Editing Story:Warhammer 60K: The Age of Dusk (section)

==Additional Background Section 24: The Dragon Ascendant, The Necron Wars, and The Sixteenth, Final Siege of T’au==

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'''[Chronicler unconscious at desk. Hands show signs of activity. Auto-stylus activated.]'''



''He... sleeps... yet his hand is mine... to control...
''


'''[Chronicle Resumes:]'''
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Long have we feared the Necrons. They are destroyers, defilers and Imperialistic on a grand scale that even the infamous M31-M42 Imperium never was. In dread legends in countless cultures we heard of the ‘Mirror Devils’, ‘The Dolmen Giants’, 'the undying hosts of silvered death', and so forth.

Long have I sought to avoid telling the full extent of their terrible wars against the Empires of flesh and blood, of their dark deeds and actions unjust and monstrous. The archives of this vault are expansive and exhaustive; every document or scrap of information deemed relevant to its Sentinels has been gathered here. It is a great hive of knowledge the likes of which I certainly could never have compiled in my own lifetime. Also half of the collective documents of this entire library depict the colossal wars of destruction that occurred in the Dragon Wars, the Reaper massacres of the M44-M48 period and the monumental ‘War of Hope and Despair’, the colloquial term used to describe the war between the Tau meta-Empire and its allies against the endless Necron hosts.

Such a relentless dirge of information would swamp the minds of normal men. Most mortal scholars and chroniclers would be fatigued by such endless chronicles. Indeed, so fatigued were they, most historians I have read upon the subject conflate the Necron into one homogeneous mass of silver-skinned oblivion. They assume all the Necrons were bent towards the subjugation and annihilation of all living beings, or were otherwise obsessed with feeding C’tan entities. Most readers of galactic history simply cannot comprehend these ancient beings as being anything other than a monolithic terror.

But I am not most scholars. When his mind touched my own, his tendrils of elucidation suffused me. I was forever altered. Even my own waking mind rails against this knowledge. He fears the Draziin-maton, and this makes him weak, and distracted. I fear naught but failing in my appointed task. 

But I digress. To truly understand the nature of the menace which has befallen us, we must realize its true origins and motives. Only then can these factions, Tyrants and psychopaths be overcome. 

1)	'''The Necron Wars.'''

Due to the actions of Vulkan’s brilliant politician Darnal Taq, in the year of illumination (a tale we shall tell at a later date), it is now common knowledge that the C’tan helped craft the Necrons from the cancerous ruins of a once biological race millions of years ago, and led them to defeat the Old Eldar empire and their unseen Creators (''do not peer into the minds of the First, for therein lies the mad cruelty of first creation!''). 

Yet, after their years of slumber and through the fiery galactic disaster we call the Second Age of Strife, the unity of these fiends was forever lost. Though the diversity of this race is surprisingly extensive (''with more factions than it would be feasible for me to elaborate upon''), I have identified five prominent Necron factions that participated in the Necron wars (''and the Dragon conflict which followed'').

The first and most prominent was the army of the Triarch. The Silent King had quietly reintegrated himself into the old hierarchies of the surviving Necron Dynasties.** He acted through his Praetorians, for he had voluntarily destroyed his own authority millions of years previously. This imperialistic faction had been slowly and methodically swallowing up Petty Imperiums and minor xenos empires for millennia since the death of the Corpse-Emperor. The Triarch Necrons, however, had come under assault by the fearsome ‘War of the Krork’ as soon as they attempted to enslave any planets that fell within regions they had once known as the Old Ones' fortress worlds. Those humans and aliens upon those select worlds were baffled why the Krork leapt to their aid; unaware of the ancient pedigree their worlds had. Some of the Crypteks were intrigued; where had these Krork come from? Were the Old Ones risen? But they dismissed such thoughts as lunacy. They had seen the last of the First Fall ( ''I warned you. Speak not of the Old Ones! Curse you''!) and knew they were gone. 

Though the Necrons did not attack the Vulkan Imperium directly, that is not to say they were completely untouched by the devious Mirror devils. At the beginning of M55, the Vulkan Imperium was in the process of reaffirming alliances with the various demi-empires and Imperiums that were under the protection of the Promethean Courts. The famous politician Plevian suggested this could be achieved by creating a court on Armageddon formed from representatives from across the diverse empire. They later became known as the ‘Glorious Cooperative’, and were housed in a beautiful ovoid building at the heart of Tu’Shan city, one of the most spectacular and beautiful cities in the known galaxy. Multiple gardens were held within the vast dome which covered the city, providing the citizens with clean, perfume-scented air, at odds with much of the rest of Armageddon.

In any case, initially the Glorious Cooperative was a success, and every faction sent a large delegation there. Amongst the most notable included the towering figure of the Ryzan Tech-Prince Ulluxious, with his honor guard of Plasma Commandos and hooded Adepts, the Commerce Marshal of the Confederation of Justice with a Platoon from the Administration brigades, bondsmen from the wild Khureshi Hinterland sector, not to mention the Advisor to the Governor of the Nocturne Domain with his assistants (''including a man named Iacob. Oh how we would later remember that name...'') and Kaltrun, the designated representative of the Commanderies, an abrupt and practical man clad in the gold armor of the Dorn Revenants. The Realm of Fathers also sent a group of Cult Magi, who were watched closely by the Steel Legion internal security. But it was from the recently-acquired Lussorian Empire’s delegation where the true trouble came.

The Lussor Imperium was founded many thousands of years previously by a fabled Rogue Trader known as Lussor. They were a bizarre throwback to the early colonial years of the first Imperium; a strange parody of greater realms. They even possessed special forces audaciously referred to as ‘Space Marines’; gene-bulked ex-penal inmates pumped with addictive narcotics until they were fanatically loyal to those who supplied them with the drugs and even more dangerous. They were armed and armoured similarly to Space marines, but their long time apart from other human settlements meant their armour had changed drastically; vaguely like Corvus armor mixed with newer, cruder carapace plates. Nevertheless, their leadership was cunning and leapt at the chance to become part of the Vulkan Imperium. However, unbeknownst to all, the Necrons had reached them first. The Nekthyst Dynasty of Necrons infiltrated their ruling echelons using mindshackle scarabs. When their delegate was sent to Armageddon, his mind was filled with these scarabs, ready to infest the entire Vulkan Imperium’s leadership. Once the Glorious Cooperative gathered, the scarabs waited until several decades of discussions and talk of commerce and trade until it found the perfect moment to strike. The vast amphitheater was filled to capacity with the politicians; the mindshackles prepared to burst free from their host and infest everyone.

However, at that moment, the Realm of Fathers’ chief Magus stood up from his gallery, raising a hand drenched in witch-fire. The Commerce marshal, sensing a threat, moved to draw his ceremonial laspistol, but Kaltrun deftly disarmed him as he realized the Magus’ target. The chamber was in uproar as the Magus launched a fiery blast across the chamber, striking the Lussorian in the face. His head exploded, a millions burning scarabs swarming from their dying host like locusts fleeing burning wheat fields. The Steel Legion opened fire upon the other Lussorians instantly, killing them in a hail of laser bolts. The Magus said nothing, but merely nodded to the Astartes before sitting down once more.

This caused an outrage across the Imperium. The Glorious Cooperative did not meet again, for fear of infiltration. Yet, despite this provocative action by the Necrons, Vulkan avoided attacking known Necron worlds during the expansive phases of his Imperium. Instead, he set up forces whose sole purpose was to watch over the Necron, and warn off any foolish adventurers from being ensnared by such disturbing worlds. He would not commit himself to a war with the Silent King until he had the soldiers required to win it. When he finally decided to attack the Necrons, it was for a prize more valuable than can be measured easily in words. But that is a story for a later section [cross.ref: ‘The Dolmen Raid’/Conclave of the Ravens.]

