Editing Nobledark Imperium Xenos (section)

== Xenos Horribilis ==

=== Fra'al ===

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The Fra'al are a settled, formerly nomadic, formerly settled race of creatures born seemingly without compassion. They are cruel but they are not sadistic so much as they are utterly indifferent to the wellbeing of others. The loss of their first empire was some time in the middle period of the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion when it seems that they thought the abduction of a few citizens would not be met with a stiff response. Their reasoning being that Humanity could spare a few plebs and those in positions of authority to make declarations of war would not care, just as the Fra’al wouldn't care if a few inconsequentials went missing. They were quite wrong. They were of a not incomparable level of technology to humanity, humanity not yet having reached the heights it one day would, and may even have outpaced the Dominion in a few areas but they didn't have the same resources. They were in the end forced to adopt a nomadic lifestyle as they had no planet. The war was bitter and bloody with no punches spared or pretense at fair play from either side and in the end the Fra'al lost their homeworld.

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For the remainder of the Dominion's history they were condemned to wander. Tentative offers of reconciliation from the Dominion were met with hostility and soon stopped and the Fra'al would not again recover until the days of the Age of Strife when they could once more raid with impunity and take a new home to their liking.
The homeworld they took is unknown, lost among the many uncharted stars of the Gothic Sector and it is there that they are most active. They trade occasionally for trinkets and toys, their technology base is lower than it once was but seems now noticeably higher that most of the Imperium at least in what they can mass produce. They trade with wicked men for human slaves and what fate awaits them is unknown though doubtless unpleasant.

The Fra'al themselves are a vaguely avian creature, or at least look as if they have had an avian analogue in their ancestry in some distant and dim past. They are humanoid in shape but more slender now than they once were, presumably from their years of forced exile among the stars. Their eyes are disproportionately bigger than those of most other species of their size and are typically a very dark red in colour with a cross shaped pupil. They are hairless with typically very pale grey skin and bluish blood based on a copper rather than iron. Their bones are light and they are frail of build. Their facial features are distinctly flat, the mouth and nose are in fact a squashed and downwards facing beak with with two nostril slits that can be close at will. The "teeth" are merely a serrated edge to the beak. The strange shape of the face and it's unintuitive construction are the result of a mutation some four million years ago that saw a decrease in general muscle mass but mostly in the cranium, causing an expansion of the cranium and brain size and a fast drive towards sapience, though apparently sentience may have arrived slightly later. The internal organs are distinctly avian in nature with the exception of the heart which is in fact two more primitive reptilian two chambered organs located on either side of the ribcage. The exact evolutionary path that lead to such an arrangement is unknown the AdBio and of little interest to the soldiers that have to deter Fra'al raiders.

The Fra'al claimed to have been to Old Earth at various times in the distant past when its inhabitants made knives of chipped stone with which they murdered each other and were preyed upon by more interesting creatures and many times after. It is unknown if these tales are fabrications in an attempt to unnerve or insult. They might be true, but what of it? Humanity outgrew them, and ever since they have been envious and bitter.

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=== Medusae ===

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The Warp was not always a place of horror and insanity. Once, in the days before the War in Heaven, the Immaterium was inhabited by all manner of natural creatures, both terrifying and wonderful. True, many of these creatures were not safe, in the same way that being around a large predator or other such untamed megafauna is never truly “safe”, but neither were they all malicious. Even after the War in Heaven, as the Ruinous Powers began to set up their own domain, the Warp was still inhabited by many creatures that pledged no allegiance to chaos, such as the Enslavers, the Psychneuin, and the Medusae.

In their natural state, Medusae resemble nothing more than floating, armored brains, their grooved sulci covered in ridges of chitin and with a huge, singular eye with a distinctive dumbbell-shaped pupil at their front. Extending from around the periphery of the brain are numerous tendrils, resembling exposed nerve endings except with the myelin sheath covered by segments of bone and a singular or series of clawed spikes at the end. Despite this disorienting appearance, Medusae are normally “herbivores” of the Warp, lazily floating from place to place using their brain tendrils as they passively feed off the psychic energy emitted by sentient lifeforms into the Warp as they dream, akin to aquatic filter-feeders.

