It is the forty-second millennium.

For ten thousand years, the Emperor sat immobile on the Golden Throne, suffering unspeakable torment so that Humanity might survive. For a hundred centuries, the Imperium of Man endured alongside its Lord, facing the threats of the Daemon, the Xenos, and the Heretic thanks to the ceaseless work of its manyfold hosts.

But that time is over. The Primarchs, long-lost sons of the Emperor, have returned, and freed Him from the doom to which He was bound by the rebellion of the Arch-Traitor Guilliman and the machinations of the Dark Gods. At the coming of Light's End and the Angel War that followed, the Returned Sons won a great victory, and slew their fallen kinsman, Sanguinius. Yet Omegon's grand plan of ascending his sire to godhood failed.

The Emperor is dead.

Seated upon his father's throne, Magnus the Red sweeps the stars with his one-eyed gaze, and beholds a galaxy in turmoil. Cadia has fallen to the Black Legion, the Gate to the Eye of Terror thrown wide open by the Clonelord's hordes. In the Ruinstorm, Guilliman himself has awakened, seeking to claim the dominion denied him ten millennia ago. The other Traitor Primarchs follow in his wake, their transfigured souls burning with monstrous ambition and desires. The Necron Dynasties rise again from their tomb-worlds, awakened from their Great Sleep to find the galaxy changed beyond recognition, while the rampages of the Beast and the Devourer ascend to a feverish crescendo.

Death, Destruction and Ruin loom large, and the light of of Mankind's survival is but a guttering candle. Yet Humanity does not stand alone against the darkness. The Eldar, Children of Isha who have rejected the decadence and atrocity that consumed the empire of their forebears, have joined the struggle. Under the banner of Eldrad Ulthran, the High Farseer and Avatar of Ynnead, they prepare the awakening of their Slumbering God of the Dead, to end the Doom that devours the soul of their race and put the sins of their ancestors to rest. And though the Emperor has perished, the Living Saints, heirs of His fragmented power, now lead the struggle of survival and victory on hundreds of fronts, while Vindicta, the Power of Retribution born of the Wrath of Magnus and countless prayers for aid, grants its champions and Heralds power over the shades of the dead.

To live as a human in such times is to stand on the edge of History. It is to know, with soul-deep certainty, that the Emperor is dead. It is to recoil from the claws of the Ruinous Powers reaching through reality's thinning veil, seeking to rend it all asunder. It to feel the light of the Sword That Was Promised rekindle long-forgotten dreams. It is to hear the beating of the Yellow King's heart, and know that the final war for the galaxy's soul is at hand.

The pleas of the innocent, the vows of the righteous, resound to the cruel laughter of the Primordial Annihilator. Suffering and damnation await all should the scions of Order fail, and this chance to overturn Ruin be lost.

The Age of Imperium is over. The Times of Ending have begun.


You stand atop a wall. Or perhaps you are the wall. It is difficult to tell, after so long.

Behind you, the capital of the empire you and your brothers built is aflame. To the west, another stronghold, greater even than this one, has fallen. In front of you, a storm approaches, dark and terrible.

You know that storm, for you have stood against it for what feels like forever. You know its malice, its cruelty, and its master. He was your brother once, but no longer. He was dead once, but no longer. Through blood and death, he has risen, though you know his resurrection did not go quite as he planned it to. You saw the fall of his great stronghold, heard the enraged screams of its fleeing lord, and smiled mirthlessly before raising your weapon in salute to the old warrior who made it happen.

But even that unsung hero could not prevent your fallen brother's return. And now he comes, to finish what he started ten thousand years ago : burn down everything you and your loyal brothers have built, and amidst the ashes crown himself king of a new realm of madness and nightmares.

He is strong, so strong in his corruption. The Dark Gods have blessed him with power beyond anything your kin were ever meant to wield. And now, your father, the only one who could match him, is dead. The thought is a dagger through the chest, the pain still just as fresh and sharp each time.

Your father is dead.

Your father is dead.

Your father is dead.

But your duty remains. And you know that you are not alone.

There is a light in the darkness, rising from the fires of the capital. A blade that is not a blade, just as the wall is not just a wall. Even from so far away, its radiance reaches out. It pushes back the shadows of doubt, reminds you of your purpose.

You are the foundation of civilization. Upon you is built the structure of Order.

You are iron, within and without, and you will never break.

But … what is this ? Something catches your eye, on the edge of the shadow darkening the horizon. Despite the risk of taking your focus off the oncoming storm even for a moment, you force yourself to take a closer look at it.

Oh.

This … this is new. Unexpected. Unplanned for.

Your fallen brother, it seems, has not lost his cunning throughout the ages of his tormented half-death.


Times of Ending : The Ruinstorm Breaks

Part One : The Greater Good

For generations, the Ethereals have guided the other four Castes of the Tau. Their wisdom ended the internecine conflicts that had ravaged their race for centuries, and uplifted them from the soil of their homeworld and into the very stars. Under their leadership, the Tau Empire has brought the light of the Tau'va, the Greater Good, to many worlds and species. Most of the time, these unions have been forged through diplomacy and a sharing of purpose, but in a few cases violence has regrettably been necessary. The Tau have paid the price to learn that the galaxy is a violent place, and that it falls to them to make it a better place, under the guidance of the Ethereals. Now, a new chapter of the Tau Empire's glorious history is about to unfold, as the greatest armada ever assembled by the ascendant race sails toward the system called Olympia by the Imperium, seeking to break the millennia-long imprisonment its tyrants have inflicted upon the people exiled to dwell within the so-called 'Iron Cage' …

Following the First Sphere Expansion, which had seen them colonize the cluster of habitable worlds around their home system, the Tau launched the Second Sphere Expansion, using new, much more advanced faster-than-light engines. It was during this period that they met other sentient races for the first time, incorporating them within their burgeoning empire. There were only two exceptions to this : the first was the Orks, who the diplomats of the Water Caste soon realized could not be reasoned with (indeed, there are many within the Tau Empire who question whether the greenskins are truly sentient at all) and needed to be eradicated for the good of all other species. Then, there were the humans, also known as gue'la within the Empire.

After successfully crossing the region of space known as the Damocles Gulf in an effort that took several generations and cost the lives of countless brave explorers, the Tau had only encountered border world of the human Imperium. These were isolated from the rest of their people and easily convinced dozens of them of the merits of the Greater Good, whether by trade, diplomacy, or force. Tales of the Imperium's galaxy-spanning size were swiftly suppressed by order of the Ethereal Caste, disregarded as nothing more than propaganda used to prop up a decaying regime.

However, the Tau leaders were soon forced to realize that, for all that it was decaying and festering with hatred and superstition, the Imperium was still mighty. Tensions between the two powers had grown over the course of several decades, until the calamity of the Damocles Gulf Crusade.


The Damocles Gulf Crusade

It was during this conflict that the Ethereals realized that the Imperium's sheer size was much greater than had initially been believed, its resources effectively limitless when compared to those of the Tau Empire. After decades of relatively peaceful expansion, a period referred to as the Silken Conquests by the diplomats of the Water Caste, an immense Imperial armada was dispatched, greater than anything the Tau Empire had ever seen. Its purpose was the reclamation of the gue'la worlds that had embraced the Greater Good, and at its vanguard was a host of Gue'ron'sha, the genetically altered soldiers which the Imperium, in a rare moment of self-awareness, had bestowed with the brutal epithet of 'Eaters of Worlds'. It was a name that would echo in the nightmares of the Fire Caste for many years to come.

The Tau new colonies, which had only just been brought up to the level of the core worlds through expansive construction and infrastructure programs, came under assaults of unprecedented violence. The logical, mathematical warfare of the Fire Caste had left them unprepared to match the ferocity of the mass charges spear-tipped by the World Eaters, who served as barbaric champions and exemplar of martial prowess to the seemingly numberless hordes of the so-called Imperial Guard that followed them. Yet unlike the greenskins brutes, who seemed to consider brutality the one and only approach to battle worthy of their interest, the Imperial forces combined the ferocity of their warrior caste with a fiercely ruthless tactical acumen.

In the end, the Tau were forced to abandon all their colonies beyond the Damocles Gulf, retreating back through the hostile region of space and toward the Empire's core worlds. It was believed that the Gulf would serve as a buffer, keeping the Imperials from pursuing while the Tau Empire gathered its strength for a counter-attack – but such did not happen. The Imperial armada passed through the Gulf far more easily than the Tau ships had ever been capable of, and caught the retreating Tau fleet mustering at the Hydass system almost completely by surprise. How they achieved this was to be the subject of fierce debate among the Earth Caste for decades to come, with the emergent theory being that the faster-than-light drives of the humans were simply better than that of the Tau.

