Nobledark Imperium Member States

A brief list of national entities that joined the Imperium whilst being interstellar powers in their own right.

Species that are members of the Imperium (Xenos Familiaris) can be found here. Other xenos species can be found at Nobledark Imperium Xenos.

Survivor Civilizations

Not every planet were as fortunate as Old Earth during the Age of Strife. Although the wellspring of humanity was devastated by the horrors of the Old Night, it still retained much of its technology and infrastructure and most of its surface still remained habitable for human life. Other worlds had no such luck; on many planets, the collapse of the Great and Bountiful Terran Empire caused their inhabitants to regress to medieval or even Stone Age levels of technology. Other planets retained some degree of advanced technology, but the conditions of their worlds were so harsh that people could just barely survive without assistance from offworld, and welcomed the Imperium with open arms.

When encountering a devolved human society, the Imperium would often unify the planet by the most expedient means possible, then have the appointed representative of the newly unified planet swear loyalty to either the Imperium, the Empty Throne, or the Steward, depending on prevailing cultural norms of that planet. Worlds with stories of a savior figure that would save them from the Old Night, a common type of story on many worlds, typically had the Steward inserted into that role to ease integration. Worlds that still held some dim memory of the Golden Age typically swore loyalty to the Imperium, which they saw as the great Terran Empire being rebuilt. Worlds that had prophecies of a king that would arise in the distant future to lead them into a Golden Age, another common belief, found it easier to swear allegiance to the Empty Throne instead. For these worlds, it was hard to see anyone born during that age as a potential messianic figure.

These worlds, which are typically under the direct control of the Imperial government and the Administratum, became known as Administrated Worlds, which make up the vast majority of the worlds in the Imperium today. One notable exception are the Forge Worlds, who would only listen or swear loyalty to the lost holy land of Mars, through which the Imperium acquired their cooperation.

However, the Imperium also discovered many worlds that, like Old Earth, had managed to rebuild from the Age of Strife and become highly advanced societies in their own right — some even managing to carve out their own small interstellar empires. In addition to the Sol-based Voidborn Migrant Fleet and the Mechanicum of Mars, these advanced societies included the Realm of Ultramar, the Interex, the Hubworld League, Colchis, Inwit, and Necromunda, among many others. For these entities, which became known as Survivor Civilizations, the Imperium extends a rather different proposal: political and industrial autonomy, within certain limits, in exchange for inclusion and a prominent place in the Imperium. Through this arrangement, the Steward acknowledged that these civilisations were as much legitimate inheritors of the Golden Age Empire as Earth was, and thus extended proposals he himself would have desired had the roles been reversed and the survivor civilisations were extending the offer instead — which very well could have happened; had he been salvaged by one of them it was likely he would be offering the deals to Old Earth instead. The terms of these agreements may vary slightly from world to world, sometimes resembling trade accords or defence pacts as opposed to treaties of confederation, but a few core tenets remain the same.

Savlar

"Savlar: Because Fuck You, That's Why"
— Inscribed above the door to Savlar spaceport, on a corrosion resistant glass slab

Savlar is, in the words of any locals who would care to waste oxygen describing the planet, a shit hole that runs on spite. Food grown there is poisonous and can only be consumed in careful combination, such that the various toxins cancel each other out. The air is laced with deadly chemicals and the weather patterns are capricious at best across most of the surface, thus making prediction of and preparation for any large movements of the planet's toxic atmospheric gases all but impossible. The water is unsafe to drink for all but the hardiest of constitutions — and must first be filtered even for them.

All in all, nobody should ever go to Savlar. Life is short, dangerous and unpleasant, much like the people that call it home — or at least a Savlar curse word that is equivalent to home. Savlar has a lot of curses, all forms of wishing natural hazards upon the recipient in a multitude of lewd and profane ways.

The only reason that the planet has any value at all to the Imperium is because of the mystical substance known as neutronium, which is produced on the accursed planet. It is not actual "neutronium", in the astrophysical "atoms of pure neutrons" sense, but is rather something that the lay-person calls neutronium due to it possibly being non-baryonic matter. Importantly, it is the key ingredient in the orbital tethers. Even more importantly, it is produced nowhere else in the galaxy.

