Editing Nobledark Imperium Drafts (section)

==== The First and Second Viskeon Wars ====

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The [[Viskeons|Viskeon]] are an extinct xenos race native to a planet on the very southern edge of the Segmentum Ultima right near the border with the Segmentum Tempestus. An asexual ectothermic reptilian or amphibian-like species (though with some similarities to Earth starfish), the Viskeon were known for their extreme regenerative abilities. Although they normally reproduced by budding, Viskeon regenerative capabilities were so extreme that a Viskeon cleaved into large enough pieces could regrow into four or five individuals.

The Viskeons are notable in that despite being capable of interstellar travel their military capabilities seemed downright primitive by most species’ standards. Viskeon lived by a strict honor code, which glorified face-to-face melee combat and saw most projectile weapons (ranging from bows and arrows to stubbers and lasguns) as dishonorable. The only ranged weapons the Viskeons ever used were thrown javelins and bladed discuses, which they typically used as skirmishing tools before closing to melee combat. Of course, when your skin is thick enough to blunt the impact of anything short of a bolter and your body can easily heal from such injuries, the use of ranged weapons might not seem immediately intuitive.

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The First Viskeon War happened roughly concurrent with the Fourth Black Crusade in M34. Spreading out in all directions from their homeworld on the southern edge of the galaxy, the Viskeon put several sectors in the Tempestus and Ultima Segmenta under siege. The Imperium, which had not known about the Viskeon and the few star systems they controlled, were caught off guard by the appearance of the Viskeon armada. They were used to attacks from Xenos Horribilis and Obscuras from the fringe, but not one this organized from a direction they didn’t expect.

All attempts at making contact and communicating with the Viskeon failed. They claimed they had been directed to attack the Imperium as part of a holy war demanded by their god, the Three-Eyed King. The Imperium initially struggled against the Viskeon, although they lacked ranged weaponry the Viskeon were able to regenerate from most glancing shots until they could close to melee combat (where they had the strength advantage over baseline humans and eldar) and killing them often made their numbers larger. Even shooting them with a bolter was a gamble, the resulting explosion could blow the Viskeon into small enough pieces that it wouldn’t regenerate, but it could also blow their limbs off and send them flying where one couldn’t see them, where they would regenerate into four more Viskeon.

However, as the Viskeon front line buckled, the weaknesses in their strategy became clear. The Viskeon had overextended themselves in order to attack multiple targets, hoping to overwhelm their opponents with shock tactics and surprise due to their smaller numbers, but this left them with few assets to reinforce holes in their formation. The Imperium also discovered the Viskeon’s ectothermic physiology and ruthlessly exploited it, hunting Viskeon down in the dead of night when they were at their most sluggish and least able to fight back. The Viskeon retreated back into the void from which they had come, and the Imperium were unable to track them down.


The Second Viskeon War happened roughly 800 years after the first, in M35. Once again the Viskeon set out from their unknown homeworld to wage war. The Viskeon moved out in a much tighter, directional formation instead of an omnidirectional campaign to prevent their front line from being overrun but surprisingly beyond this their military tactics had not changed to account for what they had learned in their first conflict with the Imperium. The Imperium, on the other hand, had learned from the encounter and adapted accordingly. This time, instead of Cadian Doctrine troops specializing in ranged lasgun and shuriken fire, the Imperium had brought in flamers and plasma weaponry to negate the Viskeon regeneration factor, with the Imperial defense spearheaded by the close-quarters, flamer specializing Salamanders, who had called for a Reformation of the Legion for this occasion.

The Second Viskeon War went much more in the Imperium’s favor, and this time the Imperium were able to dispatch forces after the Viskeon when the Viskeon forces routed rather than tending to their wounds. They tracked the Viskeon forces back to their home planets, a mere dozen in total, and burned them through a combination of orbital bombardment and ground operations. Today, the Viskeons survive only in the form of genetic samples collected by the Adeptus Biologis before their world was destroyed.

As the Adeptus Biologis and Imperial xenologists sifted through the rubble of the Viskeon worlds, trying to find an answer as to why a species would suddenly decide to attack an interstellar power they didn’t even know existed, they came upon a handful of startling discoveries. Based on Viskeon carvings and representational art of their god, the Three-Eyed King of the Viskeons was clearly the Warp entity known as [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Be’lakor|Be’lakor]], and from the remaining samples of Viskeon genetics and physiology they bear various marks of subtle but extreme artificial enhancement to produce their observed capabilities.

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