyone time, for it was home defence. The Admiral’s where much like the Exarch’s of the Warrior Shrines, serving a similar role, some had argued that they should take their rightful place in the selection of the Young King. Even after countless years of debate agreement on this issue had never been reached. Iyanna agreed with the fleet personally but in this she was actually not allowed to comment, the cult of Khaine, his worship, was a thing of the Shrines, of the Aspects not her place to interfere. The Seer council had great power within Yvresse but it was not without it’s limits.

Now through it was unimportant, everyone onboard the Craftworld could place aside such debates, because if they failed in this endeavour it would be irrelevant, as Tor Yvresse would cease to exist as a viable sustainable world. It would throw it‘s military might at the foe, and many would not return victory was the only result that would not end in the destruction of Yvresse. So then who to take with her onto the Necrontyr Vessel apart from the Admirals. Ahh yes I shall have to take Her

Her return had been stunning, most of Yvresse had rejoiced and yet… she had been sidelined, no one quite knew what to make of Mel’Nais, Farseer yet somehow different, in theory she should have retaken her rightful place on the Council yet…something had not sat right about her, she seemed to have a different attitude towards some things. It’s as if she had walked a different path for a while, one I once walked, yet that is impossible, she was Farseer when we thought her dead. and that was the crux of the problem, and yet here she would serve them well, and perhaps regain a part of the missing trust.

Finally her deliberations over the list of advisor’s was transmitted, an Exarch from every Shrine was present, and most of the Autarch’s. And of course the Young King. The Exarch chosen for this year to be the willing sacrifice to Khailia-Mensha-Khaine should the need to awaken the avatar arise, it was about to arise, his death was certain. He alone in the quick list of names and titles amongst the Exarch’s was addressed by his full title, the name if said aloud would usually take several minutes to complete, being as it was the amalgamation of every person to have worn the suit he currently inhabited since Yvresse was founded. Fortunately, perhaps in this instance the Exarch in question was a rarely awoken suit, and had one of the shorter names on record, it would also be the first time it’s wearer would be honoured to become one with Khaine.

The Young King at the moment and in the events to come was named Cothique’Finval’Sphoth’Achrae’Annulai’Eatine’Shanner’Aethis’Morvael’Arviel’Nevrin’Celsharin’Devarkme lshar’

And then the shape of the transport could be seen, making the short trip to bring the party aboard all told some Twenty in Number, One Exarch from each Shrine, Four Autarch’s, Four Admirals Two Farseers The young King and another who did not speak on the journey over, and was given a surprisingly wide berth by his companions, even the two Farseer’s seemed uncomfortable in his presence. The Solitaire was a Harlequin, more than this through he was the representative of Slaanesh. He was, cursed, yet of all the Keigh he understood the great enemy the most, his insight would make things run a little smoother, that was aside from the role the Harlequins would play in the coming events.

The landing deck of the necron ship was as vast as might be expected, but not quite what might be considered the norm. For this was one of the older ships, and so, while the bay was in itself large, the current generation of necron ships had larger bays by far in their hulls, designed for housing those vessels of the lesser races they encountered on non-hostile terms with increasing frequency now.

It was illuminated from lights high above that might as well have been glimmering city lights in the distance, but were probably something stranger, they didn’t move, but seemed to shift in some other way from time to time, the exact tones of light, hovering around white, shifting slightly, and something else, the way they caused shadows changed, flickering this way and that in some way with no visible reason.

Their host walked through this, although the bay was apparently depressurised, with the ambassador at his side, her long hair loose, her body unprotected from the lack of atmosphere and the clinging, probing coldness that was its next of kin. Indeed, the characteristics of her light outfit were quite a distance from the armour she had first arrived in, on any axis of measurement.

The C’tan stood at the doorway of the landing craft, and instantly the pressure outside was a touch less than earth’s, for the lissom Eldar had developed upon and been developed for a planet with a touch less gravity than earth. Point nine-seven gravities, was the normal, for them. This was in fact, a touch higher than the necrontyr normal, which was part of why – un-augmented, of course – necrontyr were generally weaker than most other races. Of course, with an otherwise similar homeworld, and atmospheric conditions, this gravity bred a lower air pressure. Eldar generally didn’t notice, but on human environments, they preformed somewhat better than they did in their own, because of a metabolism adapted for what was essentially altitude.

He bowed his head just a little in respect – or at least in formality – to the Eldar farseer, first out of their vessel, and then moved on to greet the others, paying particular attention to the ‘Young King’ whom he seemed to regard in a guarded manner, though the C’tan showed no emotion he did not wish to beforehand, and so his thoughts were never discernable by his body language or even words, but only in the ways in which his power and voice was used.

This voice was something expertly arranged over millennia to sidle its way into the consciousness of the listener. It was often adjusted slightly, tonally and pitch wide, to have a surreptitious trace of the voices of those dear to the listener. Not always employed, this was one of several means by which it became convincing, and one that worked even on alien Eldar, all the better with some of those more absorbed in the path, from the suppressed nature of their subconscious psyches allowed less awareness of it to seep through.

His reaction to Mel’nais was guardedly friendly, but it wasn’t quite the passionate reunion that Iyanna might have been expecting, on either side. He seemed to be more interested in meeting the Autarchs, he’d never actually met one in their current form, before, in person – or in the person as Mephet’ran – thus he seemed interested in them, or more precisely, their minds. The admirals, he seemed less interested in, though he took their hands in a gesture similar to that of some human cultures, and the Solitaire…

The Solitaire he spoke to, and after some pressure, engaged in difficult, halting conversation. None of the others heard it, nor could see their speech in any other way, for Ranisath suppressed it.

Of all the Eldar, the Solitaire was the one with most to gain from their plan, for his soul was already forfeit to the chaos god, and he could not talk to his kin, for this would spread that dread doom. Ranisath was the first person he’d spoken to (aside from those few enemies he’d had the opportunity to do so to) in over a millennium. Though it wouldn’t affect pariahs, he couldn’t stand to be around them any more than other Eldar, but Ranisath was not such, even if he had a presence in the warp, he would have been unaffected, for he was equal, in a way, to it, and in others, greater. But even so, he was not present in the warp, and so lacked any soul to possibly be corrupted.

This done, the C’tan smiled at the assembled craftworlers, and with a nod, they were plucked from the landing bay and deposited in the meeting room, there, above the table, a spherical hologram glowed like a baleful, overseeing eye, of a barren, wasted, and corrupted world. A demon world, without a central authority to sculpt it to his will, but more, a frequently changed wasteland, ruled by rival princes of pleasure, and even of decay and the other foulnesses of the chaos gods.

Inside it, in the rune language of the Eldar, glowed the characters ‘Belial IV’ which flashed incessantly. The former-jackal-god gestured for them to sit. With them, were his ‘brother’ and a number of necrontyr; necrons, rather, along with these were a number of hovering models of necron ships, and other constructs which were ‘simple’ speaking devices for the fleet’s planners.