There are only two methods in the galaxy that the Imperium can reliably acquire neutronium. One is by salvaging and repurposing neutronium from Dark Age constructions — mostly orbital tethers, but occasionally the carcasses of Dark Age starships and other creations may also carry some. The problem with this first method is that this neutronium is obviously limited in supply — there are many planets with orbital rings that were once homes to thriving human populations that are now blasted wastelands, but it is impossible to dismantle something like the Daisy Chain of Earth or the Telstarax of Medusa for usage elsewhere. The other way is Savlar. Savlar neutronium contains many more impurities, and is much weaker compared to the neutronium produced by humanity during the Dark Age of Technology — akin to comparing low-quality iron ore to Damascus steel — but it is neutronium nonetheless.

Savlar has no native life forms, and when man first set foot on it had almost no atmosphere. The atmosphere is has now is a side effect of the old industries set up by the human colonists. That it turned out breathable, if barely, was just a coincidence. Savlar is now home to an ecosystem made up of extremophile and borderline extremophile life forms of the sort typically found growing next to volcanoes on less awful worlds.

The current, hideous environment of the planet is a result of the neutronium manufacturing. In the old days of the Golden Age, the chemical runoff was contained for processing in various facilities across the planet as the world around the facilities was slowly terraformed. When the Old Night rolled in the tanks were breached, the processing facilities destroyed, and all but one of the factories burned to the ground. This released the noxious chemical cocktail of an ecosystem that Savlar is known for.

The natives of Savlar are descendants of the workers who used to run the facilities — and who subsequently got stranded in those facilities for millenia. Genetically they are more or less pure human, but like Fenrisians there are very minor deviations from the baseline. Savlar natives can handle drugs and toxic substances far better than most people. Biological and cybernetic modifications to help deal with the environment are common on Savlar, and in the regiments raised there.

The Neutronium Workshop currently operates at a mere 5% of its original estimated output, and is tended to by a peculiar and closed order of tech-adepts, referred to as the Savlar Order, whom are descendants of the maintenance teams and factory workers that once operated the Workshop in the Golden Age. The Savlar Order is very much a closed order; they don't let anyone in, nobody leaves, they don't concern themselves with things beyond their gates, and they call no outside authority master. They make neutronium and cybernetic trinkets, which they exchange for stuff. That's how they like it and that is the extent of how the arrangement would have, could have, and should have been. But then the Olympus Mons brotherhood got involved and nearly ruined everything for everyone.

All technological wonders of humanity belong to the Mechanicum, or so the Martian orthodoxy goes. The Savlar Order tended the last neutronium workshop. They were human, the workshop was a human creation, and therefore they must submit to the rule of Mars. They sent the Savlar Order a letter, politely worded, to that effect. Savlar sent a letter back telling them in no uncertain terms that they would not submit to outsiders — whilst also called into question the parentage of the Mars Council and accusing the Fabricator General of sexual deviation.

A second, much more strongly worded, letter was written by the Mechanicum — and delivered by none other than Ferrus Manus himself, in all his brutal glory. This time the Mechanicum did not ask but demanded total obeisance from the Savlar, accompanied with a declaration that refusal would have the Savlar face the might of the entire Skitarii army. The Savlar Order responded with a crudely stenciled image of a Magos bent forwards and being anally penetrated by an anthropomorphic Aquila. The substance used to make the offending image was discovered to be fecal matter, apparently applied by aerosol.

The Steward stepped in before the situation could escalate any further. Savlar was elevated to the status of Survivor Civilization — a status it did not deserve by a long way, as its new status meant it was to be counted alongside The Interex and Ultramar in legal standing. As an allied Survivor Civilization, Savlar now had all the authority they needed to officially tell the Olympus Mons Brotherhood to go fuck themselves. Which they did.

By this point it was well-known that the Savlar Order were more than prepared to destroy all that they held dear rather than let it fall into Mars' hands — Mars had gotten into a contest of spite with Savlar and they were fools to do so. The Mechanicus could have retaliated; banned all their trade to Savlar and blacklisted anyone who did so. They also could have slit their own throats and gurgled the theme song to Aspects of Steel with the resulting blood — it would have achieved much the same effect.

