Due to the surprising amount of interest in this project, I decided to add a new section to this. (Have no fear AoD readers; I'm still working on section 48 of Age of Dusk, still titled 'The Battle of a thousand Emperors')
Anyway, the first six sections of this project are each told sort of in character, and are basically setting up the background, history and description of the forces available to each faction. Anyway, here is the first section. Enjoy:
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Faction One: The Vilethian Regime
[Note: All dates will be using the human dating system, for ease of reference.]
“Look to me now my people. Look forwards to your own glory and aggrandisement. Do not look to the past as the adherents of the Old Gods would desire. They are regressive and superstitious fools; they would shackle you and limit your minds. The Gods and their Young King demand you worship them, demand that you follow their rules and strictures. I ask only that you let me lead you to a better age. And age where we rule the not only material space, but the cosmic forces that govern them! Did not one of these most benevolent gods, slain our greatest heroes and lead our race into misery? And the Young King demands we bend the knee to these capricious monsters? I demand only that you become who you are destined to me, and enjoy the benefits of an empire beyond scarcity, beyond want! I have burned their temples, and they have not struck me down. I wield their greatest blade, plucked from the ruins of Belial IV, and I am not struck down. This is because I, Vileth the Beatific, am the true Phoenix King! And you, every last eldar that stands with me, are my Pantheon! Let all perish who deny us!”- [From Vileth’s ascension speech, before the steps of the grand palace.]
History:By the start of the thirty first millennium, in the chronological reckoning of the mon keigh, the Eldar Empire was the greatest civilisation the galaxy had ever seen. Not since the long-vanished Necrontyr or Old One Empires had one race so utterly dominated the spiral arms of the milky way, from the halo stars to the core, their reach was tremendous and their reign secure.
For a million years they had reigned in relative peace and harmony with the other races of the galaxy. The minor races were left mostly to their own devices, gently monitored by the benevolent gaze of the Court of the Young King and the ruling councils of the eldar core worlds, located within the legendary Arcadian ring, which encompassed virtually the entire western side of the galactic disk. Races were tended to as a gardener might care for his fields. The galaxy was divided into thousands of segments, each with a vast worldship assigned to them. These world ships were bases of operations for colonial armies, and also administrative centres to govern the outer fringes of the galaxy, where eldar rule was less intense that around the Arcadian ring. Unbeknownst to the lesser species in question, the eldar portioned out galactic reserves, where these races were permitted to flourish. Those who seemed to grow too fecund or technologically powerful were curtailed. The orks remained uncontrollable, despite all the culls enacted over the years. They were like a persistent strangling weed, always causing low level strife. However, they were a broken species that would never likely challenge the eldar for the galactic crown.
The last Great War the eldar had fought against a near equal was the horrific K’nib conflict, lasting from -345.M10 to -290M9, which had plunged the galaxy into misery and caused widespread destruction. The eldar had vowed to avoid another Great War at all costs. The most recent (and infamous) example of such civilisational ‘pruning’ occurred with the mon keigh race.
A young and fiercely dynamic race, the eldar watched as the mon keigh developed their technologies, rapidly rising from sublight to warp travel to interstellar empires and colonies, all within a scant few millennia. The councils saw the ‘humans’ beginning to link their colonies via sophisticated warp communication devices, and develop powerful artificial intelligences. The eldar ruling councils recognised the early signs of a building galactic power, witnessing a future where the humans would dominate, and these seers petitioned the Court of the Young King to undo them.
This the eldar did by subverting their ‘Iron Men’ servants, sparking a human civil war which saw their empire splintering into hundreds of factions before it reached its potential. Humanity was forgotten, and peace returned to the galaxy at large. Peace brought with it greater leisure and the personal freedoms and quality of eldar life reached its peak. Scarcity was a myth by then, and the eldar grew ever more callous and self-involved.
The trouble reached its peak with the arrival of Vileth the Beatific on the political scene. Born on Arach-Cyn, a Core World near the heart of the empire, he was golden-haired and one of the most attractive and charismatic eldar in the galaxy. Vileth led a congregation of eldar, calling themselves ‘The Muses of Slannesh’; they preached the attractive creed that there were no limits to what could be experienced and that every eldar had the potential to be an infinite being. This was utter heresy to the Old religions, which had temples on every street corner of the Core Worlds. But the eldar had slowly been losing faith with the gods, and the monarchy which claimed its authority through them. It had long been rumoured faith in the Pantheon no longer guaranteed reincarnation. Vileth’s creed promised much; power, pleasure, liberty to do whatever you pleased. Soon enough, he and his Muses were granted places on the ruling councils, and built temples of their own, preaching worship of the self.
But Vileth went further. He began to claim the gods were weak, and that the eldar need not be ruled by them, or the Royal House of Ulthanesh who claimed to channel their authority. Politicians and nobles who opposed Vileth began to die of mysterious causes that no authorities could detect. On a groundswell of support, Vileth rose ever higher in power, to the horror of the priests and aristocracy loyal to Asuryan’s Pantheon.