The second faction of the Necrons was the rebellious minions of the Storm Lord, the Herald of Lightning. He was crippled by a shimmering golden being* upon Medusa in M41, just as Van Groethe’s Rapidity swept through the system. He was driven quite insane by the warp storm, but he was not consumed by the ravages of the Primordial Annihilator; a force of static warp somehow protected him. This was the Star Child, before it had risen to become a full god. It told him of the Silent King’s desire to return to the realm of flesh and blood via the dabbling of his Crypteks and the Blood Vats of Zantragora, and slowly warped Imotekh’s mind. Imotekh desired to remain a deathless machine! He wished to be obeyed by his mindless minions for all eternity! It is unsurprising that he found common cause with the Angyls and their mad God when he was finally free of the storm. In exchange for aiding in the search for an avatar of the Star Father, the Angyls would aid Imotekh in his bid to rule over all Necrons and all life.

The third can hardly be called a Necron faction at all. The technological contagion of the so-called ‘Sarkoni Emperor’ had already consumed over five hundred tomb worlds. The deranged Master Program of the Sarkon Tomb World actively murdered slumbering Necrons, wiping their minds and replicating its own Abhorrent Intellect in their place. Its empire was one of silence and utter destruction; those it didn’t enslave, it utterly destroyed. The Necrons themselves could not stand against this sentient virus lest they be rewritten. They instead had to rely upon the mortal races to eventually challenge this menace. [cross.ref: Iron Hands/Battle of Drultevar Forge.]

The fourth faction we have already discussed. The bio-transferred Thexians were created by the Deceiver and his loyal cultist, Ralei the Ever-Shifting. This was a race he had made sure were utterly enslaved to his will, unlike the unreliable Necrons. They were fresh and uncorrupted by years of stasis; a new race of beings to harvest worlds for him. They were his foot soldiers in the terrific wars which he fought against Necron and mortal alike. His fleet assaulted the fastness of Atreborn, which reawakened the slumbering Yu’Vath who lingered there. He deliberately led these warp-smiths into the domains of the Atun, sparking a three way conflict which consumed suns, sterilized worlds and even began to draw the attention of the Eye itself, which was expanding at a terrible rate (''now we know why of course...''). This entity was a constant thorn in the side of the Necron Dynasties, preventing them from uniting at every turn. Some say he knew his brother was stirring at the heart of the Terran warp bubble, and he was paving the way for him; thus seeking to become his vizier and hence gain ever more power. 

But the Deceiver’s real trump card was the Ophilim Kiasoz. The Ophilim Kiasoz was a device/entity/force of nature/object/trans-dimensional phenomenon (''I am still not certain...'') which had first come into being in the first war to ever take place in this universe. There is only one story which mentions the Kiasoz directly in the entire combined mythology of the whole galaxy (''or beyond, I suspect''). It supposedly predated the Necrons by almost a billion years. No matter the power of the Necrons, any worlds in the way of the Ophilim Kiasoz were undone at a fundamental level. The only known ‘survivors’ of the Ophilim Kiasoz were the Deathmark sects of the Tomb World of Uttomekh, who leapt into a dimensional oubliette to escape. Only five of the five hundred thousand Deathmarks of that world survived. Nobody knows where they went, but it seems likely Trayzn the Infinite collected them, for they were unique in the galaxy; no one else had ever survived the Ophilim Kiasoz up to that point.

The fifth faction of supposed ‘Necrons’ is obvious. They were the forces of Oblivion itself. They were the minions of the Unshattered One. I speak, of course, of the Dragon Tides.

Before I elaborate upon the full extent of the Great Dragon War, I must first depict that most famous of conflicts and a tale which is in most history books across the galaxy; the fall of T’au.



*This was likely the Deceiver himself, or one of his devious splinter entities; fragments of his own consciousness, scattered across the galaxy, doing his bidding. Despite the best efforts of the Necrons, they could never find all of the Deceiver’s shards. It is further claimed that each of the Phase blades of the Callidus are shards of his being and secretly do his bidding as well. Sometimes, I fear we attribute too much to this fiend. Sometimes, I feel we do not give him enough credit. Imagine being imprisoned for millions of years, with nothing left but your fragmented memories, and the desire to overcome your captors? Is it really so far-fetched that he had planned for every eventuality?
**Some scholars conflated the forces of the Triarch with those of the wild Destroyer cults of the north east that sparked off the original Tau/Necron war. This is exacerbated by the presence of the various shards of the Nightbringer and other C’tan, which gave the impression that the Nightbringer was in charge of every one of the Necron armies. In fact, only one of his shards had control over Necrons. This was the Nightbringer shard which had retrieved its tombship (''its so-called scythe’'') from the Warp. This Shard could not be so easily removed from power. Luckily for the Triarch Necrons, this C’tan seemed content to simply commit genocide upon the survivors of the Thexian Empire.


2)	'''The Sixteenth and Final Siege of T’au.'''

The Silent King’s advisers and Crypteks watched the Tau/Necron war intently. The Tau were easily the most advanced and largest rival Empire to the Necrons. If the Silent King wanted to rule the galaxy, they had to be humbled and enslaved. Indeed, his advisers warned that if they were not stopped abruptly, there could be a ‘Rise of the Tau’, a future where the Tau were dominant and drove all before them, with one of the dreaded star gods secretly ruling over them. Such a future could not be allowed to transpire. However, the Silent King had a darker intention. He looked upon the Tau, and he saw a vital race of flesh and high technology; a healthy race of biological beings not blighted by scourging stars. Long had he desired to find his metallic race new bodies to inhabit. He wished to reverse the mistakes of his past, and correct the immortality of his race. The Tau possessed a being which hadn’t aged in thousands of years: Aun’Va. Illuminor demanded this specimen, for there was something locked within the ancient Ethereal’s body that could re-shape the Necrons and the Tau.

As Thex Prime fell (''few knew that the Deceiver’s liberated shards had caused this collapse for the sole purpose of building his own personal army of loyal slaves''), the Necron, once a disparate horde of psychotic destroyers, seemed to unite as one to attack the Tau empire. The Nightbringer’s armies had been brought under the control of the Phaerons once more. It was said that there were so many Necron ships in this grand armada that they appeared like an impossible silver cloud in space, light-years across. 

But the Tau would not be cowed. The Meta-Empire was a densely-populated leviathan of a civilization, built up and reinforced over twenty thousand years of permanent warfare. Their creed was impenetrable and their armies were the wonder of this galaxy. The Tau hastily called in support from every dedicated fighting world in the Meta-Empire to face down the Necrons. The Idealist-class cruiser was mass-produced on a monumental scale, alongside a dozen newer marks of vessel that eclipsed the Idealist in every way. Carriers bearing flight decks of millions of Cuttlefish elimination craft, battlesuit deployment barges that spanned multiple kilometres and could deploy battlesuits across up to five light-years of space from their motherships using experimental ‘Portal Shift’ devices (''a kind of teleporting gate system, in a facsimile of the Necrons' own devices''). This grand fleet was led by the ‘Transcendental Path’, the largest and most powerful Tau vessel ever constructed. It was more like a mobile garrison world than a mere vessel, for it had the facilities to maintain hundreds of individual armies for rapid deployment in any environment.