“Please, sit,” he said.

When they’d done so, the hologram ‘said’ ‘Belial Four’ in a loud, mechanical voice. “This is Belial Four,” Ranisath added redundantly, with a slight grin, and there was a knowing, and distubringly human... titter... from the miniscule ships…

The subtle manipulations of their host had it’s desired effect putting the gathered group of Yvresse at their ease. Likely of benefit in this meeting, old warrior instincts being curtailed in the Exarch’s. The humour of Ranisath going over the assembled guests, not being great devourers of human culture they where genuinely confused as to why it was felt needed to continuously repeat the name of the place represented in the image. As if any of them where not aware of why they had gathered in this place. Still none of them would bring up that confusion, or ask for an explanation allowing the laughter to wash over them.

It became apparent even with such a small image why, in the end the Farseers led, even in times of war, why the Admirals, the Autarch’s and the Exarch’s deferred to them even in the ultimate expression of their chosen path. As the image of Beliel IV hovered before them the various Warrior’s focused on the things that effected them. Admirals stared intently at the orbital space around the image, attempting to make out the shape of the defences there, Exarchs peered at the world it self. Only the Iyanna Mel’Nais and the Solitaire took in the whole image. They kept their eyes on the bigger picture, both before them in Beliel IV and in Iyanna’s case in the interaction between Mel’Nais and Ranisath.

Perhaps I was mistaken, interesting. Well if all this goes as planned I may yet have a place for her within the council. No outward sign was shown of course, but the first step to Nais reintegration into Yvresse and the Seer council had begun.

‘How fresh is the data, and how reliable?’ After a few minutes she spoke the question likely being thought by the gathered Kionash. ‘I won’t ask how it was obtained. I suspect it was difficult.’ Pausing in thought many issues where important in the coming struggle of course but in the end only one area on the world was vital. ‘Could we see the generator’s, close up, as much detail as you can give us?’

“I’ll get onto that, and you can have as many duplicates as you want. I’m very confident that our information was accurate as of two days ago. Anyway, briefing: I think we’re all vaguely aware of the situation. There’s a horrible warp-critter that we want dead. There’s now a means to do it.

“Our objective is to take and hold the planet called Belial IV for the time required to complete this. Estimates for this so far range between five and ten days,” he stopped momentarily, and made eye contact with the high farseer, looking into her blue eyes for a moment, “Though I look forward to discussing refinements to these guesses with you later,” he added, with a glimmer of a smile, “which will be problematic, as we estimate a response from locals,” he noticed a slight shudder of distaste from some of the Eldar, “within two to three days at moderately optimistic through to generous travel times.

“Initial execution of this plan will require the suppression of large numbers of opposing forces on the planet, a military build up we believe to have been precipitated over the last century by Yvressi involvement. Both the defences on the planet and in orbit have been upgraded, and currently consist of four primary control stations in equidistant polar orbits, one orbital dock at a higher level, followed by a layer of mines and twenty seven orbital weapons platforms of varying types, capable of firing lance fire, kinetics and other types of direct fire, as well as dispensing torpedoes. There’s a distinct bias towards direct fire, which suggests they’re anticipating Eldar. No surprise.

“On the surface, we have forty-four distinct missile clusters consisting of multiple sets of six single shot missile tubes. An estimated total is nine thousand two hundred and forty heavy torpedoes of a length of around thirty paces. These are largely capable of attacking ships entering low orbits, and are configured into forty four clusters, six shot groups, thirty five 'reloads,' many of them are sub-munitions dispensing, allowing them an anti-strike craft functionality as scatter-shot fusion bombs.

“We estimate numerous divisions of fully trained standard troops equipped comprehensively with ground vehicles both transport and combat. Beyond this, we anticipate billions of demons and cultists, at various levels of proficiency. Fortunately, they’re largely spread across the surface of the planet, which allows us to either not deign to engage them, or use air-space superiority to maximum advantage against them. However, the most adept forces, presumably including some compliment of chaos space marines, are cited strategically, giving our ground forces plenty to do,” his gaze flitted to the autarchs briefly.

“Our initial attack will consist of bombardment by a series of impactors utilising jump drives from a range of four thousand light years. They’re already at optimal velocities ready to jump, and will conserve their initial velocity afterwards,” he twitched a hand and the planet was animated to show a number of blade-shaped ramships slicing into orbital assets and impacting the ground, animating shocks that rippled through the hologram and caused massive blasts that looked like miniature stars, “As I said, dealing with much of the ground forces won’t be a problem,” he gave Iyanna a smile again, “We anticipate being able to strip most of the assets from orbit this way, although a certain time lag in our data will likely allow some of them to evade due to random course corrections.

Despite the normative limits of warp-travel and the lack of functioning web-gates, we estimate that the limit for safely re-entering the warp from the system to be approximately one day from Belial four, given its orbit of eight point five five astronomical distances,” he referred to a unit derived from Naogeddon’s orbit, and thus about six point six astronomical units, “which reminds me, I hope you’re all planning to dress up warmly, I don’t fancy the environment there is exactly comfortable, even if it does have a nice carbon layer.

“This means that, after our initial arrival, we can expect reinforcements to arrive in not less than one day. In theory, that should also limit the approach of Yvressi assets, however, it is not my intention to expose your fleet in such a manner, hence, I want a sufficiently large webway intersection made available to be towed… Failing that, we’d probably have to actually tow your ships into position. If you move via chaos space, they’re bound to notice where you’re headed, and reinforce long before you arrive.”

Two days…. Two days! it was a staggering concept that they could have such information so easily it boggled the mind. Yes in the physical the Necrontyr where the undisputed masters but to enter the eye so freely, and easily, it was a concept they had not considered. The immaterial was their area, and yet maybe the Necrontyr had outpaced them in one aspect of it this I the past would have sent security concerns through the roof, now it more hurt the pride of the assembled Keigh. Both would have a similar effect when this was all over,, of a shot in the arm into further research and growth, the Keigh had gotten stagnant, content to rest on past glories.

For most of the briefing they listened and nodded, the distaste at the concept of the slaanesh worshipers the only movement they made for a long time, Iyanna made no comment on the flirting behaviour of Ranisath. She had played footsie with his previous incarnation in comparison this was mild, and to be expected from the god. The request for the web way gate shouldn’t be too hard, manufacture would be a simple matter, the only true difficulty would be in strengthening it for the towing, but it should be doable, at the very worst case, they might have to deactivate it during transit and reactivate it upon arrival. That however was a question for the Bonesinger’s, a technical matter that could be dealt with later, so Iyanna simply nodded her agreement.

