Intermission
A/N - Just a quick check in on other places, and a couple reports to System Alliance Command about stuff. And these intermission chapters are canon to the story. Also, some of the non-canon facts are simply to fill in holes. If you have canonical evidence to the contrary, send in a PM, and get credit and a thank you in the post story author's notes Unless I am deliberately being wrong for plot reasons. Or you are an ass about it, then you get NOTHING! *cue maniacal cackling*
Also, the times on when intermission chapters is kinda fluid, and may not be placed in the exact section of the story as when they occur. Like the second report in this chapter not happening for another few chapters, in spite of it appearing now.
And the previous poll is closed and the new one up on my profile, top of the page. By popular demand, we will be including a couple of Warhammer 40k 'friends' in the future. The audience will love them. Arlas? Not so much. He thinks you all are sadistic, and need a hobby. Like origami, work those mon-keigh fingers! Build up your dexterity until it stops embarrassing drunk octopuses, or not, if that is how you roll.
Edit (24 Dec 2017): FINE! Using the boring standard lore for Eldar evolution. Whip crackers.
Edit (27 Dec 2017): Lore correction, and reformatting the chapter for ease of reading. Stupid site, eating my formatting.
Subject: INFO - Eldar heavy cruiser crash site, Nirvana, Utopia System, Exodus Cluster
TO: Admiral Adam Barton of the Second Fleet;
Summary: Avoid Eldar controlled areas at all costs. They don't require external help and are slowly repairing the ship in spite of local conditions.
As per orders, I am submitting my second monthly report of the Eldar heavy cruiser crash site, and their progress toward repairing the ship.
As per the Eldar Pathfinder's request, and SA Command's recommendations, we have respected the ship's airspace of fifty kilometers, and not landed troops within two kilometers of the crash site. After watching what the ship did to four Salarian ships and a Salarian ground team that did not respect that boundary, despite most of them being under stealth conditions at the time, I can only recommend that we continue to simply ensure pirates, mercenaries and slavers don't try something stupid. Anything outside the exclusion zone is ignored, including a small prospecting vessel that developed engine problems and actually intruded slightly on the edge of the exclusion zone before the SA frigate Trafalgar managed to assist them.
The first Salarian ship attempted a high altitude stealth pass over the vessel. We detected it the two passes previously due to a chance visual observation by one of our probes, before it tried to get inside the exclusion zone for a closer pass, at which point the vessel fired once to destroy the Salarian scout vessel's engines, then twice more time to blow open the rest of the ship, killing the crew. We suspect, based on later incidents, that the eldar used point defense weapons for this interception, either not having an active, powered broadside weapon on that arc, or not having repaired it yet. It crashed in the ground exclusion zone, and the Eldar did not return comm requests to land and check for survivors. After two hours of neither movement or comms from the crash zone, I elected to simply notify local command of the incident.
A week later, another Salarian vessel attempted to land near the vessel, but came within the exclusion zone, and was vaporized by a single weapon discharge this time, which was when we noticed the salarian vessel. No significant debris survived the strike, so I reported the incident to local command again.
The next week we had a Salarian 'trader' in the area, and we observed a couple Salarian ground teams landing outside the aerial exclusion zone, and then marching toward the ground exclusion zone. Despite having several natural formations between the ship and the team, as the first Salarian team crossed the ground exclusion zone, the broadside weapons opened fire on the team, burning through multiple rock and ice formations to exterminate the team. The second withdrew back to their transport at that point, and respected the exclusion zone while evacuating and was allowed to withdraw. Whatever the eldar are using for sensors doesn't use the same principles as our own, so I am forced to admit that any close observations must wait until we have Eldar that aren't in a defensive stance. I am also concerned that we are well inside of the Eldar ship's weapon range, despite what the small exclusion zone implies.
The next week, had the 175th turian patrol squadron pass through the system on their way to the Hades' Gamma cluster, though they did linger in system to run their own scans of the Eldar ship. However, no Turian ship closed to within five hundred kilometers, let alone the fifty kilometer exclusion zone, so they left without incident.
During the last week of the month, the Salarian Union frigate Silent Whisper entered the system, and requested the status of the ships that had been lost due to exclusion zone violations. Despite warnings to the contrary, the ship attempted to breach the exclusion zone to recover their dead after broadcasting their intentions, and were promptly engaged by the Eldar ship.
This time the Eldar ship attempted to divert the vessel with a pair of slow moving warning shots, but the Salarian activated its GUARDIAN lasers to attempt to shoot down the shots, perhaps believing them missiles or torpedoes, only for their lasers to either pass through or miss. The Eldar ship retaliated with what I believe to be every working weapon on board, promptly blowing the frigate to pieces, and then vaporizing the pieces as they fell. No lifeboats were launched, leaving me to conclude that the ship was lost with all hands.