In the year referred to by the Imperial calendar as 745.M41, the Hydass system was the site of the greatest void engagement of the Crusade. The Imperial ships proved superior to the designs of the Earth Caste, and the boarding parties of the World Eaters were all but unstoppable, the Tau having no prior experience with such risky and barbaric methods of void warfare as loading one's soldiers into torpedoes to be fired at enemy ships.

Following the crippling of the Tau Empire's fleet, the Crusade continued its rampage, arriving to the sept world of Dal'yth. For the first time in its history, the Tau Empire faced an invasion of one of its core worlds, one of greater scale than anything they had ever encountered before. Millions of gue'la soldiers, the Astra Militarum, descended upon Dal'yth, along with cybernetic soldiers of the Imperium's machine-caste, the Adeptus Mechanicus. Those, however, paled compared to the brutality of the World Eaters who led them into battle.

Battlesuits clashed with genetically altered warriors, while the skies were filled with the sounds of Air Caste pilots engaging the inferior but numberless fighters of the Aeronautica Imperialis. Immense engines fashioned in rough humanoid shapes crushed entire districts under their unrelenting thread, raw mass and firepower overwhelming the most advanced Earth Caste designs. No matter the losses they suffered, the gue'la kept coming, way past the point where even the most hot-blooded Fire Caste commander would have abandoned the offensive and repositioned elsewhere.

Reinforcements were summoned from all across the Empire, but even the fastest ZFR horizon accelerator drives would take far too long to reach the beleaguered planet. Despite the heroic efforts of O'Shovah and O'Shaserra in leading the defense, and regardless of the proclamations of the Water Caste within the walls of the remaining cities, defeat seemed inevitable. Plans to evacuate the planet were drafted, but with so few ships left to the Air Caste, any such effort could all too easily end in disaster. All the while, the few Ethereals stranded on Dal'yth extorted the other Tau to keep heart, to hold onto the Tau'va.

Then, without warning, the World Eaters withdrew from Dal'yth, and the rest of the Imperial forces followed suit, leaving behind ruined cities, fields of corpses, and a traumatized population. The only explanation the Imperials gave for their sudden departure was a recorded message in Low Gothic, which once translated by the experts of the Water Caste warned that should the Tau Empire ever venture back through the Damocles Gulf once more, the Imperium would return, and this time it wouldn't stop until the entire Tau race had been wiped out from the stars.

The Damocles Gulf Crusade was over, and with with, the entire Second Expansion Sphere.


The Imperium, it seemed, had other concerns than the Tau Empire, and contended itself with solidifying its hold onto the reclaimed border worlds with the building of new fortifications to guard against a renewed assault. The few Tau who managed to escape these reconquered worlds gave testimonies of horrendous purges inflicted upon those who had accepted the Greater Good into their lives, humans slaughtered alongside any Tau who had failed to escape. The Water Caste ensured these grim tales were spread across the Tau Empire, so that none may doubt the superiority of the Greater Good, regardless of the sacrifices required in its pursuit.

In the wake of the Second Expansion Sphere's disastrous end, the morale of the Tau was badly shaken. Despite the best efforts of the Water Caste to sell the story that the Tau Empire had fought off the gue'la Imperium, the fact that the Fire Caste had only been able to slow the invaders' onslaught before their sudden withdrawal remained ingrained deep within the collective consciousness of the citizens.

To many within the Tau Empire, the Imperium reminded them of their own dark age, the Mont'au, when the tribes of their homeworld had been ravaged by war and hatred, wielding weapons far more advanced than they were culturally ready for. Belief in the manifest destiny of the Tau Empire to bring the Tau'va to all had been sorely tested, with many wondering if the light of progress and unity for which they fought could hope to prevail against the gue'la numbers and ruthlessness. Many survivors of the Crusade were also in shock from the realization of the grim darkness that seemed to rule the galaxy. Those of them who failed to recover after conventional treatment were transferred to special facilities, where they could be cared for.

Before despair could take root, however, the Ethereals revealed that Mankind was far from united in its hatred of all things different from itself. In the last months of the Second Expansion Sphere, Tau diplomats had made contact with envoys from a region of space called the Kingdom of Ultramar, which was inhabited by humans who had no love for the Imperium's barbaric ways.

When the distant ancestors of Ultramar's denizens had rejected the tyranny of the Imperium, a great war had followed, one of such scale and antiquity that it had long since become myth to both sides. Whatever the truth of what exactly had happened, however, one thing was obvious : unable to crush the spirit of the Ultramarines (as the denizens of Ultramar called themselves), the Imperium had instead chosen to imprison them within their borders, in the foolish hope that their ideals would be contained. A mighty weapon had been unleashed, one that had sundered reality itself, creating a space-time anomaly all around the borders of Ultramar and turning a region of space several times the size of the entire Tau Empire into a vast, galactic prison. The envoys who had reached out to the Tau had done so at great cost and greater risk, slipping out of their cage in order to make contact with the Empire, all in order to plead for aid.

After much deliberation, the recorded announcement of Supreme Ethereal Aun'Wei declared, the Ethereal Council had chosen to answer this plea. This contact by the Kingdom of Ultramar, the Supreme Ethereal declared, was proof of the Tau Empire's righteous destiny of uniting the galaxy under the aegis of the Greater Good.

For the next two hundred years, the Tau Empire prepared. Its borders with the Imperium were solidified, abandoning thoughts of expanding in this direction until the time had come. The envoys from Ultramar had also warned that, should the Imperials learn of their alliance, they would stop at nothing to eradicate the Tau Empire completely, such was the depth of their ingrained, mindless hatred.

The Tau worlds nearest the Damocles Gulf were remade into fortresses to guard against Imperial aggression, while the Third Sphere of Expansion was launched in the opposite direction, discovering far fewer worlds suitable for colonization than the First and Second Spheres. Combined with his advancing age, this led to the retirement of the Supreme Ethereal Aun'Wei, and the ascension of his protegee, Aun'Va, whose wisdom and charisma helped the Castes deal with these great setbacks to the advancement of the Greater Good.

The Earth Caste designed new weapons based on the data collected during the Damocles Gulf Crusade, while the Fire Caste commanders developed new tactics. For all its great strength, the Imperium was painfully slow to adapt, as mired in its ways in military matters as it was when it came to philosophical ones. Meanwhile, using records from the Imperial planets that had briefly been conquered by the Tau Empire, the Water Caste cultivated a righteous hatred not of Mankind, but of the Imperium among the people of the Tau Empire.

Just as the Ethereals had saved the Tau from themselves during the Mont'au, so the Tau'va would save Mankind from the Imperium, displays and broadcasts all across the Tau Empire declared. Untold billions lived in obscene squalor, enslaved to a culture so barbaric and entrenched in its ways that it could not be redeemed, only destroyed, razed to the ground so that something new, something better, could be grown from the ashes. The Kingdom of Ultramar was proof that, despite thousands of years of vicious, self-perpetuating abuse and oppression, Mankind still yearned for something better.

Two centuries passed thus, until at last, the Ethereal Council declared that the time had come. The Ultramarines' own preparations for their long-awaited freedom had been completed, and now was the time for the Tau Empire to fulfill its part of the new alliance.

Rarely before had such a vast coalition of the Kor'vattra, the fleet of the Tau Empire, been gathered in one place. Following the defeat at Hydass, the Kor'vattra had been completely redesigned, with some of the Earth Caste's brightest minds working to learn from the lessons of that disastrous battle. The output of the industry of entire star systems had been dedicated to assembling this grand armada, made up of the most advanced ships, crewed by the most talented Air Caste personnel and transporting the greatest troops of the Fire Caste. And yet, in the final hours of the muster, those who gazed upon its might couldn't help but think of how small it was compared to the Imperium's innumerable hosts.

The goal of this expedition was to break through the so-called 'Iron Cage' that the Imperium maintained to keep the Ultramarines contained, allowing them to return to the galaxy and join the Greater Good as allies against the oppression and barbarism of their Imperial cousins. The coalition was under the spiritual leadership of the venerable Ethereal Aun'Shi, while its martial guidance was shared by Admiral Kor'o Tau'n Viel of the Air Caste, and the two greatest heroes of the Fire Caste : Commanders Farsight and Shadowsun.