“Next, we have other concerns. We need to consider very carefully how we’re going to do this. And so I direct you to this image…” Ranisath gestured upwards, to an image showing something akin to the common symbol of an atom, with interlocking orbits. A dozen more lines appeared, and then a wire-frame view of a structure began to emerge. “I believe, if not you, then Eldar, have built such a thing before,” he looked at the solitaire, “Especially you…” this might have been something a taboo to the Eldar, as, while being addressed by the solitaires was distinctly dangerous, even speaking to them or touching them was more than a little risky. Of course, in that department, Ranisath had nothing to lose, “will need to elaborate on these slight design changes…” the seers could perhaps make out three-dimensional versions, like some of their more complex rune patterns, of chaotic summoning runes, “And construct this object in pre-fabricated pieces small enough to be brought through the web.”

The image broke apart suddenly, into three scores of smaller pieces, and axis appeared on it, displaying distances in Eldarin notation. As a construction project, it was… ambitious would be the word. Though perhaps C’tan thought on greater scales. It would have a diameter, when finished, of over two thousand kilometres.

“We need this built in not more than a month. As a Wraithbone structure.”

There was a reason for such an outrageous request, but it was not one he would share with the Yvressi. He would tell them, in time, when all was over.

As Ranisath spoke to the solitaire the gathered Eldar drew back a little almost instinctively, one did not directly address such a being. Yes the Yngir was unlikely to be affected by the reasons, but such logic didn’t matter on the level such rules worked on. This was a state of affairs that had existed for countless Generations of the long lived species, a rule learnt as children, something every Eldar knew and obeyed. For a second this simple fact drew attention away from the project the ‘host’ was proposing but eventually they would focus on it they did…

When they did it was with even greater concern, what was being proposed was a project that would demand more Wraithbone singers than they had, it would be mean a draft of those that had formally walked the path, which would in turn pull people away from other, perhaps just as vital paths, which in turn would mean pulling people into those paths. It was a taboo, it went against the very essence of the path system, that of free choice on the next stage of your existence. Still it was possible and this was for a cause every Eldar dreamt about. At last the Solitaire nodded, he or at least someone from the troupe knew of such constructs and their uses, with that the Farseer Nais and Iyanna shared a look before Iyanna spoke. ’This is doable, you ask a lot however. On top of the web gate request this will task the manufacturing capabilities of Yvresse to the limit, I hope you have no other such projects in mind, because I fear we would be unable to meet them.’

Later she would set Darvins the task of organising all that was asked of them, it was an area he was skilled in, organisation, rotas and the minutia of government. With this and the Seers already busy in the Black Library, along with our Soldiers training, Yvresse would be hard pressed in the coming days, most of it’s people either working on the war effort directly or covering for those working on such.

The necron fleet drifted serenely, and inside it, Ranisath smiled, “That’s about it for industrial concerns,” he said, “Next, you will, when the time comes, probably want to mobilise the largest ground force you possibly can, to ensure the most effective total control of the area we’re talking about. I expect you’ll be out to get every armament that you can think of, but be careful with anything ‘pre-fall’ some of the more independent Eldar constructs have a habit of being more easily corrupted by chaos, and I suspect you’ll have enough of that sort of problem when we finally reach the generators.

“Next up, we have the ground campaign,” Ranisath said, and the holographic planet transformed into a twenty sided polyhedron and unfolded, creating something similar to a human dymaxion map projection of the planet’s surface, with a key hovering above it in the form of an annotated globe in Eldarin, that laid itself upon the table before them.

Each of the regions of the map was highlighted with an Eldarin rune floating above it, “Directing our attention to the region labelled number one,” as he said so, it obediently zoomed in, rotating a touch and expanding, as the other areas of the map and the globe hovering above faded. The points of the triangular map sprouted little lines across them, forming smaller equilateral triangles like the large one dominating the table, and then began spacing themselves across the translucent landscape, equidistant, forming a grid of triangles. There were four thousand lines in all from any point to the opposite side of the triangle, each of the tiny triangles, sixteen million of them in this projection alone, representing an area between a square kilometre and a square mile.

“This,” Ranisath said, pointing to the central area, which flashed, and exploded upwards, magnified considerably, comprising six triangles, “is the Palace of Asuryan, our ultimate objective, from where they could see it, in miniature, a few feet across, it seemed almost untouched, “Where I will be initially installing a concentrated ‘vortex field generator,’ which will cover the following area’ an area thirty of the tiny triangles across lit up, before a sphere formed through it, “This doesn’t work how people who’ve found it thought it does, but rather, shifts incoming energy and projectiles into another dimension entirely. Because I don’t want to overdo it, this shield will effectively terminate about forty feet above the landscape, with its highest point of effectiveness directly over the palace. This will interdict both landing attempts and orbital attack from anything up to and including a ‘planet killer.’ Sub-surface, it should also serve to insulate the area from shockwaves propagating through the planet.

“The area selected should allow for you to mount both static defences around the palace itself, and the form of active defence,” he said, looking at the Dire Avenger exarch, “That you generally seem to prefer…

“Taking this area will be something of a problem as well,” the ‘shield’ disappeared, “As we obviously cannot rely upon orbital attack even within the same subcontinent. Even deployment of anything above squad level heavy weapons against the defenders will be questionable due to the sensitive nature of the materials stored in the temple and underneath it. For this reason, the initial assault is to consist of necron wraiths, followed by warp spiders, with other close combat aspects to secure above-ground areas once initial pacification of fixed emplacements by the Warp Spiders is completed.

The rest of you have plenty of work to do as well. We will need every single thing in this area,” he waved a hand, casually encompassing the map, the detail of the Palace of Asuryan washing away, showing an area the size of North America, “Banished, dead, or in chains, within six hours of our arrival…

“On average, though there’s a degree of variation here,” he said, “I want not less than sixty Yvressi per triangular,” he used a strange unit of measurement, “with necrons and aspect warriors serving as a reserve force to attack areas where significant resistance is encountered…” he gave them a moment to consider the number of ‘Guardian’ reservists he was ‘demanding’ from them…

Four thousand.

Squared.

By sixty…

A started hush went around the table, Yvresse didn’t use guardians except in a support role, it was something they had been immensely proud of, the phasing out of the Guardian citizen-soldiers, and their replacement with an All Aspect Warrior force, and Ranisath wanted them to not only reactivate the forces but too… do so on an unprecedented scale, it was unknown if they had that many Guardian suits in Yvresse, if they had enough weapons to equip such a large force. It was almost a 7th of Yvresse that Ranisath wanted mobilised…

After a pause Iyanna pale looking, something rarely seen from a Farseer looked up at Ranisath and merely nodded her agreement. If this went wrong the Craftworld would not recover, that many casualties would rip the world apart, the, at times, and fragile balance of the carefully constructed artificial environment would be shattered. The number of Guardian suits was unheard of, they would have to scour the entire vessel, every hold, every chamber, to dig out that many, they would have to open places not entered in hundreds of years, it would take weeks to get that equipment repaired and operational. That was something fortunately that the Aspect warrior Shrines could do, armour maintanence was one of their roles

The prospect of taking guardians to a Deamon World terrified her as well, it would be beyond the simple manipulation of the armour to prepare them for such, they’d need training themselves. This would mean further re-organisation of the populace, people would need to be pulled first into the Wraith-Singers path and then into the role of Guardians, shortfalls in the other essential areas would need to be filled by others… It was causing Iyanna a headache… Looking over at Nais she could see the other Farseer’s mind working on the issue. The two shared a look, it was unlikely by the time all the re-organisation was done that Yvresse would have too many people spare for none essential work.