One of the ways that the Savlar Order has spent the better part of 10,000 years infuriating Mars is through the baffling tradition of The Great Savlar Scavenger Hunt. Once their stockpile of neutronium is filled, a list of items is placed on the outer gate of The Workshop. The list invariably contains a great many varieties of a great many things, some of them quite strange. Partly, this is almost certainly to prevent the Mars priesthood from deciphering the needed raw materials, though some of the items are obviously for personal use — the list will invariably contain food and fresh water somewhere. Everything is listed with exact amounts, in native Savlar measurements, and everything must be presented exactly as listed. Exactly. As. Listed. If they ask for a very specific amount of Valhallan Brandy in a specific number of arsenic bronze containers then you bring that, no more and no less. Deviation from the list is not permitted, and any such deviation means the offending contestant is instantly disqualified. The first one back with the entire list ticked off to the Order's satisfaction gets the entire stock heap, to divvy up and sell on as they see fit.

The scavenger hunt infuriates Mars, as it puts them on equal footing to common traders and the like. There is no discernable pattern to the demands, and it is a constant point of discord in their filing system. Creatures of order as they are, this likewise infuriates the Mechanicus Scribes to no end. And that is almost certainly why the Savlar Order do it. Because fuck you, that's why.

Beyond this, very little of the Order is known. Investigations have been requested and refused. The Inquisition could push the issue, but it's not worth the risk.

Society outside of the walls of the Workshop consists mostly of an agrarian existence slightly above subsistence farming, with the very little surplus left over used to support Savlar's urban structures. Society — civilization is pushing it a little too far — tends to be tribe-based and ruled by tribal elders — or those who have opted to stay sober for a while.

The local religion consists of a plethora of small gods, though the Savlar would claim that they are too small to be gods. Typically, these gods can only be interacted with after taking something mind-altering, but there is too much consistency between the hallucinations for them to be merely the imaginary things typically seen in psychoactive drug trips. There have been investigations by both the Arbites and the Inquisition, but nothing exists that can prove or disprove — all that they can say is that there is no notable Chaos corruption.

Indeed not. Chaos offers hope, but the Savlar have given up on great hopes. Chaos offers comfort in despair, but the Savlar never really feel too much despair. They don't feel much anger at things, and merely accept the shit. They don't revel in the fumes or seek much excess. If their small gods of the æther are daemons, they are doing a terrible job. The most commonly reported advice that these small gods offer is exhortations to ease up on the LSD wine — a distinctly un-Chaos thing to suggest.

One more or less consistent belief among the tribes, and it can be inferred to have originated in The Workshop, is the Great Machine. It follows that the Omnissiah is the underlying mechanisms of the universe, the Ultimate Machine, but that it's obvious that the universe is broken. Therefore, god is broken and man must increase in wisdom to find a way of fixing it. Once fixed, the universe will work right. It is known as the Faith of the Broken God. This belief is considered HOLY SHIT levels of heresy within the Mechnicus orthodoxy, but the Martian Priesthood never quite gets as far as declaring the Savlar Order as such. Because neutronium.

Drugs are about the only thing that make life on Savlar tolerable. They will surely reduce your life time, certainly, but on Savlar you're probably going to be dead by age 45, snorting Rainbow Dust or not, so it's not really the issue it would be on a less fuck awful planet.

Besides neutronium, the planet's only other notable exports are soldiers and recreational drugs. The Savlar soldiery are a motley band composed mostly of addicts (usually recruits) and former addicts (usually veterans).

The Migrant Fleet

See Void Born (Placeholder)

Interex

Interexi Military Forces

See Imperial Forces (Interex)

Hubworld League (Squats)

Hubworld Military Forces

See Imperial Forces (Hubworld League)

Hubworld Architecture

The worlds of the Hubworld League are all fortresses. This is in part due to their natural architectural inclinations; any sturdy, underground structure can become a bunker with a minimum effort. Mostly, though, it is a matter of natural selection.

Worlds that were not fortresses did not survive the Long Night. The bulk of the Hubworlds are located near the galactic core — the largest concentration of Orks in the galaxy. During the Dark Age of Technology, endless robotic armies rendered this a non-factor. During the Age of Strife, each already-devastated world was thrown back onto its own resources. Thus, only the worlds which fortified their positions survived.

Visitors to Squat holds often remark on how elaborately decorated they are. Statuary, engravings and murals, fine masonry and intricate fountains; their excellent craftsmanship extends far beyond weapons and armor. Such artwork tends to accumulate over time; the oldest holds are best described as 'cluttered with masterpieces'.