Finally, forces loyal to Vileth stormed the Grand Palace on Asur, the eldar homeworld. Simultaneously, the Temple of Faces on Belial IV was attacked. A force of the monastic Exarch warriors held off the soldiers for as long as possible, allowing the priests to flee into the webway with as many of their holy texts as they could. Lilith Hesperax, one of Vileth’s most lethal generals, had the temple burned to the ground, and had the sword Anaris, which was enshrined there, sent to Vileth at once
Vileth took the palace, and captured the royal family. Their court was made to watch as the Young King, the Phoenix God’s representation in the Materium, was put on trial. The trial was a farce, only the Muses of Vileth and his supporters were allowed to provide evidence of the King’s crimes. Unsurprisingly, the King was sentenced to death. Before the wailing cries of his subjects, and the cruel laughter of Vileth’s cronies, the executioner approached the King, who knelt before a block. A beheading; a primitive method of execution, which Vileth found fitting for a King who worshipped primitive tribal gods. The Imperial executioner wore his traditional armour of sculpted bone, and bore the great scythe, the symbol of Kaelis Ra. The executioner raised his blade.
But when the blade fell, it fell upon the guards restraining the King. Disgusted at what was demanded of him, the executioner, known to history as Maugan Ra, attacked Vileth’s men, and managed to escape the palace with the Young King, escaping through the Labyrinth dimension to the port city of Commorragh, the last stronghold loyal to the Old Gods. Tragically however, Maugan Ra’s allies within the court were not able to smuggle the rest of the King’s family from the Palace. In his spiteful rage, Vileth killed them all, and trapped their souls in communication gems, so that he might sooth his fury with their despairing wailing. This sparked a two hundred year war in the webway between the Phoenix and the Serpent, which came to an uncertain conclusion when the eldar of the Old Gods found a permanent connection linking the Black Library and Commorragh, before they sealed off both from the rest of the webway.
Vileth was now uncontested ruler of the empire, and his new regime was one of spectacular arrogance and cruelty. His followers had overthrown the gods, and proven themselves to be divine themselves. His proclamation was sent out to every world ship, demanding the aliens of the galaxy worship the eldar as the gods they were. Those who would not would feel his divine wrath.
The eldar learned that there were rumours spreading amongst the aliens of the galaxy, of a saviour born amongst the humans, who would topple the eldar, using his living weapons of mass destruction, born to fight the eldar and their patron. This mythic figure had no name, but a common name was ‘Emperor’, in mockery of Vileth’s Imperial title. At first, Vileth dismissed this heresy as nothing more than backwards aliens telling tall tales. General Xelian had assured King Vileth the so-called Emperor was just a Terran mad scientist, who had died when the Iron Martians had sacked terra, before the webway war had even started. If these alien fools were following the Emperor, then they were following a ghost.
His view changed after Istvaan III. The ruler of the little backwater world had apparently had an eldar killed, when said eldar had simply come to collect some mon keigh for a zoo on the coreworld Iydris.
Naturally, a Maton extermination fleet was sent out from the world ship to kill every creature on the planet for daring to harm even a single eldar. The fleet arrived quickly, and deployed a glass plague upon the entrenched inhabitants. To the annoyance of Liquivix, the Mistress-director of the Maton kill fleet, her robot army detected survivors of the plague. She sent her forces planetside, to kill them in direct assault. The battle raged across Istvaan III, the Maton found they fought a foe which almost matched them in power and relentless stubbornness. Giant mon keigh, bedecked in sophisticated powered armours, emerged from the ruins to fight them. They were lead by three titanic creatures that fought like avatars of the Old Gods themselves.
Liquivix watched this in mounting irritation from orbit. She decided to simply mass scatter the planet. As she prepared the obliteratrix devices in her ship’s armoury, her fleet found itself ambushed by a colossal mon keigh armada, which seemed to shimmering into existence all around her fleet. Eventually, Liquivix’s superiors onboard the Segment’s worldship, arrived in the system, and made orbit around Istvaan V; the mon keigh animals must have realised a world ship’s defences could kill their whole fleet on its own.
Istvaan III was gone, and there was little sign of the fleet that had attacked. Liquivix’s battered fleet returned to the worldship for repairs. The arrogant eldar hadn’t considered Liquivix’s fleet was full of mon keigh giants, who burst forth to attack the worldship from the inside. The titanic Primarchs led the assault, and a tremendous battle ensued through the crystal-lined innards of the worldship. The ship’s offensive capabilities were eventually knocked offline, and the mon keigh commander ordered his hidden ships to emerge once more, this time supported by even more human vessels warping into the system. No one ship seemed alike in design or armament; some seemed to cast purple ball lightning across the void, others had lances and lasers, others still unleashed swarms of nuclear missiles, or flung hypervelocity munitions at significant fractions of c. Thousands of vessels assaulted the worldship, and under such a bombardment, even a mighty eldar warship was gutted by the surprise attack, after only an hour of battle.