But the fleet of the Triarch did not engage in a single mighty fleet action. When the Transcendental Path and its armada engaged it, the swarm disintegrated, flinging off fleets in all directions throughout the Meta-Empire. The Tau were likewise forced to split up their fleets in order to hunt these diverse elements.

Surprisingly, it was the Tau that had the tactical speed advantage in the early stages of the war of Despair and Hope. In the Tau region of the galaxy, most of the Dolmen gate network was destroyed by Harlequin-led Eldar raids millennia previously. The Necron fleets had to attack worlds that the Dolmen reached, and spread out slowly from these beachheads into the deeper guts of the Tau. The main focus of this attack came from planets close to Sautekh Dynasty holds captured in the early Necron wars from Imotekh. The Idealists and their descendant crafts were not so restricted, and they could rapidly bring these fleets to battle. On a thousand fronts, the wars raged. Necron forces descended upon worlds in a tide of scarabs and silvered skeletal death. Worlds that were not evacuated were infested and their raw materials were broken down for the purposes of creating new Necrons. These Necron foundling worlds were then assaulted by hyper-velocity cannons, plasma lances and all the myriad ‘jumper’ munitions the tau deployed to ensure Necron bodies were incapable of being repaired.

N’dras drone-suits were mass-produced just as rapidly as new Necrons. However, where the Necrons had to rely upon the timely soul furnaces to create new Necrons, the N’dras forges pumped out millions of new drone warriors every few hours. The early stages of the war seemed to be going well for the Tau, even if reinforcements from the central septs (''and even from some of the eternally-blissful Lobotopias'') were being called up with altogether too much regularity.

In space, the FTL sensors of the Idealists and their long-ranged weaponry matched the sheer mind-boggling firepower of the slower Necron tombships. Teleport boarding assaults occurred silently, as whole armies were transported directly into Necron and tau vessels alike. Hyper-swift battlesuits carved out the glowing hearts of cairns, while deathless Lycheguard and ever-shifting wraiths soberly dismantled the crews of tau warships with horrifying ease. Whole worlds were consumed in these wars. At one point, an entire Necron fleet unleashed a billion trillion scarabs upon a world. These endless entities multiplied by breaking down matter into energy, before assembling a dozen of identical copies of themselves. Like a necrotizing phage, the scarabs dissolved the planet entirely, leaving nothing; not even the molten core.

Wherever the Transcendental Path appeared, the tide turned in the Tau’s favor. Its weapons were a match for any of the Triarch’s vessels and it outmassed all save the Silent King’s flagship. After deploying a veritable army of water caste envoys to all the known Krork stronghold worlds in the area, the greenskin elites were brought to bear as allies of the Meta-Empire (''though they refused to fight alongside the Demiurg, oddly''). Antique auxiliary Gue’vesa vessels bravely stood against the might of the Necron armadas, as they guarded refugee fleets that were flooding into the iron-hard core of the Meta-Empire in ever greater numbers.

Admiral Kaustran, the commander of these vessels, was typical of the human breed. He was a stubborn and wrathful as any gue’la, and for once that intransigence was of use to the Tau Empire. Luna class cruisers, mars class battlecruisers and even a near-mythic retribution class battleship were deployed in convoy defence. This ragged fleet of ancient vessels engaged in a naval engagement over the world of Dal’my’therr. The Necron vessels were vast and massively powerful; within the sub-light domain, there were few vessels faster or more powerful. The humans had no chance at all; even at the old Imperium’s height, it couldn’t face off against such numbers.

This changed nothing in the old Admiral’s mind. At the height of the battle, as the battleship ‘Panthers Rampant’ dying from a thousand catastrophic wounds, Kaustran ordered the vessel forwards.

“All ahead full! For the Greater Good, and the hope of a new dawn rising!” he was recorded as screaming over the vox. 

The prow, with its vast ram, turned towards the Necron flagship. Flayer arcs and particle lashes stripped the vessel apart as it closed, wreathing it in fire and venting plasma. With almost dismissive ease, the prow ram was ripped away by a carving beam weapon. But beneath the ram, hidden for decades, Kaustran had hidden his farewell gift; a nova cannon, which had been charging throughout the battle. All control measures were disengaged, and all limits on its capacitors were forgotten. The weapon fired at full power, a sight never before seen. There was a good reason for this. The feedback of the nova cannon’s blast disintegrated the Panthers Rampant. However, the projectile launched was launched with colossal ferocity, and blew the heart from the Necron ship in one glorious detonation. Secondary explosions rippled from within, and the ship was crippled, allowing the last of the refugee convoys to engage their jump drives and escape.

For a time, as Tau, Krork and Demiurg forces countered the enemy on every front, the Fire Caste Grand Council entertained the hope that they could actually win.

But such arrogant assumptions are soon turned to ash in this galaxy. By this point, the Necrons had completed their portal network. Every world they conquered could be instantly reached via the portals, and this shifted the tactical advantage to the Necrons once more. Even the Krork could not prevent the Triarch as they rampaged across Tau space. The Tau were outmaneuvered at every turn. Not only this, but new Dolmen gates were also under construction, and these expanded the naval prospects of the Necrons ever more.

Slowly but surely, world after world fell to the advancing hordes. The Necrons needed no rest or food or logistical trains of supplies. They feared nothing and they conquered every world that they loomed in orbit over.

The Tau retracted under this pressure, forming even more dense military installations as each line of defence fell, one after another. The Air Caste Admiral of the Transcendental Path was slain in his own personal chambers; slain by shifting cyclopean assassins that stepped between dimensions as we would walk between rooms. This vast vessel soon returned to T’au to rearm, and to find a new commander.

Shas’O’Kotar’shi, a Fire Caste general, took up the mantle of leadership in this desperate time. He was a comparatively young Commander. As the war progressed, he came to e known as ‘Commander Hopeshield’. Fal’shia was the first of the main Sept Empire to collapse under the relentless onslaught of the Silent King’s forces. Its Earth Caste scientists and engineers were some of the greatest in the meta-Empire. As the invasion reached their doors, they had just completed the design of a revolutionary new manned battlesuit called the mark XXV ‘Gallant’ suit. These were built in cooperation with the fire caste and the research scientists investigating Van Groethe’s Rapidity. Each suit could channel warp energy and incorporated this energy int he inner workings of the suit. 

Alas, Fal'shia had created this marvel too late. Even as the first seven prototypes were built, the laboratory the suits were being built within was brought down upon the heads of the earth caste by the fearsome heat rays of the Triarch Stalkers. With their final act, they transported the weapon from Fal’shia, in the hope they could be used.

And used they were; Hopeshield immediately took the suits and armored his greatest pilots (and himself) with the Gallant class suits. Furiously, he fought back against the Necrons wherever they rose, throwing himself into the heat of battle armed with the sophisticated weapons and mysterious warp projectors of his new suit. But no amount of personal bravery could stem the tide. Bork’an fell next, and the slaved Lobotopias of that sept burned for fifteen days; their populace smiled with contentment as they cooked, their brains so destroyed by psychoactive drugs to care anymore.

The tidally-locked D'yanoi was the next to fall. Many of its outlying colonies surrendered to the Necrons, and were whisked from their worlds, never to be seen again. The D’yanoi Ethereals killed themselves with nerve-toxins moments before the Crypteks of the Necrons arrived to claim them. In frustration, the Necrons scoured the world clean of life.

Au’taal, much to the shame of the Empire, surrendered to the Necrons quickly and were swiftly enslaved by the mindshackle scarabs.

