Editing Nobledark Imperium Member States (section)

==== Tarellian Blessed Atlatls ====

The Warp is a realm of myth and metaphor. A place where emotion and symbology supersede matter and logic, often to deadly effect. It is for this reason that melee weapons like swords and spears are so effective at banishing daemons and other creatures of the Warp where bolters and other projectile weapons fail. 

For there is something instinctively satisfying about striking down an enemy with a blade, telling the striker that the foe is gone and cannot hurt you any longer. It is an act that resonates with the nature of the universe, for the very act of believing the creature dead makes it more likely to be so. It is a primal, visceral feeling. One entrenched in the very core of human beings. Although powder weapons — and their derivative apparatus — have been a part of human history for nearly forty thousand years, melee weapons like swords and spears have been entrenched in human consciousness for much longer.

Such is also the case with the humble javelin. Javelins have been present throughout human history as a weapon of choice — from the earliest hunter-gathers, to the armies of ancient Roma, to the city states of Middle Merika, it was javelins and atlatls that our ancestors harnessed to bring down the great beasts that roamed the frigid taigas and to defend against the scimitar-toothed predators that lurked in the night. Even harpoons, which are javelins in a sense, were once used to hunt the great leviathans that once prowled the oceans of Old Earth. Thus, javelins have attained a rather prominent position in the collective human psyche.

For javelins kill monsters.

In this, humanity and the Tarellians share common ground. Although a much more carnivorous species than mankind, Tarellians also developed their own javelin throwers and atlatls to bring down their respective megafauna. The Tarellian atlatl also attained the status of the “killer of monsters” in their minds and hearts. Thus, when the Tarellians first encountered daemonkind — vile creatures of the dark and id — is it any wonder that they dusted off their ancient tools the same way humanity repurposed its old swords and axes?

The atlatls are little more than inefficient novelties when employed against other species, but are lethal to beasts of the warp. As such, blessed atlatls are the Tarellians' first weapon of choice against daemons and other warp foes. The method of manufacturing has changed to fit the times — the darts are now forged of stainless steel and titanium, rather than the fire-hardened wood or stone of old — but the weapon is the same, just as the force halberd of a Grey Knight has its ancestry in the ancient designs of Old Earth’s Bronze Age. The Tarellians painstakingly craft these weapons with intricate ritual, imparting significance and meaning to their weapons by infusing their very essence into the process. They consider their implements to be blessed by the Old Ones, gifted with the power to strike down the Neverborn in their name — to draw a more human comparison, it is as though Zeus himself had gifted mortals his thunderbolts to wield. Javelin throwers are a rare, but highly respected, sight in Tarellian armies. Their shots are few in number, thus their wielders must be skilled to make every shaft count. When those darts do hit their intended target, however, they are guaranteed to hurt.