There was just one area that she would argue with their host… ‘Chains, you expect us to take the Filth prisoner! You do not do this. You kill the followers of the Ruinous Powers wherever you find them, you do not allow them to live, you do not show them mercy, you execute them… You cannot ask us to do this thing!’ Her voice was now strained with barely contained anger, and hate, what was being asked of her went against every instinct within her.

Ranisath watched the Eldar get progressively more scandalised, “It’s a matter of practical metaphysics. The less joy you derive from killing at the time, the easier this project will be…” he was lying again.

Or at least, it was a half truth, the Eldar would grasp one meaning of what he said, which while it was close to his own intention, would not truly become apparent until things were, for the Eldar, long over. He had inherited great experience in that matter, and knew that the Eldar would interpret his words to their own benefit.

In truth, he really sought something for the guardians to do. He was operating under the assumption that most of the denizens of demon worlds were either actual demons, or human serfs of the more important. On one hand, his decision was prompted by compassion for those who’d not chosen their birth, and on the other, guarding prisoners – although there would surely be ‘incidents’ – would give the militia he was raising something to do with their time.

“You don’t need to take the demons captive; they operate under a different rule-set. And I suppose you can err on the side of caution between mere mutants and demons, if you feel that you must… And I don’t expect you’ll get many prisoners, anyway. But it is as important as your own direct military contributions that you proceed as I suggest… You must do the right thing, for the right reasons, in the correct manner, for full effectiveness of our plan.”

Behaviours around the communal activities he had planned would in create a psychic framework underlying metaphysical impulses of future Eldar interactions not just with Slanessh, but to much lesser degrees with their own kind – something he didn’t really want a change towards – his own race, necrons, elves, and more importantly, humans.

They listened with disbelieving ears, and heard half truths, many around the table where not convinced but in the end only two peoples opinions mattered, Mel’nais and Iyanna, and of them Nais was already half convinced by the mere fact of who was saying this. Slowly Iyanna gave a nod of consent. ‘It shall be done, we shall take prisoners and we shall even treat hem with decency, but only until time to examine them closer is available. When the battle is fought and won, we shall, examine the prisoner’s and determine the degree of taint, those who We feel unsalvageable shall be executed the moment that decision is reached.’ This was said with finality behind it.

‘If that is all we can discuss at this time, then there remains but one last piece of business before us.’ standing as she spoke she moved slowly towards Ranisath, drawing the ancient blade she carried by her side, and turning it hilt first to the Yngir. ‘Into your hands I place this, the hope of my people, into your care I deliver it.’ a moment like this demanded some ritualism behind it after all, even if such an event had never happened before. ‘We hope you make the proper use of it, when the time calls, and at last let it serve the purpose our ancestors dreamed for it.’

Ranisath took hold of the long handgrip of the sword, and looked at it. It was a very long narrow blade, seemingly shaped from some form of crystal, etched with complex runes, with three glowing gems set down its length. Another was set in the hilt. In the light of the shining map, it glittered, it gave out a strange dark glow, as if some poisonous energy were seeping out now that it had found a wielder. Lightning, like that of the necron ships, crawled upon its surface.

“It’s a force sword, you know…” he said, “but the capacity is so far beyond that, it compares with how far this ship is beyond the first moon landers…” and he spoke of Necrontyr ones, a particularly tragic tale, and one that the Eldar could not know. He spun the sword end over end, the lightning hugging tightly to its surface, as though clinging to it.

“And it’s more than that. It’s probably the single greatest technical achievement of your race. And a wonderful display of ambition, too, killing gods, a wonderful idea…” he swung it in a wide, back sweep across his body, his hand feather light, “Of course, such things can only be used by those with psychic powers of their own. But this one is an exception; it doesn’t draw its power from its wielder, but from its generators, so far away now. Even what’s left in it would take all your seers a week to generate, I imagine…”

“And that will be nothing, compared to how it will be when we use it,” there was no after-image on the retina with the practice, the lightning seemed not quite to be there, and as the C’tan twisted the sword a touch in his grip, stabbing outward through the air. In the minds of every being with a soul there, the sword began to sing, a horrid keening sound, like a telepathic version of nails scraping down a blackboard. Antipathy and revulsion made manifest.

He smiled, and twisted his hand in the air, materialising a dark, ebony and flint scabbard for the weapon, in which he sheathed it. “I like it,” he said, “and I think that it likes me…” he added, as the scabbard merged with his belt, hanging there as though it belonged.

“If I may, I wish to speak with the Solitaire, and I do not think any of you will wish to be here when I do. I shall catch up with you shortly in the landing area…”

The theory of talking to a Solitaire was a strange, almost foreign one to the assembled Kionash, it just wasn’t done. It was almost a frightening concept, and while they knew in theory that Ranisath was safe from the fallout of such a conversation it was still one that they did not want to actually think too much about. So the assembled Eldar stood rather hastily and nodded before filing out. ‘I will take this opportunity, to confer with the Ambassador then, back on Yvresse, Nais if you would come with me.’

To say the Ambassador was quick to take the opportunity offered would be to underestimate the situation, it wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy her time with the Yngir, rather like all Eldar she’d prefer to be as far away as possible from any speaking Solitaire.

Back on Yvresse itself her report to the Council would be rather detailed, nothing was left out, nothing, after all a part of her expected duties had been the rather extra-curricular activities she had performed, and it was important to the Kionash that they understood what was happening. Then would come many hours of work maybe even days, re-organising almost very aspect of Yvressian society. This would be followed by securing alternative sources of food, and other essential supplies.

Ranisath entered the landing bay of the Reaper of Light, and walked calmly over to the sea-green, bone-white and fiery orange Vampire Raider that hovered slightly over the floor. That was an aspect of the Vampire Raider that was somewhat perplexing, they didn’t really have landing gear, and while egress was easy, the process of entering them again was somewhat more troublesome.

Here, the starship had formed a flight of stairs up to a raised dais, which linked with the rear-ramp of the shuttle. “I hope you don’t mind if I come with you now that I’m here,” he said, lightly standing very close to the ambassador, “I’ve not been a guest on a craftworld before…”

At least, not when he was known to the denizens in his true form. He lightly nudged the Eldar up the stairs, looking out at the escorting night-wing fighters the Yvressi had brought with them, in deep green with orange highlights and wraith-bone white ‘spider’ insignia.