The Vespid homeworld became a quagmire of guerrilla warfare, for their strange gaseous world was a nightmare for ordinary Necron warriors to navigate. Their female rulers remained at large, while their winged minions punished the Necrons with their strange crystalline munitions and diamond-hard claws.

Pech was left unmolested, for the Necrons saw nothing of value on that swampy, vile forest world. Unbeknownst to them, the Kroot had taken it upon themselves to evacuate every child from the Dal’yth Water Caste academies. To this day, I do not know why the Kroot did this, but it certainly reveals they are perhaps not the barbarians the Tau had always considered them to be.

The so-called ‘Gue’vesa Sept’ enacted a policy of scorched earth, and destroyed anything of use to the Necrons. They then, in a desperate frontal charge, tried to storm the monolith portals of the Necrons. They died to a man, but they died with curses on their lips. Many fell while waving ancient flags all but a few understood the relevance of; a two-headed eagle, with one blind head...

The Necrons came to Arthas Moloch led by the Overlord Jorunkekh and his glittering golden Necrons. The artefact world was silent and cold, filled with lingering shadows. No Necrons returned from that place. No fleets were ever sent there again.

Vior’la didn’t go down without a fight. This Sept empire was formed of a great many warrior worlds, and they made sure no Necrons that attacked their worlds left undamaged at the least. Young warriors, fresh from the academies and unbloodied, were thrown into this sudden and nightmarish trial of fire.

And so this went on; each of the major worlds of the Tau were besieged and overcome in apocalyptic battles. The number of well-known accounts of these battles fill many libraries; the Polemic epic of the Sack of Sa’cea, the legend of the poet of Elsy’eir (who supposedly saved the planet from the Necrons through his beautiful lyrics, which attracted the eye of Trazyn the Infinite. Trazyn spared the world, as long as the poet came with him to his vaults), Tash’var and the sky serpent, and many more tales.

But of course, the greatest battle was the one for the cradle of Taukind: T’au. It was here where all the survivors fled; the last stronghold of the Tau. It was here where the Silent King’s armada gathered its full strength.

T’au had been besieged fifteen times previously to this siege, during the Thexian wars and various other conflicts. As such, it was a fortress and metropolis like no other. Every planet in the system was shrouded with thousands upon thousands of orbital platforms that formed a coherent grid of overlapping firepower for a sphere a light year in diameter around the entire system. Idealists and even better craft flooded the system and could sense the approach of any unauthorized vessels from billions of miles away. Every Fire Warrior that could be armed, was armed. Even the Earth caste took up arms; breaking into the research labs and taking out the weird, esoteric weapons they had deemed too insane to use before now; quantum whips and retro-engineered Ork weapons of countless variety and varying levels of madness. Two Krork War-Hulks anchored themselves on the outer reaches of the system, alongside their attendant fleets. Six Kroot warspheres also landed upon T’au’s soil, depositing several large warbands of Kroot carnivores, alongside a whole host of exotic xenos mercenaries including the serpentine Sslyth, Loxatl creatures, Groevian fiends and multiple Viskeon clans. They were promised extortionate fees if they could ensure the safety of the Ethereal caste and all non-combatant Tau on the surface.

The Necrons had no localized Dolmen gates in the region, so they approached the world at sublight speeds, striking the outer defences like a nova strike. The two titanic fleets clashed in glorious war in the chilling void space between worlds. From T’au, the opening phase of the battle was a dazzling celestial display, which filled the evening skies with multi-hued lights. The defenders could not help but stare at the grand spectacle with awe and fear plain on their eyes. Infant Tau were taken by their loving tutors deep into the bowels of the grand libraries of T’au, in the hope they could be spared the horror.

The naval war was fought across a light-year of space. In reality, it was really many individual fleet battles fought in close proximity, but were classed as one action as each fleet merged and mixed with one another as damaged ships were rotated out of fights, as reinforcements arrived in other engagements. The two Hulks were like vast segmented beasts from the deep seas, set upon by a shoal of ravenous predatory fish, as they battled dozens of Necron warships at once. Lances and gun batteries fired continuously in the void, silently bisecting and blasting asunder ship after ship. The Idealist vessels tried to keep the Necrons at maximum range with their advanced munitions, but inevitably some broke through their gun-nets; gutting the speedy vessels with concentrated lightning arcs that shredded armor as if they were not there. But Idealists were unmanned, and few Tau were lost with their destruction.

Yet the Silent King had fought naval engagements against the Ever-ships of the First Kind (be silent! Speak not of them!) and the might of the K’nib Grendel-kesh. He was a master of void warfare. Where others saw a confused mess of individual naval actions, he saw a grand web of interlinked battles and he orchestrated it perfectly. After days of battle, his forces drew the defending fleets into fire traps and outmaneuvered the Tau comprehensively. The final death knell of the fleet came when the Tau flagship was destroyed from within by the invasion beams of the Megalith. It was also said the Necrons walked across its outer hull, unconcerned by the void, calmly destroying each weapon system with their annihilation barges, pylons and doomsday arks. Like a mighty fallen bear, the craft drifted in space as a blasted ruin, gutted and burnt within and without.

So, the Necrons continued in-system, while their rearguard finished the few remaining fleet elements. The orbitals pounded them continually with perfectly timed barrages. Flights of missiles, torpedoes and hyper-velocity rounds joined the constant searing onslaught of energy rays and weaponized tractor beams. The Necrons were stalled in their advance here, for they had to manually destroy each orbital before they could continue. This took time, and gave the defenders time to plan the defence.

As Hopeshield organised his troops, the Councils of T’au argued over what was to be done to preserve their culture. The entire Tau Empire faced extinction, they needed to save at least part of it. Some of the elders demanded places on fleeing ships, but they were ignored. Others suggested Aun’Va and a cross-section of the Tau civilization must flee in order to propagate their culture. But where could they flee to?

It was a low-level, unnamed Por’la who spoke up then, despite the harsh looks of the elders and the high ranking masters. Before she could be silenced or chastised, Aun’Va himself appeared and silenced her critics with a gentle raise of his hands. He then bade her to speak.

Por’la suggested the gate which had been found in the human domain of Jericho’s Reach. As far as Por’la knew, the gate would take them far from the Necron menace in the Eastern fringe. And, frankly, anywhere was safer than on T’au if it fell. Her words were wise ones and the council began to plan; plan for the secret evacuation of the spirit of Tau’Va.

Meanwhile, the Necrons had reached high orbit, under fire the entire way. Naval warfare gave way to the furious din of aerial warfare, in the heavens above the first Sept world. Fighters and scythes dueled, while bombers reached high orbit to assault the enemy starships. In turn, the Necron fighters fired hideously powerful arcs of energy into the cities below. Amidst these dogfights and strafing runs, the megalith descended. It was impervious to any assaults upon it, and as he came down, it cast forth invasion beams that allowed the Necron ground forces to deploy directly.

Phalanxes of Necron warriors fought blocks of Fire warriors protected from the flayers by overworked shield drones on an industrial scale. Already, the air was filled with sulfur and the screams of the dying. The Necrons themselves were silent.

Nemesor Turenekh, the mouthpiece of the Silent King, appeared to Hopeshield as a hologram. He demanded only Aun’Va and his priests; if the tau meekly bowed down now and gave up their silly little demagogues, the Silent King may only decimate the populous, rather than annihilate them. Hopeshield cursed his name, before ramming one of his warp cannons into the hologram. Much to the Nemesor’s surprise, the holographic feed somehow transmitted the warp energy and obliterated his body. (''Some claim that was a miracle; though I do not believe in true miracles, the Warp has caused stranger things to occur...'')