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Due to the increasing rise to prominence of Chaos, the Medusae gradually came to the conclusion that the best option available to them was to leave the Immaterium for realspace. However, much like daemons and other creatures of the Warp, in order to inhabit the Materium the Medusae need a host. Unlike daemons, however, Medusae do not simply possess their victims. Instead, they consume the head of their victim and place their own head on top of the decapitated body, the act of consumption merging the two together to create a new organism, a hybrid of material and immaterial. However, calling such a relationship a symbiosis is an overstatement, there is no evidence of any part of the host’s mind surviving the process aside from any memories the Medusa picks up. Indeed, it is believed in their natural state Medusae are not even fully sapient, but exist in a constant dream-like trance, only gaining clarity when they merge with a living being.

Once the two organisms have joined the Medusa no longer needs to consume living beings to survive, instead feeding on the ambient psychic energy of the dreams and nightmares from those around them. If threatened, they are capable of discharging this energy as an empathic blast accompanied by a riot of pink-purple warp light to any poor soul who meets their gaze, a defense mechanism from their days as passive filter feeders that still serves them well. Such a glance from the psychic nova of their eye is enough to cause most sapient species to have a seizure or go into a comatose state. In the worst case scenario the target bleeds to death, blood hemmoraghing from every orifice due to the sheer neurological overload of the sensory organs causing capillaries to rupture.

After fusing the Medusa’s tendrils, which once served as their sole means of locomotion, droop around them like a series of bony dreadlocks, which combined with the heavy, hooded clothes they prefer to wear gives them a witch or hag-like appearance. These tendrils are still strong and fully prehensile, allowing the Medusa to use them like mechadendrites or to tear apart any aggressor in combat. However, the tendrils of a Meduasa have another function than combat or dexterity. As a Medusa feeds, the tendrils grow and elongate until eventually the claw falls off and a rounded, corrugated brain fruit grows in its place. If left alone, this brain fruit continues to grow until eventually it pops off and forms a new Medusa. However, if plucked early it can be consumed and allows one to re-experience all of the sensation experienced by the Medusa while the brain fruit gestated. Medusae brain fruits are considered quite the delicacy in Commorragh as well as the twisted courts of the Crone Eldar, allowing one to relive the anarchy of a favored raid or stave off the probing of She Who Thirsts. Attempts by humans (typically slaves or Rogue Traders) or other groups of eldar (typically corsairs) to eat brain fruit often results in a stroke or a coma from neurologic overload. According to the Dark Eldar, it’s an acquired taste.

As the Warp became progressively hostile to all forms of non-Chaos associated life, the Medusae increasingly found themselves forced into the one part of the galaxy that was connected to the Immaterium yet out of the hands of the Chaos Gods: the Eldar Webway. Unfortunately, this made the Medusae increasingly vulnerable to one of the dominant powers of the Webway, the Dark Eldar of Commorragh. Today, the largest population of Medusae live as an underclass within the xenos district of Null City within Lower Commorragh. They have nowhere else they can go. They cannot return to the Warp, for that is where the predators lie and they cannot survive there. They cannot hide in the Webway, as they would easily be hunted down by the Kabals and it is paradoxically easier to hide in plain sight within the bustling throngs of Commorragh. They cannot escape into realspace, as most groups would try to kill them on sight. They try to keep a low profile, as the Archons of Dark Eldar Kabals are always interested in capturing Medusae to use as walking weapons or sources of brain fruit to use and sell, covering the heads of the Medusae covered with metal masks so their captors can avoid being blasted with their psychic power.