Aun'Shi, He Who Fought

Aun'el Viora'la Shi, more commonly referred to as Aun'Shi, is a unique figure among the rare Ethereal breed of the Tau race. It is already very rare for members of that most sacred of Castes to take to the battlefield, and when they do it is to serve as pillars holding up the morale of the Fire Caste, their very presence inspiring the warriors of the Tau'va to greater heights of martial prowess. Aun'Shi, however, is known across the Tau Empire for fighting alongside the Fire Caste, wielding his bladed spear with unparalleled skill.

Aun'Shi's legend was forged on the Tau world of Kel'tyr, where the Ethereal was sent in what was supposed to be his final assignment before retirement. Instead of a peaceful posting, he found a world beset by the cruel Var Sin'da, the dark raiding ones, known to the distant Imperium as the Drukhari. Hundreds of Tau had already been taken by the raiders, condemned to an unspeakable fate. Among those lost was the local commander of the Fire Caste, whose screams the twisted aliens had delighted in broadcasting across the entire planet for weeks before he'd finally perished. Attempts to call for aid had been thwarted, every messenger drone intercepted and destroyed.

Assuming direct control of the Fire Caste elements, Aun'Shi led the defense of the planet, confronting the Var Sin'da himself several times over the course of the following weeks, matching his martial might against their cowardly way of war. He had seen through the Var Sin'da, and knew that they relied on fear to cow their victims, using displays of monstrous cruelty to break the will to resist of their foes. This, Aun'Shi divined, wasn't something they did merely for their own twisted pleasure, but because for all their strength and technology, their numbers were few : they couldn't triumph in a straight, direct fight against a force that simply refused to break.

By the time the next flotilla of cargo transports arrived to bring supplies and carry Kel'tyr's output to other worlds of the Tau Empire, the alien raiders had been defeated, though less than a tenth of the Fire Warriors had survived the brutal campaign. Despite having fought at the forefront of every battle, his presence inspiring the Fire Caste to fight even in the face of the Var Sin'da's horror, Aun'Shi yet lived, having defeated the raiders' leader in person at the war's climax.

For this, Aun'Shi was proclaimed a hero of the Tau'va, the tale of his heroism spreading throughout the Empire. As one might expect, his reputation was strongest among the members of the Fire Caste, and there was much rejoicing when his leadership of the Olympia Expedition was announced.


Farsight and Shadowsun : The Heirs of Puretide

Among the members of the Fire Caste, none are more renowned than Commanders O'Shaserra and O'Shovah, Shadowsun and Farsight. But the legend of these commanders begin with another, that of Commander Puretide.

During the early years of the Second Sphere of Expansion, Commander Puretide showed himself to be the greatest Tau commander to have ever lived. Several bellicose alien species chose to join the Tau Empire out of respect for his martial prowess, and he was the first to break the Orks' will to fight after a protracted campaign of long-range bombardments and lightning ambushes. In the end, however, crippling injuries forced him to retire to the world of Dal'yth Prime, where he dedicated himself to teaching the next generation of Fire Caste officers. While his writings still form the foundation of the Fire Caste to this day, there were three young officers who caught his eye and were brought to his hermitage atop Mount Kan'ji in order to receive his tutelage in person.

These three students were Shoh, Shas and Kais. They were all exemplars of the Fire Caste, whose already exceptional talents were honed even further under Puretide's tutelage, each of them rising to master a specific aspect of the art of war. Shoh mastered the Mont'ka, the Way of the Killing Blow, while Shas specialized in the Kauyon, the Way of the Patient Hunter, and Kais somewhat eschewed Tau convention by embracing the Monat, the Way of the Lone Warrior.

Bound by the sacred rite of ta'lissera, it was hoped that, together, these three students would one day surpass their master and carry the Tau Empire to new heights. But that hope was most cruelly betrayed when Kais, having grown envious of his companions' swift progress in mastering Puretide's teachings, fell from the path of the Tau'va. Selfish desires and ambition consumed his heart, and in his madness, he struck down his own master before fleeing into the wilderness of Dal'yth Prime.

Shoh and Shas discovered their mentor's corpse upon returning from a training trip. So consumed by madness was Kais that he had failed to wipe the recording devices set up to preserve Puretide's wisdom for posterity, and the two bonded companions quickly learned the awful truth of their former comrade's hideous betrayal. Together, they hunted and slayed Kais the Traitor at the end of a prolonged pursuit, avenging their fallen master. But even with that was a bitter victory, and Kais' betrayal cast a shadow over the bond between them, and they grew more and more distant over the following years. Both blamed themselves for their mentor's death, and the other's presence reminded them of it.

Yet despite the tragedy that befell them, the heirs of Puretide remained valiant defenders of the Tau'va. Following the Imperium's onslaught in the Damocles Gulf, both of Puretide's heirs were deployed to assist in stopping the Imperial advance. While not even their strategic mastery was enough to safeguard the recently conquered worlds beyond the Gulf, their actions saved the lives of millions of their people. In the Crusade's aftermath, partly to preserve their genius and partly because the Tau Empire was badly in need of symbols, the Ethereal Council decreed that the two of them would be placed into stasis, awakened only in time of great need. With Commander Puretide slain by the treacherous Kais, the wisdom he had passed on to his two greatest students had to be preserved for the Greater Good at any cost. To prevent losing them both at once to accident or assassination, their stasis crypts were kept separated, each hero slumbering on their native sept world.

In the two centuries since, the two commanders were awakened only once each. O'Shovah was called upon to help the Tau Empire fight off the Tyranid Hive-Fleet Gorgon, his strategic genius combining with the inventivity of the Earth Caste to match the endless adaptability of the Great Devourer until its swarms were pushed back from the Tau Empire. Although entire allied species and colony worlds were lost, O'Shovah was hailed as a hero and savior of the Tau Empire, humbly accepting the honors bestowed upon him by the Ethereal Council alongside the title of 'Farsight' before returning to stasis.

O'Shaserra was awakened years later in what would come to be known as the Great War of Confederation, a battle for survival which saw the entire might of the Tau Empire pitched against an immense Ork Waaaagh ! It was during that conflict that O'Shaserra earned her own moniker of 'Shadowsun', after taking advantage of a solar eclipse to slaughter an entire horde on K'resh, culminating with her killing the Ork Warboss single-handedly and breaking the invasion's back.

When O'Shaserra and O'Shovah were awakened once more to participate in the strike on the Iron Cage, they found that they had become figures of legend to the rest of the Tau Empire. While much of the Empire remained as they remembered it, they found themselves struggling to cope with the adoration of the soldiers they were meant to lead in the name of the Ethereals, they threw themselves head-first into their new mission in order to avoid dwelling on what, to them, was but recent news, but was to everyone else ancient history.

Such was their dedication to their work that, from the hour of their awakening to the departure of the fleet, they did not spare one moment to meet outside of official circumstances.


In order to break the Iron Cage, the Tau coalition needed to go to the system called Olympia by the gue'la Imperium. To reach this star system, the fleet skirted around the Iron Cage that surrounded Ultramar, following a route decided by the Ethereals with the help of their Ultramarine allies in order to avoid premature detection by the Imperium.

Secrecy was of paramount importance, for should the Imperials detect the Tau fleet before the proper time, the entire operation would collapse. As such, the journey was a long one, stretching over many years that were at once impossibly tense and dreadfully boring. The members of the Fire Caste aboard the fleet who did not choose to enter cryostasis passed the time in training modules designed to simulate battle against the gue'la, each cycle spent within these false realities reaffirming their conviction in the Greater Good's supremacy over the Imperium's barbarism.

Due to the harshness of the trip and the importance of keeping not only its destination, but its very existence from the gue'la Imperium, the Ethereal Council had made the decision that no contingent of the Tau auxiliaries, those members of alien races who had embraced the Tau'va and joined the Empire, would be part of the operation. Despite their unwavering loyalty to the Luminous Caste, the military commanders assigned to the expedition had respectfully questioned the wisdom of that decision. They had pointed out that a number of the Fire Caste's strategies depended on the help of their auxiliaries, especially when faced with the brutality of the gue'la armies. But the Ethereals had not changed their mind, instead ordering the Fire Caste to work with the Earth Caste to develop the means to expunge these weaknesses.