Visitors experienced in military matters can observe how the complex and winding paths would force any prospective invader to divide their forces and funnel through chokepoints. They would notice how the engravings conceal hidden passages for the swift movement of troops, or obscure the mechanisms of elaborate deathtraps.

Perhaps the collections of fine art is a reaction to the stress of having to live in a giant, trap-filled bunker all the time.

Ultramar

During the relatively short-lived golden age of the Great Crusade, the Republic of Ultramar counted approximately 500 worlds within its borders — the height of the Republic's achievements at the time. Whilst many of these were mere provincial outposts and nothing more than seeds of potential, they were nevertheless indicative of a thriving and growing civilization.

When the Expeditionary forces of the Imperium first made it to the borders of those hardy survivors of Old Night, Ultramar was considered a grand and distinguished nation in its own right — exceptionally so by the standards of the time. Yet with a little over two hundred worlds to count as its territory — many of which being in states of destitution or disrepair — the Republic would ultimately amount to far less than it would eventually become. Nevertheless, for all their faded glory, the people of Ultramar were not without their grandeur nor their pride. Thus, when the diplomats and ambassadors of the Imperium offered them sanctuary within its aegis, they were somewhat hesitant. And why would they not be? They had survived for thousands of years alone, at the other end of the galaxy to the long forgotten homeworld, surrounded by barbarians and monsters; to be a mere vassal would be a dishonour to their heritage and their birthright. Though the negotiations were long and arduous, the negotiations eventually reached mutually favourable terms and the inclusion of Ultramar as a Survivor Civilization was eventually achieved.

In the days of the Great Crusade, Ultramar prospered like it had not done since before the Age of Strife, when it was a part of the Great and Bountiful Empire. With fresh trade and the pressure of barbarian invasion removed, Ultramar retook its old colony worlds and regained the ground it had lost.

But for all that the realm itself prospered in this time, the internal structures of Ultramar's governance began to be questioned. Many of the new border world powers, having grown rich and strong on Imperial trade, challenged the right of Macragge to rule all undisputedly. As time went on this dissatisfaction did not abate, and the rift between the Provincial Powers and the old money Throneworld only deepened.

Into this descended Prince Gaufrid Fouché, grandson of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman, son of King Gunthar Fouché, and (approximately, as the line of succession was in dispute at the time) eighth in line to the Throne of Franj. Gaufrid was under orders from Primarch Guilliman to set up contingencies for the unthinkable possibility of the Imperium failing, culminating in Gaurfrid laying the groundwork for the Imperium Secundus. Ultramar was distant enough from Old Earth to probably be unaffected by anything that could destroy the Imperium's capital, but civilized and prosperous enough to be a viable seed from which civilisation could regrow. Although Gaufrid had no actual direct authority within the Realm of Ultramar itself, he did have considerable territory and resources invested in him by the Imperium — through which an ever increasing majority of Ultamar's trade passed through. Peddling this influence to the provincials and the nobility of Macragge, he set forth propositions and proposals that would turn the elective monarchy of Ultramar into a fairer and more representative system: one planet one vote, with an overall leader elected for times of dire emergency. Macragge agreed to this to retain some power against the increasing might of its rival Calth, Calth agreed to it as recognition that they were not Macragge's mere subordinate was all they ever wanted, the provincial worlds agreed because it gave them a voice in the realm's decision-making, and they all agreed to it because any refusals would see a great decline in trade and a hardening of the borders with the rest of the Imperium. Was this entirely fair? Probably not — but many things are less so.

With the long-term threat of eventual civil war nullified, Gaufrid Fouché continued his ambitions by marrying the head of one of Ultramar's major internal trading companies — mostly a political decision, though he was good friends with her — to further his influence, and set about the meticulous and tedious task of reforming the disparate militaries of Ultramar's various planets and nation-states into a more cohesive whole. That said, Gaufrid's task was not entirely limited to matters of military — his hand could be found in almost every aspect of Ultramar's day-to-day proceedings. Under his influence the Realm grew richer and stronger than it had ever done before and, many would argue, since.

Then The Beast came, and all that planning seemed so very insignificant compared to such reckless barbarity.