The interior of the farseer’s drop-ship was opulent, compared to the military version. It had twenty deep purple and sea green seats of a fine upholstery that spoke of the passion of some Eldar for detail. Of course, each of the Eldar had their own seat already, so Ranisath settled down into the wide seat allocated to the ambassador, and pulled her lightly to sit on his thighs.

The ships left the necron fleet, engines flaring briefly as they powered through the air of the bay, and then switching to a more conventional rocket system, coasting along with a little gravitic trickery toward the craftworld.

The great city ship was ovoid in shape, with a haphazard look about its construction that showed many expansions over the years, even though, eventually, it came to be largely balanced aesthetically. The domes that dotted its surface, in imitation of ‘natural’ gravity, which the craftworld had a noticeable degree of, all faced outwards, giving it the appearance of being dappled with thousands of shining scales of crystal, interspersed with fluid looking vanes of wraith bone, and bare patches where the inhabitants had not yet decided to put anything.

It was a healthy craft world, and active almost entirely, none of the domes visible showed any scarring save one, which had been penetrated by a small cargo vessel. The crystal of that dome had re-grown around the interloper, and slowly merged the vessel with its parent world, forming a tower that jutted from the surface, and showed signs of being a habitation, now.

The forward section of the artificial world was tapering and almost bladed, with more wraith bone projection vanes decorating it, providing a means to redirect objects from its path, while at its rear, a number of webway portals gleamed. Between these two ends, a number of high masts projected great sails that covered thousands of kilometres and shimmered with diffuse propulsion plasmas that made them sheen from their dull orange colour to the iridescence of oil.

The ship and its escort slid over the trailing face of one of these sails, as rippling brightness wandered across it from behind, giving it an eerie backglow, so close that the passengers could almost reach out and touch it, if one opened the hatch.

Between these sails, a number of other craft darted. Some, small craft of the adventurous, out to peer at the necron fleet, others, drones and their faster than light carriers that harvested raw materials from the surrounding space to make those materials that could not be efficiently drawn from warp-forges, others were smaller warships, racing between miles-wide gaps from the sails to their moorings.

Ranisath could see many other interesting aspects of the craftworld’s surface, some of the shorter vanes projected holographic or kinetic fields, or gravitational guidance lanes, and yet more generated shields over civilian areas. Cylindrical platforms, deep in the more unmanned industrial areas, were torpedo launch tubes, and tapering towers on various mountings, protected by substantial clusters of shield vanes, denoted scores of pulsar lance batteries.

Great docking arches led downwards to star ports, most of which were arranged in the fashion of a planet, so that the craft landed with their ventral surfaces towards the centre of the craftworld. Here, huge, shark-like warships usually rested, though most of them were absent from their homes at the moment.

Other bays held civilian craft, thousands, tens of thousands, of mile-long transport vessels which resembled stranger, segmented fish, and yet more bays that dotted the surface appeared to be shipyards, where, in active areas, actinic flares from carefully shielded and easily jettisoned chambers showed the mass drawing of wraithbone.

The Vampire and its escorts twisted showily through a gap in one of the sails, attended to by dozens of wraithbone constructs not unlike warp spiders, though each the size of dinner plates, and soared towards one of the star-port recesses below.

The Yngir walked half a millimetre above the ground, as he often did in natural environments, in the Dome of Solace and Solitude, looking up at the vast crystal dome that encompassed it, carefully ignoring the wraith-lords that stalked him, along with several warlocks, as a precaution. He didn’t resent their presence, for even he let alone his predecessor, more than needed such caution. Beside him, Jill’nais seemed more taken with her home, “I used to play here as a child…” she whispered softly, “and relax here as a young woman…” she turned and walked, with a pace that seemed unnaturally light footed, to a high tree that wouldn’t have seemed to far from home on earth, with leaves in a deep green that matched that of the Yvressi flag. The unusual thing about it was the convenience of its branches for climbing, which Ranisath knew to be a legacy of the simplest psychic powers toyed with by the Eldar as children, those that involved shaping plant life; a simple process that was the distant ancestor of the infinitely more subtle and powerful bone singing used in their construction.

Stepping from branch to branch as though the tree itself was a circular staircase, with a rustling of leaves as she passed, the warlock stood on a wide platform of branches and leaves, with a woven surface of golden fibres making up the floor, she’d been young when she created this, and while she could now probably have balanced on anything that could bear her weight, at the time, as a child, she had been cautious; all young Eldar were, until they reached adolescence. Empathic children generally were cautious as a rule, absorbing their parents’ and carers concerns for them; for Eldar, even in Yvresse, with its growing population, this was even more pronounced. The children, after their first year, weren’t watched all the time, as one might have expected; didn’t need it.

Lightly letting his ‘weight’ (if not his mass, C’tan avatars were actually metal, and so massed many tons) settle on the living platform. “I used to come here,” Nais said, “to look at the stars, we all did. I always had the feeling, when I was here, that we didn’t need to fear what waited just beyond our world… I never guessed why, until now…” she said, turning to the star god.

He reached out, his slightest movements calculated to be effortlessly understanding, laying his hand on her chest, “There will still be things not to be spoken of out there…” his fingers lightly touched the waystone around her neck, and he gazed into her eyes, “You’ll still need this. But for less time… The path of rebirth will be difficult for your kind to master, and still dangerous… I can help there, but it will not be perfect…”

She laughed softly, pushing against the warm, slightly tingling surface of his hand, leaning against him, kissing him firmly, holding him, and breaking the kiss a few moments later, “As if that matters…” she whispered.


Hanging onto the C’tan’s arm, a very happily spent morning later, she wandered home for the first time in months. While there were vast parts of the ever-expanding craftworld that were deserted or barely visited automated industrial areas, and vast spaces, especially on the surface, used by the whole community, every Eldar on board had expansive living quarters, with the exception of servants, attendants and recorders, as well as additional facilities related to the profession, the quarters of the High Farseer were little different in size and opulence from those of the ‘lowliest’ layabout (of which there were few, Eldar almost universally needed an outlet for their restlessness, be it the path of death, healing, art, sheer physical toil or exploration)

The atrium of the chambers was a double-floored hall panelled in wood with wraithbone webs dividing it off from other rooms. Unlike the Menelmacari, the Eldar lifestyle accepted universal automation of many aspects of production, which allowed for far more resources to be consumed in any given home. However, they also treasured the work of their own minds and those of other Eldar. Nais’ hallway was decorated with one truly notable features, a tall and abstract statue of a woman with broad moth-like wings, made of materials worth a fortune in some markets, glossy iridescent trice-purified warp-drawn crystal.