The Medusae, in all honesty, just want to be allowed to live. They take no joy in consuming their victims, but neither do they feel guilt over having to do so to survive. Medusae are capable of forming emotional attachments with individuals after they merge, but they seem unable to or unwilling to make the connection that the very act of completing their life cycle could potentially put their associates in danger. At most, Medusae have been known to chase unbonded Medusae away from individuals that they value. Although their need for hosts could easily be satisfied by vat-growing, the Dark Eldar have no interest in helping them and the Imperium is either unaware or uncaring to their plight. Despite being mostly harmless after finding a host, the fact that they need a mortal body to communicate along with numerous poor first encounters where voidsmen have been attacked by unbonded Medusae, the Imperium has declared them Xenos Horribilis. Unfortunately, few Medusae escaped the Dark City after the Exodus from the Dark Wedding. As an underclass, they did not possess the access to the Webway portals that may have potentially granted the race their freedom and potentially even struck them from the Xenos Horribilis list. Those few that did are often found in the retinue of Rogue Traders, the few individuals who could grant them protection.

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=== Rak'gol ===

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The Rak’Gol are a horrifying xeno-breed thought native to the Koronus Expanse out beyond the Halo Stars. The source of their animosity towards the Imperium and it’s peoples is as of yet unknown, there might not even be a reason. It could just be that they are universally hostile to anything that they see as competition. Attempts at opening up a dialogue have yet not been responded to with anything other than violence and even Rak’Gol language/s are utterly unknown despite the many centuries of encounters and listening. It is assumed that they have a language as they make sound and have ear analogues and their ships transmit and receive radio waves. Written language as observed by the boarding teams seems to consist of raised bumps similar superficially to Braille, as with the spoken language no sense has yet been made of it.
 
If they have distinct sexes it is not evident with greater differences in bodily structure seeming to exist through role. Technicians aboard their brutally designed ships tending to be noticeably smaller and more nimble of limb than the warrior-breeds. Exactly how this distinction is maintained as no form yet encounter has had reproductive organs is unknown. Theories range from cloning and manipulation at early stages of development to each type maintain a breeding population on some distant undiscovered homeworld.
 
Whatever the reason their actions like the orks before them have put their kind on the Imperium’s black list.
 
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In appearance a basic warrior-form of the Rak’Gol is a little over two and a half meters tall with a hide thick enough to shrug off small stubber gun fire. Cybernetics are appointed seemingly based upon skill and age, with age being a result of skill as in such an inhumanly aggressive society a lack of skill prevents age. The natural upper life expectancy of their kind is unknown although Adeptus Biologicus assume it could be anything up to two and a half centuries based on experiments done on tissue samples from recovered corpses. The individuals of the Rak’Gol are not aggressive towards each other and are seemingly extremely cohesive as a group with everyone knowing their place and performing their duties in a manner reminiscent of the Vespid. Unlike the Vespid the Rak’Gol also have seemingly no real love for each other as individuals and have been observed killing and cannibalising the injured and crippled without hesitation or distress. Most chilling of all is the way that the targeted individual does not try to flee or plead or even flinch, they just stand there as they are carved up.
 
It is not unreasonable to assume that the Rak’Gol operate on a psychic hive mind similar to that of the Tyranids but this does not seem to be the case as they do have to speak to each other to relay information. Exchanges of speech have been observed that could be requests for clarification or even offered alternative suggestions to given orders. There have even been aggressive body language with accompanying changes of body language that would indicate heated argument and even one observed instance of dispute and violence, the loser submitting to being carved up for food. They would seem to be individuals united in hate, a common cause and an extremely effective method of instilling discipline and obedience although it’s not unreasonable to assume that such behaviour comes very naturally to them.
 
Rak’Gol technology is on par with Imperial Standard in many regards but seemingly lagging in others. It is unknown at this time if that is because higher technology is present in their fleets but has not been observed, if they have the ability to make more sophisticated mechanisms but consider it uneconomical in some way or that it is a hole in their knowledge. Their cybernetics for example are, depending on the device, anywhere between extremely crude and on par with what the Mechanicus can produce but show consistency in this discrepancy between individuals. One of the ways that their devices lack sophistication is in comfort toward the host. From dissected captures and retrieved corpses it is evident that they are capable of feeling pain but at the same time give no observable indication that they can. An explanation put forth by the Biologicus is that they just don’t care.
 