Ultramar was, by great fortune, not as damaged as perhaps it could have been in the War of the Beast — Guilliman's choice for an Imperium Secundus proving to have been correct in that regard. This is not to say that Ultramar suffered no consequence from The Beast's feral warmongering, merely that Gaufrid's tireless efforts resulted in an armed and armoured Ultramar that had never been more prepared. But Ultramar's people still died, and worlds still burned.

The path of rebuilding took a long, long time. Many splinters and off-shoots of The Beast's WAAAGH! were scattered about the Realm's space, and stranded, corrupt Eldar raiders filtered through to the eastern fringe when The Beast was cast down. Yet Ultramar held the line, and in the face of its enemies endured as the Fortress of the Galactic East.

Gaufrid took the name of Guilliman over Fouché to emphasize his authority — a name that his descendants would hold for the rest of Imperial history. Gaufrid Guilliman never saw the completion of his efforts to rebuild Ultramar, as he was a rare example of rejuvenant rejection and had adverse reactions to the procedures. He fell to the ravages of time at the tender age of 156.

After the Breaking of the Legions, the plans for an Imperium Secundus were acknowledged to be a very well-made contingency to a very real possibility, thus yet more steps were taken to secure its success. To that effect, the core chapter of the XIII Legion would be gifted to Ultramar as a means of safeguarding any such nascent second Imperium. That chapter would thereafter take upon the title of Ultramarines.

As of the dying of the Dark Millenium, the Realm of Ultramar spans nearly 300 developed, sophisticated, and cultured worlds, retaining its status as the grandest and strongest — if not necessarily the numerically largest — of the Survivor Civilizations. As Acting Chapter Master Titus puts forth his reform plans before the Senate, the upheaval that has resulted from this age of uncertainty threatens to come crashing down upon Ultramar and all who dwell within. Ultramar will either finally fall to its enemies, or it will be reborn stronger than ever to meet the oncoming storm.

Colchis

The planet of Colchis was virtually a feudal world by the end of the Age of Strife. Its population had regressed into a society reminiscent of the Stone Age, due to the rebellion of the Men of Iron, and it had taken nearly nine millennia to reach even that level of technology again — an effort not helped by the sporadic Chaos uprisings and the brutal semi-arid climate of the planet. It this pitiful state that greeted the Eldar of the minor Craftworld Bel-Shammon when they arrived.

The people of Bel-Shammon were desperate; the solar sails and propulsion mechanisms of their Craftworld had been damaged beyond repair, and they knew the birth of Slaanesh was soon at hand. Colchis was only a stone’s throw away from the homeworlds of the old Eldar Empire, and the people of Bel-Shammon knew that without the ability to move their Craftworld away from the psychic eruption they would need to either seek shelter or die. As a result, the people of Bel-Shammon were forced to take unconventional action, and asked the people of the nearby world of Colchis for sanctuary. Tears of desperation turned to tears of joy as the Colchians welcomed them into their homes. In gratitude, the Eldar repaid the people of Colchis by teaching them how to build a global and peaceful civilization.

By the time the Imperium first reached Colchis during the Great Crusade, Colchis resembled a planetside Eldar Craftworld governed in a manner not unlike a relatively calm and peaceful version of the ancient Holy Roman Empire. The planet was a patchwork of nominally independent nation-states, with a politically independent papacy acting as both a mediator in international disputes and a representative for the planet as a whole. Craftworld Bel-Shammon itself had been dismantled, its wraithbone structures turned into housing and architecture and its Infinity Circuit incorporated into the planet.

When Imperial ships first arrived in the Colchian system, they were greeted by elegant system defense ships. The Colchians had no Warp technology, but only because they never felt the need to go anywhere. There was a Webway gate in the center of the papal palace, having been moved planetside from the old Craftworld, but the planet had little contact with the greater galaxy and had not had a visitor from off-world in decades. The language they were greeted in was similarly unconventional; it seemed to be the hybridization of a language descended from the tongues of Old Earth and the High Speech of the Craftworlds. The Imperial ambassadors were later to learn that this was the global language of legal documents and trade — a practice mirrored in the Imperium with High Gothic.