The next day, another Salarian ship approached the exclusion zone, but was engaged and destroyed at a distance of twice the usual exclusion zone. Of the second ship, any pieces that drifted toward the planet were destroyed, but we were able to recover four lifeboats with seventeen of the twenty three crew on board, according to the survivors. All survivors were transported back to Eden Prime to await pickup by the next Salarian Union vessel.
As a result of the Salarian ship's actions, I have ordered my squadron to keep a minimum distance of two hundred kilometers from the vessel as a gesture of good faith. However, the probes that we dropped near the exclusion zone but have not crossed into the it have been ignored by the vessel, as such we have been able to record the repairs of the vessel, despite no crew appearing outside of the vessel, nor spotting any exposed passages. Long range penetrating scans of the Eldar vessel have revealed only a handful of rooms and passages, most connected to what we suspect was originally a hangar. We think the vessel originally only had a bridge, a hangar, and a single passage connecting the two, along with a pair of side rooms possibly used for storage or repairs, though how they service their weapons, engines, other facilities, and armor is beyond us. However, damage to the vessel's hull that we can observe have been slowly but steadily closing, though the main gun still hasn't begun to be repaired. Most interesting, however, is that the vessel is rebuilding the topside solar sail, though where they are getting that much material from is something my squadron's engineers having been becoming increasingly less civil about to each other.
Respectfully;
Captain Jakob Naseem, Cruiser Houston of the Second Fleet
Subject: INFO - Eldar Home Galaxy Races, Initial Report
TO: Admiral Hackett, Fifth Fleet Commanding Officer;
Summary - The eldar have been in a state of war with at least seven major races and twelve major organizations for the last ten thousand years, in addition to innumerable lesser races which hold only a system or two, a war which began with the loss of their core colonies, homeworld, and at least 99% of their population base, and are still considered a major faction and power.
While all this information comes from a single source, the only known active eldar, Pathfinder Arlas, I believe the information is compelling, or at very least consistent, enough to warrant further review, which I will conduct as I am able. First, I want to say that Arlas has shown myself his memories of several events, most notably his engagement with the ork kommando unit known as the Blood Tusks which included the majority of the Normandy's crew or Specialist team, to validate the information contained within this report.
This report will deal with the seven major races, and a follow on report will deal with the factions. I leave it to the scientists to decide why the Eldar come from a galaxy with so much sentient life, while our own seems to so barren in comparison.
The first race I will cover is the Eldar themselves, though only briefly, as a follow on report will deal with the differences between Eldar and humans, as well as their technology and 'psyker' ability, distinct from biotics. Their history starts with a war between a race called the Old Ones and their opponents, the C'tan and their Necrontyr slaves. Desperate for allies, the Old Ones began uplifting every race they could find, including the eldar, and eventually resorted to bioengineering races to assist in their defense against the C'tan. They ultimately failed. The C'tan and Necrontyr, however, were exhausted by the war, and went into a deep hibernation, and with the Old Ones either fled or exterminated, this allowed the Eldar to rise to prominence. They then ruled the galaxy for sixty million years. At what point and why they lost such prominence, however, Arlas refuses to give details, only that it was possibly self inflicted, cost the Eldar nearly their entire race, and the surviving Eldar fragmented because it, causing three different major factions of Eldar to form. These factions will be expanded on in the Faction Report, but were called the Dark Eldar, the Harlequins, and the Craftworld Eldar, the latter of which he is a part. Two minor factions were also mentioned, Corsairs and Exodites, but I will need more time to gather information on those ones.
The second race is the orks. Arlas showed that the typical specimen starts at two and a half meters, and only continues to grow as they live, the largest known ork by his craftworld was nearly five meters tall, and took a low orbit cruiser bombardment to actually kill the ork. Orks have no gender but default to male due to similarities to other races' males, being a type of fungus, and use photosynthesis to provide most of their energy with scavenged meat being used to make up any shortcomings. This includes a recently killed enemy, a lesser ork called a gretchin which only stands at about human height but is still able to overpower a human, or a squig, a symbiotic monster that the orks use for rations, pack beasts, pets, and even assaulting heavy fortifications. And most importantly, being a type of fungus, they reproduce with spores. To quote Pathfinder Arlas, 'Once a single ork vessel has crashed on a planet, that planet is theirs, the only question is how long it takes. They might spend tens of trillions of orks over tens of thousands of years in thousands of failed attempts, but eventually, like water against a mountain, the water eventually wins. It cares not for drops lost in the endeavor, only that the mountain is down. And once the water has the mountain, it goes looking for another mountain to tear down, hoping it is even bigger, forever seeking another mountain. The only way to stop the orks from eventually winning is to burn the very rocks from the planet, otherwise, they will simply keep coming back.'