The ships follow a similar brutal design philosophy, constructed with no though of elegance or crew comfort, no ornamentation or anything that is not strictly necessary for a war ship. All ships encountered to date have been some form of war ship or are at least capable of acting as such. Radiation from both space and the workings of the ship are not shielded as much as they would be on even an ork ship and this does not seem to impeded, concern or sicken the crew. As it is unknown how many ships there are or from where they are coming and so it is difficult to judge how fast they travel although it is suspected that they are not as fast as many Imperial ships of their size. This is speculated to be because they have no Navigator analogue although this is unconfirmed speculation. In most offensive and defensive means the Rak’Gol ships are comparable to Imperial vessels of similar size if not slightly superior although it has been observed that their sensors are not as effective as those on equivalent Imperial ships.
 
The eldar do not have any surviving records of the Old Empire that speak of things much like the Rak’Gol and Nemesor Zahndrekh does not remember anything that looked like them from his youth.
 
Exactly what has made them as they are, seemingly so full of hate, is unknown and the source of much baseless speculation. There are no clues to culture or history found on their ships or on their bodies and any hope of finding some sort of answer can probably only be found on their homeworld, should they have one.
 
The leading theory among the eldar and human scholars is that their homeworld once orbited a quite vibrant star or orbited on an elliptical orbit, often bringing it closer to the star than most life forms would deem at all comfortable. Their hardy body structure, ability to survive scarcity and seeming immunity to radiation poisoning would seem to indicate as much although there are many such worlds in the galaxy that this could apply to.
 
There are, sometimes at least, creatures that are similar to their description mentioned in some of the less popular Harlequin performances. Strange and unpleasant beings that did something foolish and angered the lords and ladies of the Old Empire and in retaliation the eldar laid waste to their cities, slew their armies and stole their sun away and left them in their ruins to freeze to death under the uncaring stars. The story is a sorrowful one that showed the monstrous and graceless nature of the old aristocracy, as the insult of the “twilight people” was slight and unintended. The last words of the last king of the twilight people, as his crown fell apart in frozen pieces, was to show no pity for the eldar though he had seen a time when they would consume themselves and that he and his people would be there still to see it.
 
If the twilight people were the Rak’Gol then they have changed. How long the Harlequins have been performing this play is unknown as it potentially could be millions of years. Time enough certainly for the Rak’Gol to adapt to a dying world in a brutal way.
 
One way by which they have adapted is by the adoption of the dreaded Yu'Vath technology. Unlike most creatures that are utterly subsumed by such artefacts and essentially become Yu'Vath the Rak’Gol reach a terrible equilibrium with it. The Yu'Vath wish to bring low all about them and reign terrible and unopposed and the Rak’Gol seemingly wish to kill everything that is not them. To this end the Yu'Vath remnants empower the Rak’Gol but the Rak’Gol can’t be consumed and their seeming compliance with the will of the Yu'Vath is merely them coincidentally having the same goals in mind for the most part. If exposure to the foreign and invasive technology is responsible for their current state then they themselves are another victim of the Primordial Annihilator and should be pitied as much as hated, though the need for their extinction remains the same.
 
The Imperium’s first known contact with the Rak’Gol came in 935.M37 out on what was then the Azimoth frontier, a prosperous set of predominantly mixed eldar and human settlements that looked at the time promising. At the time the wholesale slaughter of the relatively lightly defended frontiersmen was attributed to a hitherto unknown ork band, the lack of ork bodies believed to be an eccentricity of them eating their dead for preference. The Rak’Gol, at least in the early contact wars, went to great pains to recover their bodies and remove recordings of themselves. This method of warfare could only continue for so long before knowledge of what they were would be revealed accidentally but for that time the Rak’Gol were an unaccountable and unstoppable force from the edge of the map pushing the darkness back across the light of civilization. Even when what they were was revealed due to the unexpected arrival of substantial Imperial Army elements resulted from a poorly calculated warp jump the Imperium was barely the wiser. They had a face and even a name to what they were fighting but little else. Information that could lead to the discovery of the Rak’Gol homeworld or base of operations is prized extremely highly and rewarded generously.