The Imperium had initially expected Colchis to be controlled by an Eldar aristocracy ruling over a human underclass. To their surprise, no Eldar on the planet held any position of power above the level of provincial assistant administrator or some equivalent title. The refugees of Bel-Shammon had never wanted to rule, they only wanted a place to settle. Colchis was brought into the Imperium as a unique and civilized world, reminiscent of an idealized version of some pre-fall Eldar haven — albeit one with only 8% of the global population actually being Eldar.

Colchis has remained relatively peaceful, despite the general tumult in the galaxy since joining the Imperium. Colchis may not be armed to the teeth like Cadia or Krieg, but it has still fought off its fair share of invasions. Among the people of the Imperium, humans from Colchis tend to get along better with the Craftworlds than the average human, due to their similar cultures. Craftworlds like Alaitoc see Colchis as proof that mankind are not completely hopeless and can eventually learn to be civilized — perhaps in a few million years or so. Human and Eldar supremacist groups, like Craftworld Dorhai, see the harmonious and relatively non-militarized world of Colchis as the embodiment of everything wrong with the Imperium.

"See, this is the cultural suicide of both the Eldar and human of this world. What my sights lay upon is the abominable fusion of both and the advancement of none. This is the destruction of Eldar culture and their human partners follow suit, for there is the strength of none while holding the weakness of both."
— Unknown Dorhai writer

"See that fool? That one right there? There lies the true suicide of both Eldar and humanity. I look upon them and I would be moved to pity were it not for my disgust at their stagnation and wretchedness. They scream and cry about strength and culture, yet their society crusts over in bones of wraith and dies starved of love or sunlight. They prattle on about purity, romanticizing a time that never was when they lived in some unseen Eden — all the while carefully omitting their decadence and depravities. Let them turn inwards and look no more upon the outside world. We will pick their corpses clean, we will outlive them, our beautiful hybrid society will remain ever young, ever vigorous. If they cannot change, they shall rot."
— Her Ecumenical Excellence Mother Dwynwen XXIII of Colchis

Necromunda

See Necromunda

The Craftworlds

The Eldar Craftworlds mostly entered into the Imperium as the same manner as the Survivor Civilizations; via negotiation and mutual agreement. The Craftworlds were never ones for formality or paperwork, but they venerated their goddess Isha, who was in a political marriage to the Steward, and most originally followed for that reason. Like the Survivor Civilizations, the Craftworlds had to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, the terms for their inclusion varying from Craftworld to Craftworld. Over time, many Craftworlds saw the benefits being part of the Imperium and integrated to greater and lesser extents, whether it be interacting with the galaxy directly or the colder, more pragmatic reason of having the rest of the Imperium as a buffer against any would-be enemies.

See The Craftworlds

Minor Xenos Races

Although the Imperium is best known as the Grand Alliance of Humanity and Eldar, there are numerous other minor Xenos races that also call the Imperium home. The Imperium first began officially admitting other races into the Imperium in M36, as a token of gratitude after receiving significant assistance from the Demiurg in the Imperial Civil War. Since then, numerous other species — including Tau, kinebrach, the Watchers in the Dark, kroot, Tarrellians, even a few Necron Lords — have all been united under the Imperium’s aegis.

These races are often known as “minor Xenos races”. Not because they are unimportant per se, but because they make up such a small proportion of the Imperium’s total population, even compared to the depleted Eldar. Even the Tau, the most numerous of the minor Xenos races, are still outnumbered by the Eldar by an order of magnitude.

Like Eldar Craftworlds and Survivor civilizations, minor Xenos races are often given a high degree of autonomy within the Imperium, so long as they follow the few universal rules. In some cases (such as the Necron lords), inclusion into the Imperium is more akin to a mutual non-aggression pact than anything else, the Imperium pledging to keep its other citizens from antagonizing its signatories so long as those signatories in turn do not antagonize the citizens of the Imperium.

Tau Empire

The Tau are the most recent major addition to the Imperium, and in some ways the most reluctant. They stood for thousands of years on their own, weathering Ork WAAAGHs, AI uprisings, Dark Eldar raids, and the vanguards of the hive fleets before finally admitting they could not survive alone in mid M39. They were a large nation by non-Imperium standards, the size of Ultramar or any of the other Survivor Civilizations integrated into the Imperium, and are the third largest single demographic in the Imperium after humans and Eldar.