Despite all these precautions, the fleet nearly failed to arrive in time. On the last stretch of the journey to Olympia, the FTL drives of every ship simultaneously shut down, dropping the fleet in the void, an unimaginable distance from the nearest star. For several weeks, the artisans of the Earth Caste worked tirelessly to repair the damage, but though they succeeded in time for the fleet to resume its advance while within the generous margin of error the operation's architects had prepared, they were unable to offer a proper explanation as to the cause of this sudden catastrophe. Some kind of energy spike had run through the other dimension on which the drives' technology was based, but its origin was unknown. All reports of soldiers suffering from strange nightmares of a burning throne, a blazing sword, and a one-eyed, red-skinned king were dismissed, with the afflicted soldiers prescribed sleeping aids and other medication for the rest of the journey.

At last, the Tau fleet arrived at its destination, dropping from FTL speed at the edge of Olympia. The system had four planets : one of them was its capital, and already the Tau scanners could detect signs of strife on its surface as Ultramar sympathizers and anti-Imperial revolutionaries rose up in defiance of their overlords. Another was an industrial hellscape, its atmosphere so full of pollution as to make proper readings impossible – yet it was clear there was still life on the planet. The third was a gas giant, its resources mined by scores of space stations in orbit, while the last was a dead rock that still bore the traces of a murdered civilization – no doubt another victim of the Imperium's cruelty.

Even a cursory scan made it clear that Olympia was a system-sized stronghold, designed either by a genius or a madman. The amount of resources that had gone into fortifying it beggared belief, and spoke of the depths of hatred (or perhaps fear) that the leaders of the Imperium felt toward the Ultramarines. Hundreds of void-fortresses were scattered across the system, creating unimaginably vast zones of mutually covering fire with their great guns. The two inhabited planets were ringed with orbital stations and dockyards, and even the dead world had a sparse halo of observation satellites pointing down at the ruins dotting its surface.

And just like the Tau had been warned, the gue'la had reinforced this system even further, having observed activity within the Iron Cage despite the Ultramarines' best efforts to conceal their preparations. But the bulk of the new forces who had arrived at Olympia were preparing to beat back an attempted breakthrough from the Iron Cage itself : they were unprepared for the intervention of the Tau. It would take some time for them to reorganize in order to react to this new threat, and the Tau commanders intended to make the best possible use of that short window of opportunity.

Numerous ships of varied sizes and designs were present in the system, massively outnumbering the Tau vessels. Though Imperial technology was known to be far inferior to that of the Tau, the sheer resilience and pugnacity of their spacecraft had been painfully taught during the Damocles Crusade, and not even the most hot-blooded admiral of the Air Caste could claim a direct engagement would result in anything else than a defeat. But the fleet hadn't spent years making its way through the void simply to hurl themselves at the wall of gue'la ships. Through the precise application of power, the entire edifice of Imperial might in Olympia would come crashing down.

Intercepted communications revealed that the ruler of the Imperium, the mysterious and nameless Emperor, had recently perished, and some manner of succession crisis was unfolding on the distant capital of the gue'la empire. Though the Tau Empire had long since discarded the idea of omens as mere superstition, there was no denying that such news were auspicious, as they implied the Imperium would be unable to respond to the expedition with the same kind of maniacal focus it had displayed during the previous conflict.


"Heed my words, sons and daughters of the Tau'va.

For too long, our sacred purpose has been denied from us by the Imperium. For too long, the fire of our unity has been blocked by the walls it has built from its ignorance and pride.

Yet make no mistake : however long we have been forced to endure this indignity, it is as nothing compared to the long ages the Ultramarines have spent trapped within this cosmic prison the Imperium erected before its slow descent into its moribund state. For this grand injustice they call the Iron Cage has stood for fifty times longer than has passed since we were forced back behind the Damocles Gulf.

And still, they find the strength to fight back against their imprisonment, to open their heart to others and ask for their aid. It is a humbling thing, testament to the true strength of the Tau'va, that it can bind such disparate people together.

Now, at long last, their imprisonment, and the denial of our purpose, come to an end. At long last, the Greater Good shall resume its inevitable advance. For there is nothing that cannot be accomplished, no barrier that cannot be overcome, through the combined effort of the Castes !

Let none question our destiny. Let none doubt the righteousness of our cause. In the name of the Greater Good, we shall sunder the walls of this Iron Cage, and usher in a new era of strength through unity !"

Ethereal Aun'Shi, at the beginning of the Battle of Olympia.


Under Admiral Viel's direction, the coalition fleet moved toward the second, pollution-choked world of the Olympia system. Belonging to the Imperium's machine-caste, whose obsession with technology was matched only by their absurd approach to it, the planet was guarded by an extensive array of orbital defenses. To the surprise of nobody within the Tau fleet, more than a few of these orbital weapons were clearly designed to fire on the planet itself, a permanent threat to keep the population compliant with its masters' demands.

Soon, the skies of the planet were lit by the fires of the battle above, bright enough to pierce the shroud of pollutants that choked the atmosphere. Yet for all the coalition fleet's strength, it couldn't prevail against the machine-world's defenses without taking considerable casualties. And while every Tau was willing to lay down their life for the Greater Good, senseless sacrifice didn't serve the Tau'va (another key difference between them and the Imperium). Which was why, despite being carefully arranged to look like a full-on assault, Admiral Viel's onslaught was merely a distraction, one which would provide cover for a killing blow delivered by none other than Commander Shadowsun herself.

Shadowsun's target was an immense space elevator that rose from the planet's surface all the way to orbit. It was called Iacopo's Ladder, for reasons the Imperium had apparently forgotten, and helped deliver countless tons of industrial output to the cargo ships. At the top of the megastructure was a command and communication nexus which was tied to the system's greater network. The nexus was, obviously, fortified against most assaults, and was known to be crewed by gue'ron'sha warriors.

The Commander's strike team, twenty members in all, were equipped with the latest stealth technology designed by the Earth Caste, and carried by the prototype gunship Projection of Force. The stronghold's architects were no fools, of course, and they had prepared defenses against boarding attempts. But the stealth technology of the battlesuits kept the cadre safe from detection by the vast sensor arrays of the fortress just as well as it made them invisible to the naked eye. They were as ghosts as the Projection of Force stopped less than a hundred meters from its void shield, and the team made the last leg of the trip by jumping out of the gunship and letting their momentum carry them across the void, briefly shutting down their battlesuits' systems as they crossed the shield.

After several moments of powerless drifting, the feet of their battlesuits magnetically locked to the nexus, and the strike team moved across its surface. Eventually, they reached their designated point of entry : a maintenance hatch large enough for the battlesuits to pass through. From this point, stealth would've to be abandoned, as the Tau had to cut their way in with plasma fire, immediately causing the alarm to be raised. The nexus had been on high alert since the arrival of the Tau fleet, and squads of armsmen converged on Shadowsun's position, only to be cut down by precisely aimed volleys of plasma fire.

O'Shaserra led her kill team deeper into the station, moving at full speed to avoid being bogged down by the gue'la superior numbers. The plans their Ultramarine allies had provided them matched the inside of the fortress perfectly. To Shadowsun, the fact that such vital intelligence had been made available to them was yet another proof of the righteousness of the Tau'va : even here, at the heart of the Imperium's crushing might, there had been those willing to risk everything in hope of a better tomorrow.

By the time the kill team reached their destination, the nexus' command center, the opposition they faced had graduated from gue'la troopers to much more dangerous gue'ron'sha warriors. Half of her people had fallen before Shadowsun breached the doors herself, revealing the vast chamber where dozens of things that were more metal than flesh were plugged into their stations. The sight repelled her, for she knew that not all of these members of the machine-caste were able to move any longer – some had even been robbed of their minds entirely, reduced to nothing more than living hardware for the Imperium's machines.

And there, standing directly in front of the breached door, was the gue'ron'sha commander her briefing had told her would be here, wearing a suit of armor larger than any of his comrades', leaving him approximately as tall as Shadowsun in her XV22. Terminator armor, her suit's display informed her. In his hands, he carried a hammer crackling with the energy discharges of its primitive power field, and though the weapon was crude in the extreme, Shadowsun knew better than to underestimate the destruction it could wreak.

At his side stood several soldiers of the machine-caste, looking almost comically small in comparison. Without any hesitation, the warrior charged, a thundering war cry erupting from his helmet's mouth-grill.