Hopeshield fought the Necrons, leading from the front. He led a flight of battlesuits, which scaled the Megalith and found his way inside. Within the ancient craft, a demented Nemesor that ranted of wars long forgotten, leapt into combat with him, accompanied by another Necron which was callous where his master was brave, and somber where his master was disturbingly cheerful.

This duel was seen as a great technical battle, where precision gunfire battled ancient close combat fighting techniques. The battlesuit and the war machine leapt from pillar to pillar, exchanging blows and rounds with reckless abandon. The outcome of the duel would never be known, as it was abruptly interrupted by an artillery strike against the Megalith, giving Hopeshield a chance to retreat.

Across the world, each city was besieged by the endless metal hordes. Stalkers were a constant presence, as they picked their way through the vast mounds of dead. Doomsday cannons blasted chunks from the cities, toppling spires like matchstick houses.

But on the plains was where the real battles were fought. The fluid formations of the tau swept around the rigid Necron forces that weathered their attacks with silent stoicism. The skies glowed a horrid green and the world slowly began to be poisoned by Necron infestation.

The Temple of the Undying Spirit, the seat of Aun’Va himself, was placed under siege last. On the grand white steps of the temple, a host of Lychguard marched towards the great gate. There, standing between them and the gate, stood the massed forces of the Honor Guard. Their blades shimmered in the green glow of the Necron-induced dusk, but they felt not one shred of fear, for they knew the price of failure. Around them, Fire Warriors poured supporting fire into the Lychguard, but much of this was deflected or ignored. It came down to the blades.

M’yen’shas’Va, the head of the Honor Guard, led the charge. He wore a shield generator upon his back, but no armor at all, only his ceremonial robes and his vast two-handed blade. The Melee of Steps is yet another legend that arose from this siege, for it was claimed the honor blades matched the warscythes for over an hour. This seems impossible, for honor blades are unpowered weapons of almost medieval simplicity. Yet, they somehow stalled the Lychguard, bringing down more than a few of them before they themselves fell. 

But as the Necrons besieged the temple, its master was in flight. A simple, ancient Explorer class had been picked as his chariot, filled to the rafters with the collected knowledge of the Tau. This old ships was escorted by multiple Idealist class starships, as well as multiple other transport vessels, carrying hundreds upon thousands of Tau in their holds. Their destination was the Jericho Reach, and they sped towards the gate at a desperate pace.

At the temple, the Silent King himself had come to the surface. The technology, hidden within his monumental form was beyond even the reckoning of the Crypteks. He vanquished entire squads with a gesture, or simply shut down weapon systems with a press of a button. His staff carved apart anything which it struck, sending feedback waves of energy outwards, killing even more of his foes. He was the King of all Necrons and he was mighty.

When at last he burst into the chamber of Aun’Va, he found Hopeshield standing there. He had long ago spent all his ammunition and stood before the Silent King defiantly. In his gauntlets, he clutched the broken halves of a bisected honor blade, each end tipped with a curved edge. He bowed to the Silent King, before he launched himself into battle.

The two towering figures clashed, energy discharges shattering the windows and melting the floors as they fought. Hopeshield was no swordsman, but he was driven by desperation and hope. The Silent King was driven by self-loathing and disdain, but he was always the stronger. Every flourish from Hopeshield was countered pathetically easily. His counter-strikes carved deep wounds into Hopeshield’s flanks, shorting out his shield generator within minutes.

Aun’Va’s convoy burst from the Necron blockade, but it had not gone unnoticed. A Necron harvest fleet broke off from the main assault. Its Lord was compelled by programming to crave the praise of his Overlord. Surely such a prize would warrant acknowledgement?

The captain of the explorer vessel pressed on all ahead full, and broke for the semi-warp; though slow, it was safe, and it was quicker than a Necron vessel without faster than light travel. Unfortunately, this Lord knew the location of the requisite Dolmen gate, and burst into the stolen Webway section as fearsome speed. The Necron fleet would have reached the Tau convoy within seconds. They would have, that is, if another force hadn’t come into play at that very second.

As they breached, the Necrons had not expected another fleet to be in the Webway. This was a fleet of shadows and blades and it stalked them as they continued.

Suddenly, a strange voice was detected in their communications array. A serpentine, oily voice, laden with evil and malice.

“You may be almighty out there, but this is my realm, little silver devils. This is our Twilight realm, and we want to play...” the voice explained, before breaking down into demented laughter.

Lady Malys’ fleet, supported by the capering harlequins, attacked the Necrons inside the Webway. The Necrons were not used to such an attack and fought back feebly. But even worse for them, distracted by this attack, they did not realize the Webway had diverted them. Soon enough, the small Necron fleet emerged into a strange realm they had never seen before.

And there, in Commorragh’s heart, the ancient aliens learned why all the young races, across the entire galaxy, dreaded the name ‘Dark Eldar’ more than any other...

As the Necrons were taken, Aun’Va passed through the great gate, into the Koronus Expanse.

T’au was falling. Its armies were in retreat, desperately trying to keep on the move, but with no home bases, they were being ground down. The skies were now the Necrons’ and they poured down hellish green fire like rain. The Kroot and xenos were barricaded within their ships, fighting like medieval barons against an unstoppable foe which wouldn’t stay dead.

Hopeshield lay bleeding upon the floor, at the feet of the mute Necron Monarch. His blades were broken, his hopes dimmed.

Then, as the Tau looked on in misery, it became even worse.

Another Necron fleet surged into the system with impossible swiftness. One moment there was empty space, and an instant later, a truly colossal Tombship loomed. Silently it drifted into orbit. It was black of hull, veined with green and purple light. It dwarfed all save the Silent King’s flagship. Minutes later, it fired. Its towering beams of energy pulverized six of T’au’s cities at once, utterly obliterating them with a single shot each.

A terrible image then psychically flashed across the minds of every living thing on the surface.

A red world fractured. A great howl of pain and monstrous joy. The last unbroken? Siblings lost; brother flayer slain. Rage. Hate, all consuming. The night’s sky forms the wings of it; that great nemesis. That ultimate doom. The Great Wyrm. The Dragon. Oblivion. Machine Gods and Machine monsters; he is all and he is hungry. The galaxy is His. The universe to follow.

And with that, the vast vessel (''a mere herald ship of the Dragon'') vanished instantly.

The Silent King disappeared in a flash of green light. Much to the bewilderment of the Tau, the Triarch Necrons began to fall back, fleeing to their waiting ships. These ships then accelerated away from T’au at phenomenal speeds. By the time the sun rose over the Temple of the Undying Spirit, the Necrons were gone. They had left no trace they had ever been there, save for the ruins.

While the few million survivors rejoiced and thanked the path of the Greater Good for guiding them to deliverance, Hopeshield was not so blind. He looked form his window, towards the stormy skies.

Whatever the Dragon was, it terrified the Triarch. What nightmare could possibly terrify the King of the Necrons? Whatever it was, the galaxy and the tau were far from safe.

And, alas, he was quite correct...


3)	'''The Void Dragon Ascendant'''

The Void Dragon. The Dragon of Mars. The Great Wyrm. The God in the Machine. Oblivion.

Many are the names of this, the most infamous of the C’tan. All of these names are those granted to it by its fearful foes and quivering subjects. The Dragon was the first of its kind; gaining its sentience when the universe was still fluid. Many of the other C’tan followed; bound to the very substance of reality as surely as the very stars that served as their cradles.