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=== Slaugth ===

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#The_Rangdan_Xenocides_and_the_Slaugth|The Rangdan Xenocides and the Slaugth]]

=== Tindalosi ===

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> '''''The Horror from Out of Time:'''''

Few mysteries are as vexing as those surrounding the Ordo Chronos. According to what little is known, the Ordo Chronos is an Ordo of the Inquisition that was founded, or would have been founded, or will be founded, to investigate chronological disturbances and protect against temporal threats to the Imperium. The Arch-Enemy would love nothing more than to win a pre-emptive victory by changing history and erasing the nascent Imperium from existence, and given the Ruinous Powers’ near total control of the Warp and the Immaterium's decidedly loose relationship with time such a prospect is not an idle threat.

According to what little records remain, an Administratum budget report here, an offhand mention in a tome in the Black Library there, the Ordo Chronos was one of the earliest orders of the Inquisition, and was active until at least early M33, with the last known records being around the date of the Harrowing and the creation of the Hadex Anomaly. However, the Inquisition itself has no records of an “Ordo Chronos” ever being founded. Even people who have been around since the beginning of the Imperium, and therefore should know of the Ordo Chronos’ existence, including the Emperor and the Empress, profess no knowledge as to having ever created an “Ordo Chronos”. If the upper echelons of the Imperium know anything about the fate of the Ordo Chronos, they certainly are not talking.

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The only solid evidence of the Ordo Chronos on record since then is when an Inquisitor of the order turned up in a blue crate in the cargo hold of [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Prince_Yriel|Rogue Trader (then Prince) Yriel’s]] ship ''Hoec’s Grace'' in M38. He lasted long enough to answer a few questions from other Inquisitors but disappeared as quickly as he came. Unfortunately, his answers were as vague as a [[Nobledark_Imperium_Imperial_Society_and_Culture#The_Starchild_Prophecies|Star Child prophecy]] and about as helpful. According to what can be discerned from his testimony, the Ordo Chronos was destroyed when its members were sucked into the newly formed Hadex Anomaly, of which as far as he knew he was the only survivor. He survived because he was lucky enough to have “merely” become stuck in a pocket dimension where he experience the last 24 hours of his life on repeat for several centuries. When asked how he escaped from such a prison he merely answered “a bloody lot of hard work”. However, given the nature of the Ordo Chronos, it is possible that this an event that from their perspective had happened, has yet to happen, or may never happen due to having occurred in an alternate timeline that was averted in “our” time.

Even the nature of how the subject of the Ordo, time, works is itself uncertain. Some schools of thought argue that time is deterministic. If time did not interact in some orderly fashion with realspace and the Immaterium, it should not be possible to view galactic history through fossilized light, or for ships to arrive at a destination via warp travel before they even left. Others, however, take a different view. If fate is pre-ordained, then prophecy and eldar farsight, which work by viewing potential alternate timelines, should not even be possible. Some postulate a unified theory of time, in which the quantum observer effect prevents time from being observed non-deterministically, but these theories are difficult to test (not to mention dangerous). Such experimentation is made even more dangerous by the presence of the Tindalosi.

One of the few of which any detail is known are the Tindalosi. However, this is not saying much, given that the Tindalosi are only known about by virtue of being too noticeable to ignore. In truth, about as much is known about the Tindalosi is as known about [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Wyverns|Wyverns]], or the Arch-Leprechauns of Hippocampos IV. Even their name, “Tindalosi”, is probably not their actual moniker. They get their name from a written account from the Dark Age of Technology by an eyewitness of a Tindalosi attack in late M23, in which the writer compares them to fictional creatures in an ancient Terran story.

The Tindalosi are silvery, biomechanical constructs, approximately two to two and a half meters long or about the size of a large hunting hound. However, despite the mechanical nature, the Tindalosi appear to breed and reproduce much as organic beings do. They have six legs, somewhere between a canine and an insect appearance, allowing them to bound after their prey with frightening speed. The front and bottom of the Tindalosi’s triangular head is a curved sickle, someone resembling that of a biting insect or bird of prey. The optics are large, red, and appear segmented, though whether they are compound eyes or something else is unknown. The head is at the end of a long, jointed, arm like neck, which can snap out with a hunting heron and slice into its victims, sucking out their bio-electrical energy. The Tindalosi are best known for their ability to phase through space and time, allowing them to track their prey wherever they may go.