When the battle was done, the leader of the Primarchs, the so-called ‘Warmaster’, Horus Lupercal, had the last surviving eldar send a psychic message via waystone to the eldar high command. He denounced the eldar as false gods, declared humanity and its allies free and called on all species to unite and destroy the Vilethian Regime. In the name of the Emperor of the Insurgency of Man.
This bold attack was the spark which ignited the Human Heresy.
It had long been assumed by the eldar that the human realms were isolated, and hadn’t the means to communicate with one another, let alone coordinate themselves. This was prove wrong when previously assumed to be independent empires, such as the mon keigh-xenos Interex alliance, the totalitarian Nostromon Imperium, the Republic of Kiavahr, the Kingdom of Ultramar, the Inwit empire, the Technocracy Pilgrim fleet, the Baalite League and many hundreds of other independent human congregations seemed to declare their allegiance to the Warmaster simultaneously, across the galaxy. Not only that, several alien races also began to throw their lot in with the rebels. The L’huraxi, the Tallerians, the Ne’kulli, the Demiurg; all made their loyalties clear. Mind-bogglingly, even the orks of Gharkul Blackfang seemed at first to have sided with Horus.
The Sslyth, Laer, Lacrymole and Nephillim races allied themselves with Vileth almost immediately, but many alien races remained unaligned in the opening stages of the Heresy.
The Vilethian regime had been blindsided. Someone had clouded their prophetic abilities to orchestrate such a grand and prolific Insurgency. Vileth assumed it must have been his enemies amongst the Phoenix City, for he still did not believe in this supposed human messiah. This Horus, he was the instigator, and the Vilethian regime would see him fall.
Forces:As befits the dominant military and economic power of the galaxy, the Imperial eldar have access to a vast industrial base and the ability to mobilise huge armies at short notice.
The backbone of the eldar’s might are the Maton war machines. Maton is the name their enemies tend to give them, short for Automaton. The eldar name for them is long, but translates roughly as ‘those who lack the luminous soul, but walk with great might and purpose in defence of the eldar’. Maton are tall bipedal machines, melding wraithbone, psycho-reactive plastics around reinforced bio-metallic skeletons. They range from ten to fifteen feet tall, based upon their specialisations. They are the faceless elite of the empire; relentless, emotionless soldier machines. Once activated and deployed upon a planet, they will systematically exterminate all sapient non-eldar entities using their wide array of weaponry, the most infamous being the distort cannon.
While effective tools of terror and destruction, the Maton are unsubtle weapons. They are hardwired to be unable to attack eldar, so are of little use in battles between eldar forces, and also lack psychic weaponry.
This means the Vilethian regime still maintains large standing armies of eldar warriors, the greatest being Vileth’s personal force from his home world, known as the Arach-Cyn Praetorians. Eldar are physically superior to humanity in every sense; they are both faster and stronger, with more powerful senses and the capacity to learn new skills rapidly. They also possess innate psychic abilities, which most military eldar channel into further enhancing their physical attributes. One eldar is generally considered the match of ten ordinary Insurgency Troopers. For the elite Arach-Cyn Praetorians, their abilities are complemented by their Scorpion pattern war plate and their unfettered access to the best weaponry, including the recently invented blaster rifles. The giant Legio Astartes of the mon keigh are considered more effective in a one on one engagement with a Praetorian, but the odds are less certain when two armies of these soldiers ever meet.
Whenever the alien auxiliary forces of the eldar are deployed, the eldar seem perfectly happy to feed them into the most dangerous and gruelling battlezones, to avoid the loss of even the most meagre of eldar lives.
The webway allows the rapid deployment of eldar armies and fleets across the galaxy, which is essential to the war effort, due to the dispersed nature of their foes. The most common vessels of the eldar are the dragonships; fleets of wraithships controlled by the guided will of only a handful of directing eldar souls. Dragonships are not particularly powerful individually, but their drone-like nature allows veritable swarms of these vessels to overwhelm an enemy fleet.
On the opposite side of the scale are the Void Dominators. These are large capital ships, and are the finest naval vessels the eldar possess. At the start of the heresy, no known Void Dominators had been destroyed by enemy action since they were first built. Unlike the scout-battleship Void Stalkers, Void Dominators are built not only for manoeuvrability, but also survivability and extreme firepower.
As eldar age, they become more and more suffused with warp energy. The most ancient eldar are terrifying opponents, swift as bullets, strong enough to tear open armour with their bare hands, and capable of destroying scores of enemies with their formidable minds. Yet even these ancients require biomechanical power armoured suits in order to duel a Primarch entity on near to an equal footing.
The deranged techno-sorcerers of the empire under the direction of Magister Urien Rakarth, have also been busy devising new weapons and abominations to unleash upon the upstart rebels.
Though the eldar military machine is formidable, their primary weakness is their lack of experience facing a galactic foe. The last full scale galactic war they fought was so long ago; there were no living eldar who had first-hand knowledge of the event.