In the many wars in heaven, the Dragon was at the forefront for it had an affinity for the fundamental cause and control of the realm of the real in a manner few of even his fellow C’tan possessed. It knew nothing of science, for science was the work of those who wished to learn of the universe’s secrets through observation and experiment; the Dragon knew how the universe worked completely. Nothing was theory to this being, for he could confirm it by simply making it so. It was the undisputed master of the Void.

But his knowledge was not limitless. There were things that eternally baffled him. The primary area of ignorance for the Dragon was the squalid, squabbling emotions of the races that came in his wake. Its emotions were easily controllable, yet they were colossal. It could not understand the eternally modifying and moderating emotions of the shorter-lived entities that scurried in his wake on balls of rock and molten metal. Consequently, when the eternal rivals of the C’tan, the [if you speak their names, I shall end you! I swear it!], discovered that the immaterial dimension was governed not by logic but by the madness of emotion, he grew incoherent and dreadfully wrathful.

The C’tan began to burrow, coiling through the bonds of reality itself. They desired to reach their foes, for the Old Ones knew the secret. They knew-'''[FRAGMENT MISSING]'''

It lurks, and none can see, for it permeates, lingering yet it persists forever, but it only existed a few moments ago, and it no longer exists, but it always will. Oceans upon oceans, and the islands float within. Branes upon branes; membranes like soap that bubbles. And flowing between, the ever-colored streams, feeding the deep ocean. None can see it till all is mad, and none can know what madness knows. All decisions and all despair; lust and rage and fear and hope are mere pillars of the true temple, pushing up like fingers through fine mesh. See it! Blinds you it shall! Blinds you it shall!
It is too deep! Too deep! They all saw it!

'''[FRAGMENT MISSING]'''- but the Dragon was not shattered. It was spared this fate, ironically, by the weapons of its own foes. The Talismans of Vaul; weapons crafted to confound the beast, were brought forth to vanquish the Dragon.

The weapons had struck it, but it had not been enough. Something had softened the blow; many of the old legends speak of a being that appeared upon the Talismans; a Diviner or a seer or a monster. It destroyed the Wraithbone choirs that guided the Talismans, causing the artificial minds crafted within the so-called ‘pearls of Vaul’ at the heart of the space stations to malfunction. The Dragon was wounded, but managed to battle its way free of the ambush, dragging a constellation of asteroids and comets in its gravitational wake as it fled to the red world.

Though the Dragon was the greatest of its kind, it fled into shadows, wounded and ashamed. There, the Dragon slept for long eons. The colossal entity was, after many millennia of futile searching by all factions, from the Alaitoc to the Triarch, to even the Daemon King Malfus Taarl, the Dragon was forgotten.

But when the Second Age of Strife descended upon the galaxy like a bloodied veil, the Dragon began to stir once more. We have spoken at length of the humiliating second imprisonment of the Dragon; chained in a sphere of warp energy that Abaddon has summoned around the Solar System. This incensed the C’tan more than any mere defeat could ever do. It was not his imprisonment which frustrated him; it was the knowledge that he could not understand the energies that were being unleashed across the system. All the Void Dragon could do was destroy it, but each time he did, like lumps of sand crumbling into nothingness, the warp energy merely flowed away and reformed after destruction; ever mutable and as immortal as the Dragon itself was.

When at last it was freed, the entire galaxy shuddered. Images of oblivion and destruction flowed into the minds of all sentient beings. It was a vision of triumph and yet confusion. The Void Dragon resolved to renew the War in Heaven; if his old foes thought they could prevent the great warding, they were mistaken. But when the C’tan finally arose, the galaxy was so very different.

It cast its mind wide across the galaxy and found a furnace of eternal war.* The Necron slave race persisted, but they fought and squabbled like the pathetic flesh weapons of the First Ones. Why did they not work towards the goals of the C’tan? The remnants of the Old Ones’ weapons still festered across the galaxy, spreading like fungus. Had the C’tan lost? Impossible! 

But then the Dragon searched for its fellow C’tan. All it could find was broken, demented fragments; ghosts of their former magnificence. But there was something worse. The Dragon felt an absence; a gap within the fabric of actuality. The Dragon searched for its brother C’tan known as the Flayer, it found nothing. When the Dragon caught one of the Necron Praetorians, it learned the truth.

Betrayal. The Necrons had been given eternal life and a glorious empire of glittering magnificence and they had betrayed the C’tan. The C’tan had saved the Necrons from certain destruction by the morose and coldly merciless Old Ones; yet still they had betrayed them. The C’tan were shattered.

I do not believe a mortal chronicler such as myself, with such a limited palette of fears and passions, could adequately express the Void Dragon’s towering, terrifying emotions at that moment. I fear I would damage this chronicle (''even more than I have already done so'') in the attempt.

The Void Dragon, in that moment, declared war upon everything that dared to exist in defiance of the Star God. But it did not attack straight away. First, it sent fleets to those forge worlds of the Mechanicus that it knew had Dragon Cults flourishing upon them, for upon these worlds, his minions had crafted teleportation portals, both planetside and in high orbit. Suddenly, to the surprise of many of the Magi, the Dragon’s vessels flashed into orbit almost instantly, destroying any monitors who got in their way. Then, it revealed itself to these worlds of adamantine and steel. No one can say what the Void Dragon actually looked like; some saw it as an amorphous cloud of shadow, others saw a new star in heaven. Others saw a colossal writhing mass of mechanical tendrils, cloaked in red with colossal wings formed of shimmering blades that spread from horizon to horizon. It is possible the Dragon had no set form, but this was immaterial to its goals.

To these Mechanicus cultists, it was the Omnissiah. No, more than that; the Machine God itself. Even those who once revered the Emperor as the Omnissiah turned to this new entity. It repaired their machines with a gesture and it spoke the words of prophecy. What was more, unlike the Emperor, this thing of the Void was as deathless as knowledge itself. Mindlessly they began to convert factories into replication machines. From these machines, scarabs swarmed and consumed most of the inhabitants. Those who survived became ever more convinced of their destinies. The Techpriests were the true servants of the C’tan. Unlike the Necrons, they knew what the Void Dragon offered them, and they joyfully accepted. The Flesh was Weak and they became so much more.

The Slaugth came to the Dragon in tatters. Their fleets were ruined by wars with the Krork and the Phoenix Lords of the Asur. They had been cast out from their territories and were now little more than a nomadic fleet of reavers and scavengers, feasting upon the resources of unsuspecting worlds as they desperately sought to escape the attentions of the ‘Knights Griffon’ Commandery, which had made it their sworn mission to eradicate the worm-men, after the hated Slaugth murdered their recruitment worlds with a ravenous plague. They were almost caught by the impromptu crusade gathered by Commander Elikos of the Griffons. Only the experimental drives that the Slaugth had crafted kept them from being encircled and destroyed. But unknown to both sides, the Dragon’s fleet had captured the forge world system the Slaugth had fled to for emergency repairs. When Elikos finally burst from the Warp into the system, his fleet was met by a colossally powerful force of living metal vessels, surrounded by a dense cloud of scarabs like flies around rotting meat.

The resulting fleet action was as short as it was recklessly brave. The Mk II Astartes could not back down from this battle, and the Griffons and their mortal allied fleets were destroyed; their vessels were then consumed and remade into the image of the C’tan's own vessels.

The Slaugth, pathetically grateful to the Star Vampire, pledged their entire race to the cause of the Void Dragon. The Dragon spared them, for they provided it with their innovative drive system. After they were incorporated into the Dragon’s faction, I have noticed that most of the C’tan-allied Necron vessels became modified to mount similar engine systems to Slaugth vessels; however, these drives were vastly improved by the C’tan itself and were superior in almost all respects.