Shadowsun breathed heavily within her battlesuit, surrounded by the ruin of the command room. Her shield's display read silver, marking a fifty-three percent charge. In a single blow of his hammer, the warrior had shaved off nearly half of her suit's defenses. The XV22 Stealthsuit wasn't as heavily shielded as other Battlesuits, but there was no denying the strength of the gue'la warrior caste. Were it not for the energy shield, her armor would have folded like paper under the strength of the blow.

Her enemy (the name engraved on his shoulder paldron identified him as 'Auric') laid on the floor before her, his armor pierced all the way through by focused plasma fire in several places. One of his arms was gone at the shoulder and the other was broken, his helmet was gone, revealing a hard, scarred face that was pale from blood loss. And yet despite it all, he still clung to life.

It beggared her imagination that, like all gue'ron'sha, the giant had once been an ordinary human child, ripped from the arms of his kin in order to be remade into another brutish tool of violence with which the Imperium could enforce its cruel rule.

His armor was painted in different colors than those of the warriors she had faced on Dal'yth. Instead of the white and blue of the shock troops that had led the Imperial vanguard with such devastating results, this one's was a metallic grey, with yellow and black stripes the only spot of color, while a grim metallic skull replaced the sinister iconography of a world held between the jaws of a cosmic predator.

"It's over, Eater of Worlds," she told the gue'ron'sha, her suit translating her words into his language as she spoke them. He had fought well, and was deserving of her respect. "You've lost."

To her surprise, he laughed.

"Oh, you ignorant fool," he grunted, his words' translation running on her screen. "I am no World Eater; I am an Iron Warrior, a proud son of Perturabo. Or did you think all of us Astartes are from Angron's gene-line ? You really have no idea what you are dealing with." Suddenly, all humor vanished from his expression. "Or else you wouldn't have come here of all places. Your kind meddles in forces beyond your reckoning. I don't know what lies the Thirteenth told you, but whatever deal you've made, you will regret it."

"The Greater Good shall prevail over the Imperium's blind hatred," she replied. "Our destiny shall not be denied."

"Do not speak to me destiny," he snarled. "We've spent a hundred centuries fighting against those who made such claims -"

"Commander Shadowsun," said the voice of Aun'Shi in her ear, cutting off the gue'ron'sha's ranting. It was almost unheard of for an Ethereal to contact a member of the Fire Caste in the middle of a military operation, but then this was Aun'Shi, who had ever stood at the side of the Fire Warriors. "We've no time to waste. Finish him."

Her finger tightened around the trigger of her plasma gun, and the head of the World Eater – no, the Iron Warrior, she corrected herself – vanished.

"Good. Now proceed with your mission."

Shadowsun moved toward a bulky contraption at the back of the room. While most of the room was in shambles, this particular engine had been spared. Her efforts to ensure that was the case were partially to blame for the fact that she alone had survived the battle out of her entire diminished squad, apart from her two drones.

"This is it. Faithful helper, if you would ?"

"Of course, Commander Shadowsun," replied Oe-ken-yon, her assigned MV62 command-link drone, in a sing-song voice, before hovering above the Imperial machine and extending a connecting tendril. The appendage had been added to his chassis prior to this mission, so that he might link with the Imperials' primitive machines and deliver the weapon the Ultramarine envoys had given to the Tau Empire for this precise purpose.

The weapon in question was a piece of software designed to spread through the Imperial systems and cripple them, blocking their communications and revealing the hidden target of the entire expedition. It supposedly used concepts the Ultramarines' equivalent of the Earth Caste had uncovered in their millennia-long struggle against the Imperium.

"Link established," said Oe-ken-yon after a few seconds of searching for the correct input port. Uploading package ... uplo-what is that ? What what what what -"

"Little helper ?!" Shadowsun called out in sudden alarm. "Oe-ken-yon ! What's wrong ?"

"Co-co-command-commander -"

This was the drone's final word, for his voice turned into a shriek that went higher and higher, until he exploded into a shower of burning shrapnel that slammed into Shadowsun's energy shield harmlessly. She stared at the metal corpse of her companion, feeling numb. What had just happened ?

Then, suddenly, Iacopo's Ladder began to shake under her feet.


The Shriek, as the Ultramarine envoys had named the weapon, spread swiftly all across the Imperials' primitive communications. Within moments, entire sections of the vast network of void fortifications were blind, deaf and mute, their machine-cast hard at work to restore communication.

That much had been expected by the Tau, but what accompanied it had not. As Shadowsun departed, jumping back across the void to be picked up by the Projection of Force, detonations bloomed all across Iacopo's Ladder, entire sections of the megastructure collapsing and falling to the planet below as megaton meteors. Given the crowded conditions of Imperial habitats, Shadowsun struggled to imagine the death toll her operation had caused, but knew it must be in the millions.

She had caused the death of more Orks during the campaign that had given her her title, but those had been be'gels : they had already proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there was no place in the Greater Good for them. Here, the dead were gue'la who had spent their entire lives enslaved, members of a species that had proven they could understand, join and prosper within the Tau'va.


"Commander Shadowsun," said the voice of Aun'Shi over the cadrenet, cutting through O'Shaserra's morbid thoughts.

"Yes, wise one ?" she replied.

"I can sense your grief, Commander. While it reflects well on you, know that you share no guilt over this devastation. The Shriek was meant to disable the gue'la networks, as you are aware. But we underestimated the scale of the Ladder's decrepitude."

Of course. It was typical of the Imperium to skip on maintenance in the name of short-term gains.

"Wise one … the helper-drone who delivered the Shriek was destroyed in the process. Did you -" She hesitated, but forced herself to continue : "Did you know this would happen to him ?"

"Sacrifices must be made for the Greater Good, Commander Shadowsun. Now, return to the flagship," commanded Aun'Shi. "Though it came at great cost, you have played your part in this battle well. Now it is time for Commander Farsight to play his."

"As you command, wise one."


Despite its unintended consequences, the weapon the Ultramarines had provided had fulfilled its purpose. For all the ways in which Tau technology was superior to that of Humanity, there were still areas where the older species had the edge, and nowhere was this clearer than when it came to the psychic sciences. The Tau lacked the natural understanding of such things that manifested at random among so many of the other species they had encountered, and progress in unravelling this mystery had been frustratingly slow.

According to the Ultramarines, it was through the application of psychic energy that the great barrier surrounding their domain had been constructed in ancient times, preventing them from leaving except in small ships, which needed to perform extraordinarily hazardous crossings in order to escape their prison. And those same energies (which the Tau referred to simply as 'mind-science' instead of the myriad superstitious names other races had bestowed upon these strange abilities) had been used to conceal the true target of the Olympia Expedition.

But as the Shriek spread through the entire star system, the delicate balance that shrouded that target from detection was shattered. There was a spike of energy that required a hard reboot of every sensor system in the fleet, but when the Tau ships could see once more, a new object had appeared in void where before they could see nothing. It was vast, a disc of metal ten kilometers in diameter, its surface inscribed with millions of sigils that baffled the Tau automated translators. Countless batteries were mounted on its periphery, and within mere seconds of its unveiling a great energy shield shimmered into existence around it.

This was the Keystone, lynchpin of the entire Iron Cage that kept the Ultramarines trapped, and whose very existence was a secret it had supposedly taken over sixty centuries for the Ultramarines to discover. Yet though it was exposed, the Tau leadership knew this was unlikely to last. The exact mechanism of the Keystone's concealment had been beyond their Ultramarine allies to uncover, but military wisdom dictated that they assume the damage caused by the Shriek would eventually be repaired.

Commander Shadowsun had done her part : now, as she prepared for the arrival of the Imperial relief force, it was time for Commander Farsight to do his.


"We are born with free will, but an ignorant choice can lead us to darkness just as easily than slavery.

That is why it befalls us to use that gift responsibly. Learn the glory of the Tau'va. Bask in the radiance of the unity it brings.

Understand your place within the Greater Good, and accept it. Only then will you find peace, under the guiding light of the Ethereals."

Sio't meditation, attributed to Commander Puretide (added to the Sio't posthumously).


How exactly the disruption caused by the Shriek had stripped away the Keystone's veil, Farsight had no idea. Even O'Vesa, the Stone Dragon, his ancient Earth Caste companion, whose lifespan had been extended far beyond normal thanks to the experimental nano-drones he'd designed and used on himself, couldn't make sense of it. The Keystone operated completely independently from the rest of the system, cut off from every network. It made no sense that a software attack had affected it like this.