There were other rooms, bedrooms for the ambassador and guests, kitchens, dining rooms, rooms of artwork, rooms of half-magical computers, several bare and thus far unoccupied rooms, what would be called a home cinema, though it was a much a home theatre, as the Eldar barely had a concept of physical mass-media, though it was slowly gaining popularity from contact with Menelmacari. As well as this, she had a number of rooms related to her previous and current paths, one with curved swords and pistols on the walls, and training tools as a banshee, a dance-practice room, three indoor (everything was) gardens, three large rooms for entertaining guests as a courtesan, a bare wraithbone room for communicating with the spiritual denizens of the world-ship, and a number of others making some thirty rooms of various sizes.

Despite the temptation, Ranisath did not, however, spend all his time enjoying the company of his lover, he also had meetings with bonesingers and other admirals, harlequins and general exploration of the rest of the craftworld, from other parks and gardens to the observation areas on the tips of solar sail struts, the temples of dead deities, many of whom he knew personally, and the vast linear accelerator at the prow of the world ship, designed to vaporise objects in its path, such as planetoids. But he came back, each time…

Going to War, and on this scale usually involved waking the Avatar up, well it more involved a subconscious awakening of the Avatar, the call to war stirred it, and the feedback brought it forth. The Young King awaited his sacrifice with, a strange eagerness, eager to face oblivion. He was not pleased to learn it would not occur the Avatar would not be awoken from its slumber.

Not awakening Khaine did strange things to the Eldar, the rage and need to kill was left without a focus, it fed back on itself. Walking the Craftworld at the moment would be even less pleasant for an outsider than usual. Even the Menelmacari in the embassy where advised to keep to themselves at this time, the Kionash where on edge. Violence needed a focus and while it had one to an extent, they could all feel Khaine’s call for blood deep within them.

It had been like this once before the tales said when the Avatar first became a part of Yvresse, before they knew how to awaken it. The call built up inside them, the need to do violence and slay their foes. Back then it had led to the first and only Civil War within the halls of Yvresse. Desperate refugees fearing some unnamed evil that awaited them after death fought over the possession of the limited number of Spirit Stones capable of protecting their souls. Now the Yvresse walked on eggshells around each other, even as the work progressed towards the war.

Iyanna felt the building tension as she walked through the halls of ‘her’ city, saw that even in such a liberal place it had taken root, many of the inhabitants kept to themselves, when usually they would be thronging the streets and she felt it inside herself. If the Young king was meant to be facing oblivion she should be the one sending him there. It was an instinctual part of her that felt the call, an ingrained dark place within her, one she both hated and embraced.

Still she did not relent, even knowing that one day she would awaken Khaine and then she would face the fury of the restrained Avatar, on that day, even if she survived the coming war, she was uncertain if she could survive that.

The system was one of the galaxy’s holes. What passed for a sun was really little more than a white dwarf, and the planets were gas giants, and not particularly big ones, with only a few moons that were deserving of the name. Near one of these gas giants, a tangled twist of wraithbone made up a web-gate, and beyond that, over the horizon, a space station, and beyond that, a few drifting parks of rubbish and half used supplies, linked in to frames with solar sails and thrusters.

Among this area, drifted a number of Eldar ships, including the four-sailed Void-Stalker type battleship, Blood Star. Its blue hull, and orange sails were disrupted by bands of red and black, the pirate fleet’s markings. On board, Shadow Lady Ellylon, the current commander of the fleet, was idling time away. There were often times when she wanted to be doing more than occasional destructive raid on derelicts, hulks, old mining colonies, and even inert asteroids. Unfortunately, most of the time, piracy was unprofitable these days, and there weren’t really that many good markets for mercenaries. At least, not on a scale that would warrant her personal involvement.

They occasionally hunted warp beasts or the stray tyranid drone ships detected by farseers (all part of being neighbourly, and more importantly, it kept the outcasts out of trouble from time to time) on one fringe of the galaxy or another, and that was their chief excitement, occasionally, Ellylon took the Blood Star on such hunts, but it usually wasn’t required; lesser cruisers and light cruisers, of which she had twelve in all, could see to such tasks quite happily.

As a matter of protocol, the fleet was almost independent. Occasionally, ships were overhauled by the craftworld, but the fleet maintained its own maintenance and repair. As such, most of the ships in the Yvressi corsair fleets were highly customised; the Blood Star itself had a purified, energy dissipating space-frame of hyper-conductors, fluids impregnated by sorcery, to dissipate energy and momentum from points of impact at faster than light velocities, akin to the living metal of the Necrontyr, ameliorating the famed fragility of Eldar constructions. It also sported a rather unsafe aft-weapon, concealed among its engines, a distort-charge, a large-scale but unstable refinement of ‘conventional’ vortex torpedoes, which the fleet’s shadow class cruisers were all equipped with; they’d been put into full production upon the appearance of the Necrontyr, but this weapon had never been used under combat conditions.

The warship, for that’s what it was, was thus one of the most powerful vessels the Eldar had, and consequently, it had visitors. A harlequin, a flitting quicksilver figure, of urgent message and informal merriment, had visited calling the outcasts to come, at a time in the near future.

So too, yesterday, had a necron visited their ship, with more detailed instructions, about times, relative velocities, deployment instructions, the best areas of the planet to attack, and the likely approach routes of enemy reinforcements.

But he wasn’t going anywhere. Surprisingly, she didn’t mind…


Yesterday

The whole craftworld hummed with energy, the sound of drums seemed to seep into the mind psychically, resonant and throbbing, the pulsing melting beat of the call to war. Deep in its heart, in a hall before great bronze doors, three figures strode in a formation. To the left, the warlock-ambassador Jill’Nais strode, hand tightly gripped around the handle of a sword at her side, knuckles white with the pressure in which she held it, so near to the orgiastic psychic release that was to come.

To the right, calm, plumed and lofty, unbelievably unaffected by the terror-excitement that seemed to permeate the air with its own vibrating heartbeat, as though he were only half there, the lofty figure of a Great Harlequin.

In the centre, as tall as the second figure, stood Ranisath, he reached out, and the doors before them flew aside. Beyond, figures were gathered around a golden chalice, into which blood dripped from the opened wrists of a ceremonially clad Eldar, “Cup of Creole,” a voice said from within, “accept our sacrifice…”

“Stop!” Ranisath cried, his voice echoing a thousand times from every surface.

The gold haired figure, with shimmering oranges whites and greens, holding a ceremonial weapon inside the Eldar’s wrists turned and started, “Intolerable!” Iyanna hissed, “this is too much! This is our culture,” she added, “and more than just that, it is our our grim necessity! You would think to have us fight without the will to do so?”

“I would have you fight your enemy yourselves,” he said, “indeed, you must.”