The third race is the tyranids. From what Arlas has reported, it was their version of the rachni, except the Tyranids would bioengineer new combat forms to suit specific battlefield needs in their staging areas as required. The similarities, however, are striking. Led by a single mind, it didn't matter how many were slaughtered, the rest would keep pushing forward, unless the leading mind decided to regroup the survivors with the next wave. And even worse, they used any biomass they could acquire to spawn more units, so each world that they took was stripped of everything, plants, animals, water, even air, to fuel their massive fleets. Arlas claimed his Craftworld was specialized to hunting down tyranid 'splinter fleets,' which apparently were survivors of a previous invasion that was broken with the death of the Swarm Queen, though he claims the Craftworld was almost as good against the orks.
The fourth race was Tau, a group of blue humanoid mammals similar to humans, but with more affinity for group actions and ranged combat, and supported by a lesser race called the Kroot for tracking and melee combat. The Tau are also led by a lesser race called the Ethereals, but Arlas didn't say much about the Tau race or its allied races, other than they were hopelessly naive and arrogant. Along with a number of words in what is assumed to be the Eldar language, but he did not translate them, so I assume them to be explicatives or insults.
The fifth race was humans, and he said they were identical to us, in temperament, aptitudes, intellect, and appearance. I am not sure he meant that as a compliment. He did say that humans had replaced the Eldar as the dominant race, and were aligned under a theocratic dictatorship, devoted to 'the God-Emperor of mankind.'
The sixth race was the one he was least interested in talking about, called Chaos. I was unable to determine if it was a race, faction, allegiance, or something else, but considering it involves what he calls daemons, that have three arms, six eyes, two legs, a mouth full of misshapen and pointy teeth, and flings 'warp fire' that burns you to ash if it grazes you, I believe including it in the race section to be prudent.
The seventh and last race is the Necrontyr, and while he was unwilling to discuss much about them, it was because he doesn't know much more than the basic stories about them, in addition to his memories of two encounters with them. They used to be a race of hunchback humanoids, that made a deal with the C'tan for immortal bodies, but failed to realize the C'tan would 'consume their souls.' Now they are a race of machines that hunt down and destroy the living, trapped in metal bodies that are impossible to actually destroy without casting them into the 'immaterium,' using a fusion gun to vaporize them, or using a few more esoteric weapons some of the other factions use. Even if the bodies are melted, they will either slowly reform from the goo, hardening back into soldiers and weapons, or teleport back to their bases to reform there.
Those seven are the major races, and he had no information on any of the races we have encountered so far in our galaxy. No Salarians, turians, asari, quarians, krogan, or any of the others. All of his extranet access has been information gathering on the races, homeworlds, populations, military strengths, political stances, reproduction, even the differences between levi and dextro-protein species. Despite his searches, he still maintains his attitude of superiority, and still stays apart from most of the crew, though he has found a kindred spirit in, of all people, our krogan, and has slowly been warming to the rest of the crew. He has also stated that his Craftworld is coming, though he refuses to give more details, and we have discovered that they sent at least one other group ahead, though again he refuses to give details. I will continue to log what I can, and submit follow up reports.
Respectfully,
Lieutenant Commander Joannis Shepard, N7 Adept
Subject: Council meeting log, video communication, 2183-64b.3, subject: Eldar Pathfinder Arlas, new race
Tevos, Asari Councilor: So, now we move onto our newest 'race.' After having time to review the logs, both provided by the humans and from our own agents, the Council of Matriarchs and the Asari Empress both agree that this being is not human.
Valern, Salarian Councilor: Agreed. Genetic samples far too complex to have originally been human.
Sparatus, Turian Councilor: And how exactly did you get a genetic sample? He has been in sealed armor whenever he has been on the Citadel.
Valern: …
Sparatus: Right, apologies, forgot who I was referring to.
Tevos: What about your investigations into his weapons? Are the human reports of him using laser and plasma based weapons correct?
Valern: Laser weapon confirmed, plasma weapon strongly suggested, can't confirm without either testing weapon ourselves, or seeing it with enough sensors.
Sparatus: And how did you do that?
Valern: Two agents killed before meeting with Tevos. One by his primary weapon, another by melee weapon.
