Editing Quest:The Long Night:Sparks at Midnight (section)

==The Ceremony of Remembrance==
The first seven years you have spent at the Ceremony of Remembrance at Itza have covered the early existence of the Old Ones, including their first encounter with xenos and the creation of the Lizardmen, as well as their early attempts to shepherd younger races, to varying levels of success. These tales have covered the first ten billion years of the Old Ones existence, and you haven't seen a single reference to events that you have heard of. Its hard to picture just how old the Old Ones truly were, and how long their civilisation lasted. You thought that the Ancient One was old, but the Old Ones usually reached a billion or more years before moving on.
The final five years of the Ceremony of Remembrance is where you started seeing parts of history that you recognised. That part started eleven billion years after the Old Ones left their world, when an intergalactic army of robots invaded the galaxy aiming to wipe out all life. At first the Old Ones, never having needed to wage war before, were on the backfoot, but within a few decades they turned their powers to war, holding the line even as the First Spawning of Saurus Warriors was spawned. It is here that the Ancient One, silent until now, starts speaking. He speaks about how he and his kin were armed with weaponry devised by the Old Ones and Slann, and sent into battle, and how they at first held the line and then started pushing back the robotic hordes. In many ways, it sounds like fighting a robotic version of the Tyranids, with them retaining the same ability to rebuild from near-total losses if they had raw materials. The Ancient One goes into how as the war went on he and his brothers learned more of the ways of war, and their weaponry and tactics became more and more effective, allowing them to push back the foe. A thousand years after the war had begun, the last invader was destroyed, and the Old Ones set to work on healing the galaxy of the damage inflicted. While the galaxy seemed to have returned to normal, there was a new addition, with the Saurus Warriors joining the Kroxigor Builders, the Skink Administrators and the Slann Mage-Priests among the servants of the Old Ones.

Eighty million years later a new race rose to prominence, the Necrontyr. This barbaric race was ruled by a hereditary noble caste that constantly warred among each other for more wealth and power, and was short-lived due to inbuilt genetic issues making cancers common. These rulers noticed the immortality of the Old Ones and their servants, and desired it for themselves. The Old Ones refused to pass on the secrets of immortality to the rulers of the Necrontyr, worried about making an immortal ruler caste and instead offered a cure for the Necrontyr's cancer which would allow for the entire population to reach a decent age, not just the ruling caste who could afford the treatments that the Necrontyr could make themselves. The Necrontyr refused, and shortly thereafter declared war on the Old Ones as part of a political ploy to stop various rebellions and attempts at secession, a war that the Old Ones quickly won. After winning the Old Ones drove the Necrontyr back to their core worlds in the Halo Stars, and exiled them there until they can more peacefully interact with the galactic community that the Old Ones had set up. The Old Ones hoped that the Necrontyr's defeat and humiliation would break the dominance of their ruling caste, and allow them to form a more stable, and less aggressive, form of government. As unrest started to tear down the Necrontyr's social order it looked like the Old One's plans would come to fruition, and then another force was brought into the equation. The Necrons managed to attract the attention of the C'Tan, the star grazers an ancient race older than the galaxy itself which feasted on the lifeforce of stars. It is unknown exactly how the short-lived Necrontyr attracted the attention of these beings, but the result was clear. With the guidance of the Star Gods the Necrontyr pushed their already advanced technologies ahead by leaps and bounds, and the various insurgents were put down for a time. Soon enough the C'Tan offered the Necrons as a whole the immortality the Old One's once denied their ruling caste, in the form of bio-transference. With the acceptance of this offering by the Silent King the immortality, and unity, of the Necrons was assured, as was their eternal service to the C'Tan, who had drunk their life force as they were transferred in a great betrayal that still haunts the Necrons to this day.

With that, the War in Heaven started in earnest, with the Legions of the Necrons spearheaded by the C'Tan pushing back the Old Ones and their Saurus Warriors on all fronts. Soon enough the Old Ones started to seek the aid of those species that they had uplifted in the past, and further uplift them to boost their ability to aid. With this, the Necrons rapid push slowed to a crawl, with them slowly pushing back the forces of the Old Ones and their allies. In response, the Old Ones started making entirely new races to wage war against the Necrons, with the Krork being the most prominent. This slowed the war into a stalemate, with ever more advanced weapons being deployed on both sides. Soon enough weapons of such power that they could not be used in the galaxy without destroying it started to be deployed and then pulled back, creating the very real risk that nothing would survive the War in Heaven. This forced the war to drag on evermore, as no longer did the sides need to simply defeat their foe, but they now needed to also devise counters to all of their foes superweapons. None remember exactly how long the War in Heaven lasted, and none can as time itself was but another weapon in that war.

''The tales of the War in Heaven lasted four years in total, and included tales of such heroism and grief that you wept at them.''

Eventually the C'Tan and their Necron slaves stood ascendant, and crushed all but a handful of scattered remnants of the Old Ones forces, who were getting ever more desperate in their efforts to avoid defeat. It was at this point that the last Slann of Avernus, and probably of the galaxy attempted to create a weapon that can easily slay even C'Tan, and brought the End of All into the galaxy. While they managed to seal what they had brought forth into the shape of a blade and bind it with thirteen seals the aftereffects of their actions brought their end, and brought Chaos into existence. At this point the Necrons turned on their C'Tan masters, shattering all of them in one of the greatest feats in the history of the galaxy. This was not without cost however, as the C'Tan took the vast majority of the Necrons fleets and legions with them, leaving those few that remained in a bad positions to deal with the scattered remnants of the Old Ones forces and the various apocalyptic forces unleashed by both sides over the course of the war. As such the Necrons withdrew to hidden Tomb Worlds, and entered into the Great Sleep while their automated systems rebuilt their forces.

This left a handful of scattered races of the Old Ones allies and servants as all that remained in the galaxy, along with dozens of apocalyptic forces, including the newly risen Orks that rose out of the grave of the Krork, the Enslaver Plague, the Time-lost, the Primal forces of Chaos, and many other forces out of nightmare. Three million years after the Necrons entered the great sleep the Aeldari emerged victorious, being the only forces left in the galaxy with any real strength. Thus began the era of the Aeldari Dominion.

For fifty-seven million years the Aeldari Dominion dominated the galaxy, despite the occasional rise of the Orks, the K'Nib or other ancient foes. In this time Avernus, the last remaining outpost of the Lizardmen and through them the Old Ones continued its ancient tasks, waiting for the Old Enemy or the Folly to return to haunt them. Then came the Fall.

''The last six months of the Ceremony of Remembrance covered the Fall and events since then, events that you were already familiar with. It was amazing to see yourself and those you know in the final stages though, and to know that as long as Avernus existed your deeds and struggles would not be forgotten.''