Clearly there was more to the Shriek than what the Commander had been told, especially in light of the destruction that had followed its activation. But Farsight couldn't afford to spend time pondering these matters, for despite the confusion caused by the Shriek, several Imperial battlegroups were moving to the Keystone's aid at full speed. Speed was of the essence : within a few hours, these reinforcements would make the planned assault all but impossible. And so Commander Farsight was forced to discard most of his carefully constructed plans and fall back on a short, brutal, and costly approach.

The words of the Ethereals silenced his doubts at the sacrifices this would require, but not even they could extinguish the grief within his heart. Farsight's care for the troops under his command had always been part of what made him a great commander in the first place : his determination not to see their lives wasted had fuelled his drive to improve for years, as he led the Fire Caste to victory after victory, ending with the great triumph over the Tyranids.

The scale was smaller here, but the stakes were just as high. The long-term survival of the Greater Good depended on the success of their alliance with the Ultramarines. Farsight knew better than anyone save his remaining bondmate how close the Tau Empire had come to destruction two centuries prior, and how only a miracle had saved them. Eventually, however, the Imperium would return its hate-filled gaze on their small corner of the galaxy, because its poisonous ideology couldn't tolerate the existence of any rivals to its galactic hegemony. And why O'Shovah could and would do his best to prepare his people for such a conflict, he knew the brutal arithmetics of warfare could allow for only one final result.

They needed allies, it was as simple as that. The Tau'va strength had ever laid in its ability to pull disparate people together for a common goal. The strength, resources and knowledge of the Ultramarines would go a long way toward tipping the balance to a point where even the fanatical zealots who controlled the Imperium would hesitate at the idea of attacking their alliance, and that hesitation would send cracks throughout the whole rotting edifice.

Such had been the logic of the Ethereals, and Farsight couldn't find any fault in it. Nor could he dispute the justice of freeing the Ultramarines from their cosmic prison, for only an empire as barbaric as the Imperium would see fit to continue punishing the descendants of its enemies so many generations after the actual conflict. The only thing that gave O'Shovah pause was what the cost of this liberation would be.

Only a portion of the Tau fleet had taken part in the assault on the machine-world. The bulk of the coalition, among which were scores of vast transports containing millions of Fire Warriors, still hung back in the void : enough for the Tau Empire to fight alongside the Ultramarines once the Iron Cage was broken and their waiting armada could escape. With the Keystone now revealed, one ship, a leviathan of the deep whose size dwarfed every other Tau vessel, fired its engines.

The Crown of Ascension was a ship unlike any built by the Earth Caste prior to the Damocles Crusade. As the flagship of the coalition fleet, it held tens of thousands of Fire Warrior within its kilometers-long hull, and boasted of shields and weapon systems several orders of magnitude more potent than the Air Caste's doctrines had calculated were the most cost-effective levels. However, the Ethereal Council had decreed that only by embracing such illogical excess could the Tau prevail against the obscene might of Olympia's defenses. As the Keystone's batteries opened fire, the wisdom of their decision was made plain, for no smaller vessel could have withstood the devastating barrage in order to get close enough for the next phase of Farsight's planned assault.


Clad in his Hero's Mantle, which stood within the launching bay of the Crown of Ascension, in the final moments before battle when there was nothing to do but wait, the mind of O'Shovah once more trod all ground. It was a habit that had developed during the long journey from Tau space to this system, and one he'd been unable to shake off despite its best efforts.

He couldn't help but wonder. Why had O'Shaserra not been awakened during the eleven long years of the war against the Tyranids ? And why hadn't he been roused to help her against the Orks in the Great War of Confederation ? He knew the Ethereals must have had their reasons, of course, and it wasn't his place to question them, but he couldn't stop himself from thinking about it, trying to puzzle their motives.

He and Shadowsun (a name that fit his old friend and rival) had proven during the Damocles Gulf campaign that they did their best work together, the strengths of each complementing the other's. And surely the Ethereals knew this too, since they had awakened them both for this mission. Had the Ethereals wanted to make sure one of them would still be alive if the other failed and died ? O'Shovah was all too aware of the propaganda icons the two remaining pupils of Puretide had become, however uncomfortable the thought made him. Losing one of them would have been a severe blow to morale; losing both would have been something only the loss of the Ethereal Supreme could have surpassed.

It made sense, although from a strategic perspective Farsight would still have awakened them both, given how dire the threat had been in each instance. Had he failed against the Devourer, then the entire Tau people would've been lost, and their fate wouldn't have been much kinder had O'Shaserra not wielded the teachings of Puretide so successfully.

But then again, the Tau Empire had prevailed in the end. Perhaps it was his pride talking, making him overestimate the direct impact any single warrior could have on war beyond serving as a figurehead to inspire the troops.

Or perhaps, whispered a voice at the back of his mind that, despite all his efforts over the decades, he had never been able to silence, there is something wrong with the Ethereals' judgment.

The voice belonged to Kais, the traitor who had slain Master Puretide all those years ago. Since they had killed him on Dal'yth, his ghost had haunted Farsight, a mask worn by the darkness lurking within his own heart that, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to banish to the hellish pits where it and his renegade bondmate belonged.

The ship shook under enemy fire, drawing Farsight's mind back to the present. On the screens of his battlesuit's internal display, he saw that the Crown was in position. He opened the cadrenet and spoke, forcing his voice to be as calm and confident as the troops under his command expected him to be :

"All decks, begin the deployment of the XV169s. In the name of the Greater Good !"


The XV169 Void Boarding Battlesuit

Designed by the Earth Caste in response to the events of the Damocles Gulf Crusade, the XV169 is far more capable in close quarters engagements than any of the other models used by the Fire Caste. Representing a complete departure from the Fire Caste's usual approach to warfare, it was nevertheless produced in vast quantities in order to cover the needs of the Olympia expedition.

The XV169 is equipped with a short-range plasma weapon capable of punching through gue'ron'sha armor, along with a pair of assigned drones tasked with providing fire support and projecting an energy shield. A suite of thrusters allow it to move through the void under its own power in order to reach its target, at which point an entry can be created through the use of its plasma torch, which doubles as a melee weapon.

During testing, the XV169 proved more than satisfactory against the gue'ron'sha simulacra created by the Earth Caste. All reports of test pilots developing mental issues resulting in overzealous levels of aggression were promptly suppressed, with the Ethereals overseeing the project declaring it the result of the warriors' minds taking the lessons of the Damocles campaign to heart.


As the waves of XV169 battlesuits were unleashed from the hold of the Crown of Ascension, the Keystone's point defenses went live. Hundreds of Fire Warriors died within seconds, and more perished with every passing moment as the Keystone unleashed a veritable deluge of fire. The void between the station and its shield was soon full of torn metal and Tau corpses, yet still more voidsuits poured out of the coalition's launching decks.

In his custom Coldstar battlesuit, Farsight watched the carnage unfold, forcing himself to ignore the screams of his conscience at the sight of so many of his brethren laying down their lives. He could not save them, but he could make sure their sacrifice wasn't in vain. With the help of his battlesuit's artificial intelligence, he looked at the patterns of fire and death, searching not for a weak spot (for he knew better than to assume the Imperials would have left one in such an important structure) but for the point which would take the least casualties.

Finally, the Fire Caste Commander's well-honed mind found what he was looking for. With a single order, the entire tide of XV169s shifted its approach, and the first breaches into the Keystone were made.

The interior of the Keystone contained a mix of gases that, according to Farsight's battlesuit, were utterly inimical to Tau and gue'la both. Fortunately, the XV169's systems, which could brave the cold void of space, were more than able of handling this environment.

Secrecy may have been the Keystone Station's greatest defense, but it was far from the only one. Within moments of their intrusion, the Fire Warriors were attacked by the Keystone's defenders. As he watched the footage from the embattled units, Farsight recognized their enemies from the old records : they were what the Imperials referred to as Kastelan robots. As was typical of the Imperium's stagnant technology, these models didn't seem any different from those the Tau had encountered centuries ago, apart from their painting, which was a dull metallic grey instead of red, and perhaps a greater variety of weapons. The machine-caste handlers that had always accompanied them in previous engagements were completely absent, however.

This struck Farsight as strange, for the Imperium's irrational hatred for artificial intelligence was well-documented. After a few moments, however, his companion O'Vesa uncovered the truth. The gue'la robots did not possess any true intelligence, but merely acted according to a very basic programming, shifting from one mode of behavior to another based upon instructions received from a central command. What was truly surprising was that, according to the Stone Dragon's analysis, a single gue'la mind appeared to be directing the entire army.