Sparatus: ...Tevos met with him?
Tevos: Yes, same day we had Nassana Dantius arrested for corruption and failure to disclose security risks, thanks to Spectre Icivia Kryik and the Shepard Twins. Your secretary was notified, as you were in a meeting with the Hierarchy Primarchs and Tribunes. Valern, what did the STG agent dispatched to Eden Prime learn from there?
Sparatus: Apologies, I have to check something.
Valern: What STG agent?
Tevos: Valern, we all know that every salarian 'trader' is just a STG agent with a hold full of trade goods instead of spy gear.
Valern: ...Damage to starport retaining wall extremely unusual. Definitely delivered by high heat weapon, possibly plasma, but again, without tests on actual weapon or a high definition, mutli-spectrum recording, we can't say for sure.
Sparatus: ...How about a recording of the weapon discharging?
Valern: … … … What?
Sparatus: Spectre Icivia Kryik sent me a copy of a file of the Twins on their mission. Apparently the humans had a VI go rogue in one of their training bases.
Valern: Know already, two agents were called in by System Alliance to confirm coding not problem, wasn't, currently suspecting sabotage. Discharge recording?
Sparatus: Well, apparently the savage went ahead of the group to scout, and bungled it. Got ambushed and injured. Sending the file now.
No activity for three minutes.
Tevos: Goddess, that was brutal.
Valern: Extremely informative, can extrapolate much from this. Sending file to STG for analysis now. Interesting that arm didn't bleed, but the mech's blade wound and the bullet wounds did. Would suggest prosthesis, but too finely tuned, would have to be directly linked to nerves for that type of control. And that teleporter, absolutely fascinating.
Tevos: He was ambushed by a tank, three heavy mechs, a mob of drones and Loki mechs, and those two… monster machines, and he still took out most of them before being injured. And he even managed to get away, judging from the last teleport we saw. Was that the entire recording Sparatus?
No activity for one minute.
Tevos: Sparatus, are you still there?
Sparatus: What kind of monster…
Tevos: SPARATUS!
Sparatus: Yes, what! Sorry, I was… distracted.
Tevos: Was that the entire recording?
Sparatus: I need to… yes, that was the entire recording. You invited that… thing to the galactic swordsmanship tournament, correct?
Tevos: Eldar. He is an Eldar, Sparatus, not a thing or a monster, and yes I did. Why?
Sparatus: Right, I need to go, plans to make. The Primarchs and Imperator…
Turian Councilor Sparatus has left the vid call.
Valern: Well, that was not concerning at all.
Tevos: I hope he doesn't do something rash. Valern, will you inform me if he is planning something… unpleasant? If this is what one Eldar operative is capable of, I have no desire of finding out what several can do. I doubt that his people would take his loss, especially at our hands, lightly.
Valern: … Of course.
Salarian Councilor Valern has left the vid call.
Tevos: Why do I suddenly feel like the only voice of sanity on this Council yet again? Computer, call the Empress, she needs to know what her daughter will be facing at the tournament. Assuming he joins, of course. End current call.
Asari Councilor Tevos has left the vid call.
The video suddenly plays again, showing the eldar dodging a pair of anti-personnel missiles and a tank shot with a teleport, before rapidly engaging the mechs with his fusion gun and pistol, firing wildly as he tried to keep the mechs from converging on him and teleporting whenever he failed. The defiance lasted all of ninety three seconds, before one of the Maelstrom mechs stabbed him from behind as he landed from a teleport, and a second Maelstrom mech took off his arm. The eldar then teleported again, taking most of the two mechs with him.
eRr0R: Fascinating. The commanders are keeping such intriguing company.
eRr0R (unknown user) has left the vid call.
_: If only you knew.
Vid call has ended. Archiving full log in Citadel permanent storage archive. Deleting last one hundred twelve seconds of video call. Storing modified vid call log in public Citadel storage archive.
Warhammer 40k universe, unknown world in Eye of Terror
Farseer Cael'Iadra glanced over her warlock guard squad, ensuring no one had wandered off, before nodding to the striking scorpion exarch behind her. The exarch gathered her squad, and stalked off toward the next eldar building, to ensure it was clear before the Farseer and her squad arrived, while a Dire Avenger squad stayed nearby, ensuring the Farseer wasn't ambushed while the scorpions scouted ahead. Off to her left, she could hear Dark Reapers shredding chaos infantry squads, and howling banshees engaging chaos space marines, before something exploded nearby. She winced as a falcon hovertank slammed into the ground nearby, but nodded in relief as the gunner was able to climb out of the tank and retrieve the pilot's spirit stone before joining her group. Over to her right, a proud, massive Phantom titan strode forward, firing both of its titan Pulsars at an unseen target. At its side, a second Phantom fired at a different target, covering its sister titan's advance.