“Why?” she demanded, lifting the blade, holding the wailing doom, a shape changing weapon of the warp-mixed metal of the Avatar beyond, walking toward the C’tan.

“Because he within has already fought the abomination and failed, the Harlequin said, suddenly, “If you would learn the full meaning of the interactions of gods, then follow me.”

“You cannot know that!” she snapped.

“There is One who can,” the Harlequin-master replied, “Come…”

She cast down the great black sword, and went.

Belial IV

In a single moment, space lit up as this region of space had never before seen, even permeated as it was by unreality. Ships travelling so fast that they and their targets were completely vaporised hit every target. The Eye had seen them all, and ram-ships were sufficient to destroy each one of them. Every single station and ship in orbit of Belial IV exploded at once.

Soramantho saw this. His fighter had been on combat patrol from the Styx-class carrier Remorseless Violation, and the flash of its destruction would have not just blinded, but slain him, in normal space; fortunately, the space of the Eye did not work that way. His hands were chained into cowlings on either side of the cockpit, and the display screens before him merged with apparatus that pierced his abdomen and groin, sustaining him from a food-stock in the fighter. Soramantho had last used his legs when he was seven, before being recruited for the pilot-corps of Lord Marakil.

He made the Hell Talon twist on its axis, briefly reflecting that Lord Marakil was dead now, in a single instant. “Report…” he said, to the navigator before him and to the left.

“All Praise to the Pleasurebringer, maker of perfec- No contacts. Station Three-Alpha has been destroyed. The Daemon Oratas has been destroyed, our wing vessel reads destroyed –tion, master of all things, bringer of agony and greatness…”

All three inside the fighter-bomber had long ago had their vocal cords altered, their entire faces bonded to machineries for singing the praises of their masters; efficiency was what Lord Marakil valued – perfection – and so his forces were adapted to their roles; an inability to communicate anything not directly related to the ship’s function was Marakil’s idea of an effective pilot. And when one was not speaking usefully, one was only perfect if praising Slanessh. Thus, even in sleep, the sealed cockpit was full of the sounds of heartless praise.

A new object appeared on the screens, three hundred thousand kilometres distant. Soramantho thought and the ship responded, increasing its velocity, travelling faster and faster; there were no limits to how fast one could go; in the Eye, fuel wasn’t really consumed in most places, and the speed of light was no limit to movement.

The screen popped up with a dialogue.

Unknown vessels. Dozens of them.

His voice screamed for an attack in the name of Lord Marakil. He had other ideas, though; there would be no punishment for desertion here. Briefly, he considered fleeing for another star. But while there was enough fuel, there was not enough food. He turned back to the crone world.

Long beams of emerald light shot out, but not at him. On the surface of the planet, Sormantho could see entire cities, oceans, plains and ice-expanses dissolving into nothingness. Great sigils were struck out, and huge demons fell upon the seas they drank from, their heads sliced through or off by miles wide beams.


In a chamber filled with necrons, on board the command ship, four silver figures, each cloaked in gold and silver, stood around a diagnostics panel. “Necron fleet now in battle formation,” one announced, observing the ship’s actions.

“All systems locked and primed,” another said, glancing over to its left, where thousands of necrons and their constructs were gathered, dozens of monoliths, pylons, obelisks and other war machines lighting the chamber with a green glow as they came online.

“Crucible at ninety percent efficiency…” another announced, as its interlink feed updated it on the distant construct…

“The harvest will commence…” the largest of the necron lords announced, its taloned fingers gripping a resurrection orb. “Begin the invasion!”

As one, nine thousand five hundred necrons and battle constructs disappeared.


Helot-Erakan held his gun close across his chest as the things appeared on the Blasted Plain. Thirty crescent shaped objects, like icons, had appeared, surrounded by a host of hundreds of figures. The objects turned, pointing towards him, three bolts of green converging from each one, and firing, thirty blasts hitting the ground under the wall. Steam billowed up as thousands of square meters of ground disappeared into a vast crater. Erakan dropped his weapon and clung onto the plasteel battlements of Lord Gelhadaxe’s fortress as they subsided into the cloud of scorching steam. Erakan was glad for the sealed mask he was wearing, even though he could feel his hands burning, he could at least see, and embrace the pain as he slid down the battlements. Others were burnt and destroyed, or fell, flashing into skeletons and disappearing.

He clutched at his autogun, and fired back.

Then he could see the others. Hundreds more creatures, these, some kind of jetbike, or platform, he couldn’t even guess at; he’d seen Lady Karlda soar on a disc once, but this was hundreds. He didn’t even care who they were, or what they wanted. He wasn’t going to wait here.

He ran to the gatehouse. If there was glory to be won, in the name of his god, it would be there.

The ravine was a deep area approaching the Temple of Asuryan, one of many ground access routes that had to be secured before the place could truly be deemed safe. Iskarilla fir Karun watched with the optics of her vehicle as she casually passed down it. The skies were overcast with molten ejecta, and the mountain ravine was steep sided. Her titan, one of the smaller, Revenant types, was actually patrolling the area; a group of larger phantom titans had swept this route before, but had found no resistance here. There was only a single living eldar in a Revenant, the rest of the vehicle being automated, as well as containing, in its most armoured compartment, the spirit-stones of all its previous occupants. Were she to die in the vehicle, her own spirit would become one with that infinity circuit, rather than merging with the waystone she wore.

Overhead, she saw a flight of wave-serpents and a scorpion vaul engine break the sound-barrier, headed the opposite direction, doubtless to establish some defensive position. Her attention was called back to her immediate environs by a contact signal. Somewhere ahead, was movement, of a very large mass. She increased her pace, arming the twin sonic lances her titan was equipped with. Ahead, the rocky slope was heaving, breaking apart, as though something were pushing up through it, for a moment she thought it was a Necron field structure.

Then part of it resolved itself into something more ominous, the barrel of a crude mon-keigh laser weapon known as a volcano cannon. There must be an enemy war machine buried under there, only now becoming active. Perhaps it was a trap, or perhaps this machine had been buried by the quakes from the orbital stikes, regardless, it was clearly making its way out, and with a thought, Iskarilla sent a request for assistance, and fired at the gun. The enemy’s void shields would not operate under that, and so it was her best chance of doing something about it.

She fired, the weapons generating massive sheer forces in the protruding gun that tore it into pieces. It was quite uncorrupted by the standards of chaos machines, and didn’t bleed, or do anything else disturbing. With a sheering, grinding noise that almost matched the horrific sound of her sonic lances, a circular saw ten meters wide punched from the fallen slope, flaring with a disruption brilliance that would have blinded had she looked upon it with her eyes.