The first boarding parties directed their efforts toward disabling as many of the Keystone's point-blank defenses as they could, creating more openings for their comrades to join them. In this, they were successful, but were swiftly overwhelmed by the Kastelan robots, leading to a complete wipe-out of the first wave. Their sacrifice had bought Farsight the opportunities he needed to deploy more of his troops on the Keystone in order to secure several beachheads, and soon thousands more Fire Warriors landed, eventually joined by Farsight himself, once the Tau Commander judged he could join the fray without risking his own life too much – for, much as it rankled O'Shovah, his continued survival was of far greater importance to the Greater Good than that of the soldiers under his command, something Aun'Shi had repeatedly reminded him of as they designed their plan of attack.

The battle that ensued was brutal. The Kastelans felt no fear, and fought unto their destruction without any hesitation, while the Fire Warriors pressed ever onward, driven by the importance of their mission to the Greater Good. Soon, the station's corridors were filled with broken robots and battlesuits. And still, more Tau warriors made it through the gauntlet of defenses, while additional machines were awakened from storage vaults deeper within the station.

Whoever it was who guided the Kastelans (despite Farsight's best efforts to locate them in the hope of performing a decapitation strike, they remained frustratingly hidden from detection) also had control of the station's systems, and used both with a tactical acumen that awed Farsight despite the toll it was taking on his men. Automated weapon emplacements fired right into melees with pinpoint accuracy; blast doors opened and closed in time with the robots' advance; lumens flared with the intensity of flashbang grenades just before the blinded Tau were suddenly attacked.

Despite all of this, the Tau pressed on, deeper and deeper into the Keystone. As they advanced, the fell energies channelled by the structure's mind-science technology began to affect Farsight's troops. Reports of splitting headaches, auditory and visual hallucinations, and bouts of madness multiplied, leading to several instances of friendly fire. This, O'Shovah realized, was why the Imperials had only crewed this vital installation with purely mechanical constructs, which were immune to those inimical effects : indeed, the Tau drones accompanying the attackers were similarly unaffected.

Driven by Aun'Shi's orders, Farsight pushed further into the Keystone, ordering his forces to rely upon the drones' own senses rather than trust their own. Fortunately, the Tau Commander wasn't among the afflicted, allowing him to continue leading the attack effectively.

Further and further went O'Shovah, but the deeper into the Keystone he and his warriors pushed, the worst their communications became and the stronger the mind-science influence, until eventually Farsight was forced to order his remaining troops to fall back. For some unknown reason, perhaps a quirk of his Coldstar battlesuit's design, the Commander was still unaffected by the fell pressure. While leaving his soldiers without his guidance sat ill with him, O'Shovah knew that only by disabling the Keystone could he achieve victory and put an end to the increasing death count.

Deeper into the station, the architecture of the Keystone changed. Farsight's surroundings went from cold and unfeeling metal to smooth white stone, engraved with delicate hexagonal sigils that glowed softly gold. There was no trace of anymore Kastelan robots, nor any other defensive mechanism, but Farsight didn't let his guard down. Only when he reached what his battlesuit told him was the center of the Keystone did he catch a glimpse of a towering humanoid figure standing immobile within a hexagonal chamber.

It was larger and bulkier than the Kastelans, its design far more elaborate, and painted in crimson. On one of its shoulder was painted a stylized sun, while on the other was written 'XV', the Imperial numeral for fifteen, along with name in standard Imperial Gothic, 'Kadeth'. However, Farsight's battlesuit couldn't detect any active power source within, nor any sign of the biological pilot that such engines (called 'Dreadnoughts' by the Imperium) required to function.

Dismissing it as a mere monument, left there to honor some long-dead Imperial, Farsight turned his attention to the rest of the room. Six faceless statues of humanoids made of the same white stones as the walls had been arranged in a circle, their backs against the walls and facing inward. Each statue wore several pieces of strange, gleaming jewellery that defied all of his suit's attempts at identifying their material. The ground was covering in complex, intricate patterns that glowed silver and gold, converging on a large sword of alien design that was stabbed right through the stone.

Looking at the weapon made Farsight's head ache, even through the screen of his battlesuit. It hummed with power, and before he realized it O'Shovah was advancing toward it, though to do what he had no idea.

His advance was suddenly interrupted by a noise from behind. Turning around at speed, he saw that the large crimson walker had begun to move. His sensors hadn't detected any power source – and they still didn't, he noticed. Unless the Imperium had access to stealth technology more advanced than anything the Earth Caste could build and had decided to use it on a walker right in the open, there was only one explanation : more gue'la mind-science was at play, somehow animating this Dreadnought.

For all that Farsight's battlesuit was cutting edge, it was still at a disadvantage in such close quarters. Its weaponry was primarily designed for short-range exchanges of fire, whereas the Imperial walker embodied the Imperium's brutish approach to warfare. Each of its arms ended in a curved blade haloed by a nimbus of energy that cut right through the Coldstar's shields, while its fists fired massive shells from built-in twin-linked bolters. Again and again, Farsight was forced to give ground, barely keeping ahead of the gleaming blades as they sought to cut through his suit and end his life.

In one single, desperate motion, O'Shovah pulled the sword from the stone and into his adversary's chest. The blade cut through its armor like a knife parting silk, and the Dreadnought froze into place.

But it wasn't the only thing it severed, and in that moment O'Shovah's fate, and that of the entire Tau race, was forever altered.


The sword – the Dawn Blade, he knows its name better than his own – cuts and cuts and cuts. Air and metal animated by mind-science, and then time and lies –

he is on a world of sandstorms, fighting the greenskins alongside his comrades as hungry ghosts howled in the wind, demanding revenge -

he is on orbit around Dal'yth, being told to surrender his wounded soldiers to the scientists of the Earth Caste so that they can still serve the Greater Good despite their broken bodies and minds -

he is on Mount Kan'ji, returning to the modest home where Master Puretide lives. Shas and Kais are walking with me : their latest training exercise required the three of them to work together.

They can hear a voice coming out of the house.

"So it failed. A shame. His imprint would have been most useful, once the proper adjustments had been made."

The voice is cold. Cruel. The three of them are exhausted from their training, and carry no weapons but the ones they have fashioned for themselves, but they advance as one regardless, rushing to their master's aid.

They cry out as they see him, in shock and grief. Puretide lies on the ground, his face a rictus of purest agony, his skull topped by a strange device that doesn't resemble any Earth Caste construct they have ever seen. And standing over him is an Ethereal, who looks at their arrival with a sneer.

"Ah, of course. The students. Do not move," he orders, and they freeze. It is a reflex, the habit of a lifetime, yet for the first time Shoh does not want to obey. He does not know what he wants to do, only that this is wrong, wrong, wrong.

His bondmates are petrified as he is, unable to do anything as the Ethereal rips the device from Puretide's corpse and approaches them.

"You three will have to do, then," he says. He isn't talking to them, Shoh realizes, but at them. None of the Ethereals' usual kindness and wisdom is visible on his face, only cold, pitiless calculation. "Perhaps a combination of several eidolons will serve better, in any case."

The Ethereal walks toward Shoh, raising the unknown device, the device that killed Puretide. From up close, it looks like a crown of thorns, ready to pierce through the Fire Warrior's skull. And still he does not move -

But Kais does. At the last moment, just before the unknown Ethereal can place the device on Shoh's head, his bondmate erupts into motion. He kicks the Ethereal in the chest, grab the device from his hands and dashes it to the ground. It shatters to pieces with a sound entirely too scream-like.

And then the Ethereal is standing again, fury written plain on his face. But Kais is already gone, running outside the building, to disappear into the wilds of Mount Kan'ji. The Ethereal snarls, before rounding up on Shoh and Shas, still frozen in place by his command.

"Kais killed Puretide," the Ethereal lies, and his lie becomes the truth inside Shoh's mind. "You caught him in the act. We weren't there. Go, and avenge your master."

They go to track down their last bondmate, hunting him across Mount Kan'ji for days. Kais is good, but he is alone, and without provisions, while they restocked before departing. Eventually, they corner him.

Kais doesn't fight back once he realizes they cannot hear his words. He let them cut his throat with the very knives they had used in their bonding ceremony, tears running down his face.

Why didn't Shoh ever realize that ?