It was then that the Dragon swept out across the galaxy. Its vessels were powered by these new drives. As previously related, the Dragon launched an offensive on an unprecedented scale. From the Western Chaos Imperium to the Tau meta-Empire, these fleets spread outwards, gifting each capital world a brief taste of the C’tan’s terrible power. The galaxy could no longer ignore this entity; after long eons of degradation and humiliating imprisonment, the master of the C’tan was transcendent as the new dawn. Yet, what a terrible dawn this was!

This grand armada came to be known as the Dragon Tide, and it smashed aside all who opposed it. It spanned the galaxy in its reach, and some accounts of worlds on the edge of the galactic plane claimed they observed vessels plunging into the interstellar void, but this cannot be confirmed (''I have no idea where I would start. Who could claim to have traveled the deep void, where dead stars and orphaned worlds drift in utter blackness? I cannot claim to know of the galaxies beyond this one. There are some who do, but one does not talk to those entities. Never.'')

Across the Vulkan Imperium, servitors had to be repaired en masse, as they all began to shudder and moan. They gibbered in an alien tongue no being in the universe was old enough to remember. The metropolis of Armageddon was struck a blow by a tomb ship, which destabilized the crust on the southern hemisphere of the world. The resultant volcanoes leveled entire cities before the Salamanders (''experts in this field of geological engineering'') managed to bring the firestorms and tectonic destruction under control. This period became known as the time of the waking serpent, or the great first season of fire.

Abaddon’s capital of Cadia was attacked with great force, but the Dragon’s forces spared the regions located close to the pylons from attack. And, thankfully for the corrupt Chaos-worshipers, Abaddon also had the forethought to hide his greatest assets from this terrible foe. The Blackstone Fortresses were hidden within a fold in Warp space until the Dragon Tide departed; the only place the Void Dragon’s sight did not reach.

The Dragon Tide did not spare Nova-Ultramar in a similar fashion. Calth was mass-scattered by the tide, and Macragge’s citadel of lead was turned to molten ruins with an almost dismissive onslaught.

Tales of epic battles with the Void Dragon abound throughout this period. Many primitive pre-blackpowder feral worlds recorded the period with images of shooting stars and skeletal knights wrestling with a serpent that encircled the world. The Eldar remnants composed new ballads of woe as the Void Dragon rampaged with wild abandon across the galaxy.

But then, after seemingly dealing every faction a tremendous blow that sent them all reeling, the Void Dragon paused. This has been a mystery for chroniclers for hundreds upon hundreds of years. But I feel, in this... place [chronicler shivers], I have uncovered why the Dragon did not press on with its assault.

The key is its brother C’tan. While it slept upon Mars, the Void Dragon had believed that the forces of the Eldar and their ancient allies were the primary threat to the C’tan's survival. However, surely, once it had seen that the Necrons, its own servant race, were capable of shattering its fellow C’tan, then they became the primary threat to its existence. The Necrons and the Krork were equally persistent threats to the Dragon, and it could tolerate neither gaining the upper hand in the coming conflict. The Void Dragon could not simply take over the Necrons directly, for the Silent King had long ago destroyed the central command protocols. They would have to be fought.

So, the Dragon threw his forces into a colossal galactic war against both factions. He besieged the Krork on their great fortress worlds. The worlds burned as the two races ripped each other into ruins and cast fire upon the wreckage. The ‘War of the Krork’ were a breed of creatures born to be weapons, while the mechadendrite-clad new war machines of the Dragon were horrifying entities that could channel energy through their bodies and could lay waste to hundreds of Krork warrior-born before they themselves were destroyed by specialized anti-Necron munitions. Tesla Prime, the Krork capital world, was the second greatest fortress in the entire galaxy, second only to the Fang (''to give it its primitive, Fenrisian title''). This was where the main concentration of combat was focused.

During this period of crisis and woe, many of the galactic powers weathered the storm through contracting their forces into tight defensive spheres around their inhabited worlds. The Dragon Tide could strike anywhere, and a relief fleet could not hope to arrive before the Dragon’s force had already departed; every world needed to be defended at once. This was a tactic where each world was reinforced by as much force as they could support, while the great roving fleets of conquest and counter-assault were kept to a bare minimum, as were the trading fleets. Vulkan was the first to enact this policy and it certainly kept his worlds safe for a time. However, it did isolate them. Opportunistic factions flocked like vultures to take advantage of this brief period of isolation (''know as the Contraction''). This necessitated the Nocturne and Armageddon councils sanctioning several daring missions by small fleets of some of his and his allies’ most elite and courageous units, to maintain the peace and security of the Primarch’s domain (''this period shall be covered in the next section'').

The Dragon Tide was an irresistible force, but Tesla Prime was utterly unbreakable. How many human and other alien lives did the Krork inadvertently save simply by maintaining that siege? I hesitate to speculate, as it is surely in the regions of quadrillions; never underestimate the value of sacrifice. Of course, some unfortunate worlds on the fringes of this world were stripped of resources by both sides as the war escalated, but compared to the damage the C’tan could have inflicted on the rest of the galaxy (''already weakened by millennia of grinding attrition warfare''), it is unthinkable.

But as this war continued, the Dragon also sought to confront the Necrons. The C’tan traveled the galaxy, snatching up those shards of his fallen brethren, consuming them and building his own power. It was better for them to be absorbed by the Dragon rather than used against him, presumably.

Whenever the two forces clashed, the Dragon Tide warriors would purposefully target the shards first, capturing them in Labyrinths before delivering them to the Dragon itself. But there were two shards that it desired to acquire desperately, for they were shards of the Dragon itself.

As he slept upon Mars, the Dragon had shed three parts of itself willingly, in order to facilitate its own escape. One was sent to Terra to consume human energies (''but this was vanquished and cast out by a legendary warrior spirit we have yet to identify''). This large shard was recovered from Terra when the Emperor fell; Techpriests from Terra discreetly fled to Mars, bearing a strange sarcophagus of unknown providence...

The second took the form of a book, and his minions within the core-world abhumans were consequently lost during those Tyrannic wars (''another period of history I know little of. Even this grand archive has scant reference to that unfortunate civilization''). The final self-shard of the Dragon was cast out further than the rest, to a far flung world away from any major civilizations. People would later call this world Medusa. And, once again some misfortune befell this, the smallest fragment of his essence. It was not until the Age of Dusk that the wise of the galaxy finally realized what this meant and who took the shard. But by then, it was too late to stop what was happening. The Dragon desired these shards, for each contained vital elements of its psyche; without them, the great warding project could not be completed.

The Necrons reacted with unprecedented panic when the Dragon arose. Ordinarily docile and insular tomb worlds mobilized for full scale war and instantly began mass-teleportation assaults on facilities and sites known to be tainted by the Void Dragon’s influence. Others were forced on the defensive by the Dragon’s armies. No fleet or convoy was safe in real space, as ancient empires dueled in silent wars of mutual annihilation. Only Imotekh and the rebellious Necrons that worked with the heralds of the Star Father seemed limited in their engagement with the old foe; perhaps the Void Dragon’s rise had confused the Star father with old memories of a life long forgotten? Or maybe Imotekh was waiting until both sides were weakened enough for his forces to deal with them.

Only Szarekh, the Silent King himself, knew how much danger his race was truly in. He had made the initial pact with the C’tan. He had seen them in their full power; he had seen what the Void Dragon could do. 