The Farseer moved forward at the sound of combat in the next building, but it ended before she got close, and a striking scorpion stepped out, gesturing for the group to come in. Inside, a striking scorpion dead lay on the ground, and two more were being treated for injuries, but the nearly thirty cultists who had set up a small shrine in the building were dead to the last. She sighed, ignoring the shrine to check the various rooms, but the lore they had hoped to find in these buildings so far were lost, ruined and destroyed by both time and invaders.
The Farseer sighed, and in the privacy of the last room, stretched, arching her back like a cat as she enjoyed the sensation of isolation for just a second, before returning to the main room. This time the Dire Avengers were sent ahead to the next building, while two Warlocks who followed Isha, goddess of healing, tended the striking scorpion wounded and another collected the spirit stone. The powerful striking scorpion exarch, wielding a power sword and a power claw with a built in shuriken cannon, was at a window, looking out, watching a pair of revenant scout titans duel with a chaos titan. The Farseer moved to stand beside the exarch, and while the revenant titans successfully brought down their opponent, one of them was destroyed by the chaos titan's escorts. They watch the second revenant go into a fury, slaughtering the killers of its kin, but soon it too falls, landing on top its sister. The exarch finally communicates as they watch several tanks push to the titans, to try and recover them, or at least the spirit stones in them. (*We linger too long, and gain nothing. We are losing.*)
Farseer Cael'Iadra doesn't move, but simply sends her exhausted agreement. (*Agreed, but we are almost to where we need to be. It will be either the next building, or one soon after. We need what they hold. The runes were clear about that.*)
The exarch doesn't speak, but simply gathers her remaining able warriors with a gesture, before moving ahead. After a moment, a Falcon hovertank arrives, the two wounded scorpions and the downed falcon tank gunner quickly being loaded and evacuated before the warlocks gather around the Farseer, and move to the next building.
Three buildings later, and the Farseer finally called a halt. Seven chaos berserkers and twelve chaos Bloodletters had fallen to the group, but so had a majority of her escort, including the striking scorpion and dire avenger exarches. She had four warlocks, a striking scorpion, and six dire avengers left out of her initial force of forty. She gazed about the large structure she had spotted and diverted the force to, her foresense screaming it was where she needed to go, but as she personally checked room after room, her despair grew. Each room was a ruin, destroyed and desecrated by the forces of time and chaos.
It wasn't until she checked the last room that her despair wavered slightly, as the door had not been hidden, but the interior was pristine, unsullied by blood and viscera like the others. She sent a mental warning to her escort of her location, and entered the room. After she crossed the room, the door suddenly shut, and she whirled about, her hand on her Singing Spear, but no daemons leapt out of the air to tear her armor from her and defile her, no cultists sprung from hiding places in the wall to mutilate her. Instead, a small door in the wall opened after a moment, revealing a staircase down.
After a second of consideration, she took the stairs down. She got only a few steps down when the door behind her suddenly sealed, plunging her into near perfect darkness. She glanced backwards, but only for a second, before continuing forward. It was only a short stairway, but in the darkness on a chaos infested world, it felt like an eternity, even for a Farseer with more than four millennia of experience to draw upon. Only time would tell if it was courage or bravado that compelled her down those stairs, a desire to ensure the deaths of so many Eldar, on the cusp of their Craftworld leaving through the Elisphan webway gate, were worthy causes or just more wasted lives.
Upon arriving at the bottom, Farseer Cael'Iadra was rewarded for her courage with a small trove of undamaged tomes. She glanced over their titles, and allowed herself a smile, before reaching out to her warlocks. *I found what we were looking for. Call in the transports and an escort.*
She traced the spine of the most important tome on the shelf, reading the title to herself one more time. 'A Treatise on Greater Webway Gates and Their Construction.'
A/N - Because screw canonicity in the Warhammer 40k verse! This is a crossover, which means I can play with anything I want! BUWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Ahem, more seriously, that is the first intermission chapter, giving you a view of what is going on in other areas of the galaxy, and what other important personages are planning. As well as introducing a handful of new characters. Kinda. Also, I know some of the species facts Shepard was reporting were wrong, that was due to it being third or even fourth hand information, or her just misunderstanding him. Or him just outright lying.
Also, FYI this is important so pay attention, I will be busy with holiday stuff for the next week or so, so I may not update for a week or two. Send nasty-grams if you want, I will simply laugh at you and delete them.