From the shrouded past to the distant present, the Dawn Blade shows him the Tau Empire, not as he saw it but as it really is.

He sees a pyramid of chains, each link forged from a broken promise, leashing all Tau from the moment of their birth, binding them to the gleaming figures of the Ethereals.

But the Ethereals don't stand at the top of the pyramid. They carry their own chains, which stretch past their light and into a darkness that doesn't reject light so much as devours it, just as it devours all things – all hope, all faith, all love. And the darkness sees him, and smiles, and –

The sword cuts again, and he sees the future that might yet be.

The worlds of the Tau Empire are aflame. Millions of non-Tau citizens are dragged to blood-soaked altars marked with the Ultima sigil set within an eight-pointed stars.

The Ethereals lead these monstrous ceremonies, their benevolent faces turned cold and cruel. The statues of past heroes of the Tau'va are cast down into the dirt, and new monuments built in their place, shaped like the darkness that has usurped the Greater Good –

The sword cuts once more, and the awful future falls away. For a moment, there is nothing, nothing but the endless void and the mocking laughter of four awful voices, pressing down on him with crushing force. And then –

he sees himself, reflected a dozen times and more.

Always, there is an Ethereal looking at him, the stone in their forehead shining with a light that burns through his mind, opening it to the Ethereal's voice :

Forget.

Do not question what you are told.

Obey your orders.

Forget. Forget. Forget.

Forget.

How much has he forgotten ? How many of his memories are fabrications ?

How many horrors have the Ethereals hidden from him ?

He screams –


O'Shovah blinked, awakened from his trance by the sound of his own voice screaming. He was back in his battlesuit, back on the Keystone, with the strange blade he held in one hand plunged through the heart of the Imperial walker.

Everything was just as it had been before, and yet nothing was the same. The sheer weight of revelation was crushing him, threatening to shatter his mind. But before his sanity could give in, the walker twitched, its head turning to stare directly at the optic sensors of Farsight's battlesuit so that it appeared to be looking directly at the shaking Fire Warrior within. Then, a voice came, echoing in Farsight's skull but not registered by his suit's audio receptors. It spoke in perfect Tau, but in a human voice, and one that belonged to an impossibly ancient male if Farsight was any judge :

+Now you behold the truth your masters have kept hidden from your kin. Now, the veil is lifted from your eyes. Know that this is only the beginning, son of Vior'la. You will know despair and horror such as you cannot yet imagine. But do not give in. Wield the blade. Cut the thread of your people's fate, before it all burns away.+

+You have a duty to make right this wrong, young warrior.+

Then the voice fell silent, and the light faded from the walker's optics as it tumbled to the ground, the ancient warmachine falling to pieces and releasing a handful of dust into the air. But its words were impressed into O'Shovah's mind, where they acted as a ward against the horror-induced madness that had threatened to consume him entirely.

The Tau Commander looked around, and saw that cracks were spreading through the stone, forming patterns that caused glitches in the display of Farsight's battered suit. In some unknowable way, the Dawn Blade had been the lynchpin on which the entire Keystone had rested, and now that he'd taken it out, it was all coming apart. Briefly, he considered putting it back in the hope that it would stop the collapse, but the silent words of the walker stopped him from doing so. As he laboriously made his way toward the closest exit point his forces had secured, he felt as if, with the blade removed, the entire Keystone was falling apart, like a dam no longer able to hold back the rising tide.

Similar reports were coming in from his troops (the cadrenet having cleared following one brief pulse of violent static that Farsight couldn't help but think had sounded like malevolent laughter), though few were in any state to hold a conversation. Where before only a handful of individual warriors had succumbed to the mind-science-caused madness, now whole teams were falling prey to it, howling on the cadrenet and baying for blood as they fell upon their own comrades, all thoughts of strategy or the Greater Good lost. Worse, the rest of the fleet wasn't spared from this strange phenomenon, judging by the transmissions Farsight was receiving from the rest of the expedition, though thankfully the effect was strongest within the Keystone itself.

"What have I done ?" Farsight muttered in horror.

Though he couldn't begin to imagine how such a thing was possible, the causal link between his removal of the Dawn Blade and the ensuing madness was undeniable. He had been told that disabling the Keystone would cause the entire anomaly to fade away eventually without the Imperial mind-science that sustained it, opening the way for the Ultramarines to leave their prison in force. But according to the feed the Crown of Ascension was transmitting to his suit now that the comms interference was gone, the anomaly had grown larger since his action in the core.

Another lie of the Ethereals, thought Farsight, unconsciously tightening his battlesuit's grip around the handle of the Dawn Blade. The truth of it was as obvious now as it was vile. The Ethereals had lied, had used their own mind-science (for what else could it be) to control the entire Tau race, all in the name of some design he could only guess at, but knew was as terrible as it was grand.

+You have a duty to make right this wrong.+

Duty. Yes. That, at least, was familiar. He didn't know how he would do it, didn't know if it were even possible, but it didn't matter.

He would make this right.


The wall crumbles beneath your feet, with the sound of shattering stone and failed duty.

The newcomers, the ones you didn't see coming, didn't plan for, have struck at the foundations, despite all the effort you and your brother put into keeping them safe. They have removed the pillar, the keystone taken from a distant land around which your kinsman managed to build the impossible. Without it, and faced with the might of the storm, the structure cannot hold. It all comes falling down, and the devastation spreads across the star-spanning frontier between the empire of your dead father and that of your fallen brother.

Only now, in the moment of its dissolution, does the line between you and the wall become clear once more. Only now do you begin to remember your identity beyond this endless watch.

You fall, and you wake, emerging from one endless struggle and into another. One more personal, but no less difficult.

There is pain all around and within you, old and fierce. So many wounds, sustained over the course of so many battles, so many wars. Scar after scar after scar, legacies of battles beyond counting and remembrance, and your spirit too full of bitterness and grief for them to heal properly.. Your sons do their best to assuage your suffering, and you love them for it – but it is not, cannot be enough. Only your father had the knowledge to repair the damage done to your body, and your father is dead.

Yet pain will not break you. For what are the torments of the flesh, to someone who has witnessed the slow, agonizing death of his dreams ?

There is someone nearby. They are talking to you.

"My lord ?" The voice is familiar, but you cannot recognize it yet. It is one of your sons, though, you are sure of it. "Are you awake ?"

"… Yes." You speak, once you remember how to work the engines that burrow into your ruined flesh, keeping you alive. "How far from Olympia are we ?"

"Not far, my lord. But the Navigators -"

"I know. The path ahead is dangerous. The Iron Cage has been broken."

"What ?! How can this be ?!"

"The Arch-Traitor has found others to manipulate into doing his work for him, as was ever his way."

"I … I must tell the others, my lord. We need to get ready …"

"Yes, you do. But first, prepare my suit. Awaken the Iron Circle. This will demand my personal attention."

"At once, my lord Primarch !"

The wall is broken. The storm is here. Guilliman is free.

But, now that you are no longer required to stand upon the wall and lend it the strength of your inner iron, so are you.

To be continued in

The Ruinstorm Breaks

Part Two : Lords of Ruin


AN : Well, it's been some time, hasn't it ? In my defense, I finished one story and started two new ones since the last update on this fic, and A Young Girl's Weaponization of the Mythos has grown far beyond my expectations. Also, it took months for me to get my hands on the full series of the Arks of Omen, which did a number on my motivation for this story, so really, if you think about it, the scalpers are to blame.

Two things helped me get my motivation back : the last update of The Weaver Option, and stumbling upon Naturally RP Voiceover's Youtube video featuring a collection of him performing some of the greatest speeches published by the Black Library. I really recommend you check both of these out.

Once I decided to write this chapter only from the POV of the Tau, it became a game of seeing how much ominous foreshadowing I could fit into the narrative. Which was certainly fun, let me tell you. By the way, fans of the Tau faction, please lower your torches and pitchforks. Wait until the next chapter before you get angry : more will be revealed as to what happened to the Tau Empire in this timeline.

Thank to Jaenera Targaryen for beta-reading this chapter. As always, I hope you enjoyed this, and look forward to your thoughts and reactions. I also promise that, barring exceptional circumstances, the next chapter won't take over ten months.

Next time : What are the secrets of the Tau Empire ? What happened during the Damocles Crusade ? How did Guilliman manipulate the young race into doing his bidding ? And who wiped out the Interex ten thousand years ago ?

All these and more will be answered in the next installment of the Roboutian Heresy.

Zahariel out.