Though much about the Tindalosi is unknown, they seem to have originally been created by another race as some sort of temporal assassins, though they have since gone feral. Nevertheless, even though the Tindalosi may have gone feral, some vestige of their original programming still remains. Anyone who discovers too much of something will find themselves tracked and hunted by these creatures, though exactly what that something is unknown. Entire mechanic is workshops have been found slaughtered overnight, all because somebody found some inconvenient fact. 

There are three possible hypotheses as to the origins of the Tindalosi. The first is that they are Necron constructs, gone rogue in the millions of years since the War in Heaven. There is some support to this hypothesis. In contrast to their lack of technological knowledge regarding the Warp, the Necrons are well-versed in the usage of time and the “side paths” created by higher dimensions to their advantage, as indicated by the existence of Deathmarks, Chronomancers, and their ability to “phase out”. This was one of the main advantages the Necrons had over the Old Ones and their servants during the War in Heaven. The Necrons would have known well to monopolize this advantage and prevent the Old Ones from using against them, as they had done the very same to the Old Ones with the Dolmen Gates. Creating a race of mechanical constructs to seal off the higher dimensions from everyone but them seems exactly like what the Necrons would do. This is supported by the fact that for all the observations of Tindalosi across the galaxy, these beings actively ignore Necrons, whereas they think nothing else of killing any other being in their way.

Alternatively, the Tindalosi could be human creations, created by the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion before or during the Iron War. Passive mental contact from psykers have shown the Tindalosi have souls, which is not a typical trait of Necron technology. Whether or not the Men of Iron had any souls is a hotly debated topic among modern Imperial scholars. The Adeptus Mechanicus vehemently state that the Men of Iron and Iron Minds had no souls, and the very idea of such is blasphemy, but Emperor Oscar clearly has a soul, and if the Men of Gold had souls the idea that the Men of Iron and Iron Minds had souls is not that out of the question. Esoteric reports from the Old Eldar Empire located in the Black Library may support the latter hypothesis. There’s also some evidence that Tindalosi do not self-repair or self-destruct in the way that necrodermis does, but this could be due to poor eyewitness reporting. Ancient humanity also had at least some rudimentary knowledge of chronological and higher dimensional weaponry, given such evidence as the Mechanicus reports of first contact with the Dark Age of Technology being known as Castigator (see Inquisitorial Report: WHITE TITANIUM HEDGEHOG for more details) and the incident with the Speranza (see Inquisitorial Report: RED IRON PHOENIX for more details). Even the reports of Tindalosi before mankind even stood upright can be explained, given their association of time the Tindalosi could travel to whenever they wished, plaguing the galaxy long before they were ever created.

Finally, it is possible that the Tindalosi were created by another xenos race, neither necron nor human. Necrodermis and humans were probably not the only races to experiment with time or self-replicating, self-destructing machinery. Any of the races that existed in the millions of years between the War in Heaven up in the Fall of the Eldar could have done the same {Ed. Note: Possible link with the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Apep|K’nib]] or [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Hrud|Hrud]]? Must investigate further}. Others have suggested connections with the Harrowing and the events of that era. It is even possible that several of these origins are true, the Necrons modifying “naturally occurring” machines to their purposes. How we lament how the late Eldar Empire turned their back on what was happening in the universe outside of their demesnes, and what few records they did amass mostly lie within the Eye of Terror. All we know for certain of the Tindalosi is what they are now, rather than what they were.

Reports of an abnormally large, aggressive Tindalosi, known as Vodanus, have been substantiated but not fully validated. Testaments of psyker survivors speak of a Tindalosi whose mind has evolved beyond that of a simple animal to full sapience, and full of a hateful cruelty beyond what any simple animal is capable of. This has not stopped numerous void superstitions from springing up in its wake. Some say that any who see Vodanus are doomed to die shortly thereafter, though this may be seen as self-evident given the nature of the Tindalosi rather than anything unusual.

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