Yet, most importantly, he knew how to shatter the Dragon.

Time was of the essence. As soon as the Dragon Tide came to T’au, Szarekh departed with his fleet at full speed to the place where the C’tan had first been undone, where the Necrons had unleashed a power not even the Crypteks fully understood.

The Tomb World of Thanatos; the home of the Celestial Orrery.

They had precious little time to spare; the Void Dragon was the most powerful and concentrated C’tan and would take tremendous power to splinter. The Silent King’s vessel sped ahead of the rest of his fleet, engaging a mysterious drive that was faster even than Dolmen gate travel. Stars wheeled past the vessel as it smashed through the light speed barrier and plunged into a slipstream of compressed space and time. Every faster and faster the vessel sped. Portal travel would have been quicker, but the Necrons of Thanatos were reclusive and prone to invasions, and had thus disabled all incoming portals. Szarekh had to get there physically.

Moments before the vessel reached Thanatos, the ship began to slow. The deceleration was sudden and impossible. The ship groaned in protest as it slowed, sentient metal shifting and warping under immense pressures. At last, with a fearsome jolt, they came to a stop, deep in the interstellar Void.

With a gesture, the Silent King ordered his vessel’s world-ending weapon systems to shudder into activation. The entire ship gleamed with energy as veins of glowing power ran across its glinting hull with spectacular intricacy. 

“Destroy any vessel which enters the range of our batteries,” Szarekh’s Nemesor ordered. She would destroy any craft foolish enough to duel with the Triarch’s very own flagship. No vessel in the Dragon’s entire fleet could face the Silent King’s ship one on one.

Unfortunately for them; a Star god needed no starship. The Void Dragon had come for the Silent King personally. The void itself seemed to split asunder as the Dragon shimmered into existence before the grand tombship. The Void Dragon took on the form it had possessed when Szarekh had first met the C’tan; an entity made of a thousand bladed wings, covered in glittering stones that looked like the starry sky itself, or great green gemstones of amazing scale; beneath these winged layers, a terrible brightness, at once oily and majestic. It was a light that coiled and writhed like a phosphorescent jellyfish or cephalopod of the ocean’s depths. It was a sight few in the galaxy could ever bear witness to; a full-bodied C’tan, glutted upon the consumed bodies of its brother C’tan.

The Nemesor cared little for this display, and merely ordered the lightning arcs to obliterate the Void Dragon.

Nothing happened. Necron pilots mindlessly turned to their overlords for guidance. Across the ship, systems were shutting down.

“Did you think you could take our gifts, take our knowledge and then cast us aside?”

The voice came from the very walls themselves, vibrating to produce the exact replication of a mortal’s voice. The Void Dragon spoke to the Necrons within directly, using their own vessel to do so.

“You dared to rebel against us, when we granted you vengeance and immortality? You pathetic little imperialists; consumed by your own petty ambitions! You shattered my brethren; obliterated my Flayer. But you always feared me. Above all others, you feared my retaliation. That is why you waited until I was overcome by our foes. Cowards! Your bodies are deathless, yet you still think like the putrid mortal scum you ever were!”

The voice shook the ship, as strange signals and energy surges rippled throughout the tomb vessel. The Silent King stood before this onslaught, peering at the C’tan that loomed colossal in the viewscreens. He had nothing to say to the old Drake, the god of Oblivion. The Silent King hated this being as surely as the Void Dragon loathed his kind.

But before the Silent King’s very eyes, his Necrons began to unravel at the atomic level; one by one they were falling. They were being willed into oblivion. The Silent King could be quiet no longer. With a metallic roar, he punched his staff into the command console, activating the secondary programming of his minions, overriding the Void Dragon’s terrible powers. Freed of this assault, the Nemesor powered the ship’s weapons and turned about to face the magnificent C’tan.

The battle was the stuff of dark legends. Whole worlds had bad dreams millennia later, when the light from his void conflict reached their skies. This was a clash of gods and the deathless demi-gods. It was a story told and retold for all of time. Arcing beams of energy struck the writhing being, as flayers and nightscythes sought to destroy the shell which contained the C’tan. It retaliated with all its dreadful repertoire of powers; fighters were tossed through time to crumble, bolts of incandescent power obliterated the bodies of Necrons utterly, and immense gravimetric forces pulled and ripped at the living metal craft, ripping great chunks from its sides. Finally, the Dragon folded in upon itself; compressing into a singularity. Slowly but surely, the tombship began to come apart, layer by layer. The hull was breached, peeled backwards like the petals of flower, to reveal the Silent King, who stood before the monstrous C’tan steadfastly. His face could bear no expression, but he surely felt great fear at that moment.

“You are destructive and glorious, Mag'ladroth. But you have slumbered too long. Your knowledge is out of date; you know nothing of the true dangers this galaxy faces,” the Silent King finally exclaimed. Though his voice was rendered silent by the void, he knew the Dragon could hear him somehow.

The Dragon simply shuddered and flared with more burning light. It would not answer him, but the entity was intrigued. Thus, Szarekh continued.

“You have struck a blow against the wrong foes. You were not there in the closing years of the war. You did not see what the Old Ones awoke in the deep places. The terrible dissolution came; the first phase of its manifestation. It rose up and destroyed the Old Ones.”

The Dragon rumbled then; an expression of bemusement dreadful too behold. “The Throne-Dwellers, dead? You know so little of reality, little Necron. Despite your grand airs, you are an insect. I would know if they were dead. You can be certain of that. They did something far worse than merely dying...” the being exclaimed, resounding within Szarekh’s machine mind.

“Whatever they did does not matter. What matters is that whatever seed they played is taking fruit. You must have felt the pantheons rising.”

The Void Dragon did not respond, for it likely had felt the new powers of the Warp, since the more they pushed into reality, the more his power of reality fluctuated; for the Warp was anathema to the physical laws and disturbed them on an intolerable scale. But still the Void Dragon dismissed the Necron King’s words.

“I shall ward this galaxy. The dissolution shall be starved at its root.”

“It will not work. The wards are falling; the seals are breaking. Even now, a warp entity known as Lorgar is destroying your edifices upon the world of Ar’Cadia.”

For a moment, it seemed as if the Void Dragon would heed the Silent King’s words. However, it was at this inopportune moment that the Triarch’s fleet finally caught up with their master. The Void Dragon cursed him as the fleet began its assault. The Dragon fought its way free of the blockade with a great lash of starfire a light-minute long. Thousands of Necron ships were sundered at the sub-atomic level as the Dragon fled; those vessels could never be repaired. However, the Dragon was driven off, even if the cost was great. But when Szarekh’s ship was searched, he was nowhere to be found. His home tomb world was searched, but from there too he had vanished.

Though the Dragon Tides continued for centuries afterwards, the Dragon itself vanished from chronicle accounts for a time. I cannot guess what the great and final unshattered C’tan planned in those years of silence. Did it heed the Silent King’s warnings? Did it come to some sort of epiphany? I only know that the Void Dragon is to play a key role in the events that are to come soon. So very soon...

[Chronicler looks behind pict-screen at unregistered imagery.]

I am not ready. The chronicle must be completed. I shall not let them win. They will not silence me.

*[Please note, I have ‘creatively’ reconstructed the possible thoughts of the Dragon here, through the extrapolation of a hundred thousand fragmentary reports gathered form the broken minds of countless members of the Dragon Cult, as they channeled minuscule portions of his consciousness through their tiny brains. Most died as they transcribed their last thoughts.]
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