It heaved itself free in one (appropriately enough) titanic motion, and she backed away, engaging her engine’s jump jets, heading out of the ravine onto the mountainside. It stood, rocks falling from it like rain as its defaced banners tore free of its interment. The chaos-warlord roared, sounding a horn that blared corrupt machine code at her, and opened a pair of missile bays on its upper surface. It fired, its heavy missiles streaking past her, fooled by her holo-fields, only one impacting, its glancing hit sheering off a large part of her left leg. Frantically, she did the same – her missile systems were puny in comparison, but much faster to operate – firing into the missile silo with four missiles, and at the enemy’s head with the other four.

The missiles did no more than scorch the enemy head, managing to miss the weaker optics and cooling grille, but exploded within the magazine with tremendous force as the wraithbone missiles compressed hydrogen within them to fusion point. The armoured shoulder of the enemy titan disappeared, and she was tempted to think that the fuel in the enemy missiles might even have contributed.

Then she saw the other missile launcher, containing a large missile that her own war engine identified, psychically, there was nothing so crude as the human systems here, with a cold rush of terror from its spirits, as a vortex missile. A human device, crude by comparison to those used by the Eldar, but effective enough in its brutal way, in shunting its victims into the warp.

Such a weapon was a nightmare for the Eldar, indeed, in Eldar literature, using such weapons on other Eldar, even the dark kin, was viewed as so abhorrent that it was viewed as the ultimate sign of debasement. Of course, they were happy to use them on other species.

She had to fire upon it, before it could be fired on her. Another volley of rockets flew, but in the last instant, the enemy’s shields interposed themselves, cylcing up to activity.

She had crippled the enemy, it had only one shot left, but she was dead. Her only chance was to flee, try and interpose non-essential parts of her vehicle with the enemy missile, and keep its heart (and herself) from the vortex.

And then, she realized, it was too late, as the enemy missile fired, before her jump-jets could cycle to full activity again. Her holo-field had not fooled it. There was no way to avoid a central hit.

The missile exploded in mid-air, disappearing with a flash, totally dissimilar to its normal impact. She wondered for an instant, if the missile had by some miracle been damaged by the burial and malfunctioned. But then she saw it, amazed at how quietly it had come upon them. It was a familiar profile, a very well known image among the titan clans. It was to than the other titan as the warlord was to her own lighter war engine. It dwarfed it into insignificance. The Tomb Stalker, a unique Necron war machine from ancient times. She hadn’t realized it was here, but then, other Necron machines were, but even so, it was though to still be buried where the Old Ones had left it imprisoned.

However, she rather glad to see it. One of its mandible-arms reached forwards, an enormous gauss weapon visible within its structure, and it fired. The mountainside flared, blazing as the green beam burned through it, and then, the enemy war-engine was caught, evaporating away in a heartbeat, like a human caught by one of the smaller scale gauss weapons.


The ship was far different from other Eldar ships. Not because it used a different technology, or because it was built in a different style, but because, even for the Eldar, even for the Necrons, form followed function. And this ship was far different from the others in the Yvressi fleet. It was older even than the craftworld, and totally unarmed, a living relic of a different age. Its infinity circuit held spirit stones that could remember times long before the Fall, times of growth and adventure. It was a web spinner, a vessel that rarely in its million-year existence, had entered the material plane. Its infinity circuit was unlike those of other vessels – to it, the sufferings of the Fall were still fresh, and still a mere trend of recent history, to be overcome.

Built around a central spire, arranged upwards, the ship was the heart of parts of it that could spread, in real terms, across thousands of light-ears, within the warp. From the webway, it could draw the unstable, newborn paths of the web, and weave them into cohesive axial branches and roots. Such was its purpose, and those of its more primitive cousins, for the thirty million years since the Eldar had first recovered from the dark ages – the oldest slumbering spirits within it remembered such times – and began to improve upon the nascent webway.

Its living crew, a small number of spirit-seers to commune the desires of the living with the dead, had asked the vessel to perform a task it had long anticipated. It was building a passage in the web – its initial trip, complete, now, built only a formative warp tunnel, of the kind that even humans had been able to replicate, on a few occasions – to allow for the transport of vast forces and assets to the Crone Worlds.

It would journey back and forth, within and, with automated, shielded warp-travelling drones, around, the new-formed web-trunk, strengthening it, until it became as solid as any part of the webway itself. This, however was merely a point-to-point passage, from a staging post outside the great warp storm (the ship refused to give the Eye any grander name) to the Crone World.

The spinnerets, the remote-controlled, shielded vessels that entered the warp, were essentially infinite in number, the ship was capable of making more with the energy they harvested. They plunged into the deeps of the warp, harnessing and purifying energy, which they layered around the newborn tunnels of the webway, but as well as that, they could send it back to their mother-ship. The spirits that crewed it had mostly lived before the path system, and were adept in creating wraithbone as they were in piloting the vessel. In use, each spinneret had a short lifespan of hours, but by then, its replacement would be ready for launch into the empyrean.

Edela’a frowned, sitting in the control cabin of the vessel, its white wraithbone here and there augmented by the orange and green colors of the craftworld. Like most ghost-dragons, this crew-less ship had no screens or controls in the ‘control cabin’ merely seats for the living observers which its spirits permitted on board.

She was used to speaking with the dead; the craftworld had countless such spirits, but these had a rather different attitude. We’re leaving the warp storm, the voice said, within her mind, a gestalt of the thousands of spirits that occupied the craft, less diffuse and distracted than the mind of the craftworld. she almost wanted to know how it knew that exactly, but the Philosophy of the Webway was a complicated topic, and not the purview of spirit-seers, as a rule. It was good news, she relaxed fractionally. For an instant, she was sure she could hear the distant, amused chuckling of ancient spirits, at her unease.


Helot Erakan held his gun, bayonet fixed, as he trudged across the plain of flesh. To his mind, there was nothing unusual about the living, human, texture of the plain he was cutting across the fringes of. The invaders clearly thought otherwise though. If he turned his head to the left he would see acres dissolving away in the distance in that awful green light. He didn’t turn his head to the left, much.

The fight in the gatehouse had been intense and brief. As far as he knew, he was the only living survivor. He had seen the metal men pour through it, and even seen Lord Gelhadaxe himself perish, held high in the clutches of a half-man half-spider monstrosity that led the assault, run through with a long blade. Gelhadaxe had always said that nothing could harm a Child of the Emperor. Clearly he was wrong.

Erakan didn’t care much. He simply wanted to find something that could bleed, and then he could kill it. He could have done with some more bullets, or at least a lasgun, though they were less sensuous, less penetrating, but for now, he would settle for the act of killing. Up ahead, rose a sharp rocky bluff, on which blue-armoured figures stood, clad with high white helmets.

He’d rather the way hadn’t been guarded, but clearly he wasn’t that lucky. There was certainly no going back, the sound of the plain being ripped up behind him was growing nearer. He’d just have to bite the bullet, and hope the gods smiled upon him. “For Slanessh!” he cried, charging forwards, wondering, for a brief moment, which of the Four these warriors worshipped.