Their long refusal to join the Imperium was a puzzle to Imperial minds. For thousands of years, 'Imperium' was essentially synonymous with 'Civilization'; for the Tau to reject membership was essentially to reject their own civilized nature, as far as the Imperial diplomats were concerned. Their stubborn independence is even more puzzling in light of how well Tau and Imperial ethics mesh, the 'Greater Good' ideal of a place for everything and everything in its place having a great deal in common with Imperial ideals of strength through unity and diversity. The Tau, naturally, believe the Greater Good is more complete, comprehensive, and generally superior.

Of course, integration was hardly frictionless. The Farsight Enclaves split off after a brief but bloody war to avoid becoming part of the Imperium. Many Tau resented going from an independent empire to a province of a far larger one, even though they understood the necessity. The subsequent attempts to accumulate more political power within the Imperium generated resentment among the Imperial aristocracy. But in the end, the truth won out — better together than apart.

As of M41, the Tau have become reconciled to their place within the Imperium, but remain ambitious. They want to become the equals of humanity and the Eldar, not just a junior member of the Imperium. They have the technology, they have the will, they have the unity of purpose — if they survive the coming storm, they have an excellent chance of doing so.

If.

Military Forces of the Tau Empire

See Imperial Forces (Tau Empire)

Demiurg

The First of Many

The Demiurg, in the present day, are known as a nomadic race of stocky, silicon- based humanoids, noted for their superb craftsmanship and sharp business sense. As ever, the true story is more complex. The Demiurg once had a homeworld, an empire. But no longer.

The foundations of the modern Demiurg were laid almost eighteen thousand years ago, in the age before the Fall, when they were a young race first expanding out into the stars. Their homeworld, now long gone, was located in a star cluster of intense stellar activity, which produced vast amounts of mineral wealth but also great radiation storms that sterilized all carbon-based life which tried to arise. It was not until a silicon based ecology arose that the cluster knew the touch of life, and after millions of years of evolution the demiurg were able to develop civilization and take their first steps into the stars in (relative) peace.

Their first colonies were founded on their closest neighbors using slower-than-light ramscoops, but their expansion only began in earnest when they built the Kybernetes. 'Invented' would not quite be the right word, for the Demiurg maintain that the design was revealed to their finest craftsmen by their forge god Faruul in a dream. The Kybernetes are the Demiurg equivalent of humanity's Navigators, although naturally there are a great many differences between the two. The silicon-based biology of the Demiurg is exceptionally well suited to the addition of augmetics, and it by this technology that they navigate the depths and currents of the Warp.

A Kybernetes, once selected, undergoes radical and irreversible modifications, binding them on the deepest level with their ship. In a very real sense they become the ship, their sense of self expanding outward into the metal. They feel auspex arrays as their eyes, hull plating as their skin, magnetic and gravitic field projectors as their hands, plasma jets as their legs, air recyclers as their lungs, fusion furnace as their heart. They will never again be able to walk on the surface of a world, but very few Kybernetes mourn the loss. And, most importantly, the gain the ability to see into the Warp without going mad, and guide their ship-body along its currents. Compared to Navigators, Kybernetes have their strengths and weaknesses. They're slower on average and are slightly more dangerous; a Kybernetes cannot peer as deeply into the Warp as a Navigator and thus are occasionally blindsided by dangers a Navigator would see coming. On the other hand, any Demiurg could become a Kybernetes with sufficient training and the necessary modifications.

With this gift from their god, the Demiurg began their expansion in earnest, colonizing the many systems of the stellar cauldron in which they had been born. It was not an easy expansion, for all the worlds around them were scorched and lifeless, but their craftsmanship was up to the task. To bind the many colonies of their growing empire together, they created the first of the great Trade Ships; cathedrals of industry, designed to be almost entirely self-sufficient on their years-long tours of the outer colonies, each almost a city unto itself.

For over a millennium, the Demiurg methodically expanded. They breached the boundaries of the tortured region of space they called home, and discovered for the first time complex life besides their own; a joyous occasion, one still well remembered by the modern demiurg despite the millennia of tragedy since. They encountered a few other intelligent species, established trading relationships, and fought a few small wars. They even encountered the Eldar a few times; although by this late point in the Empire's history these points of contact all ended in tragedy. But a few small raiding bands boasting of having a vast galactic empire were not enough to halt their steady rise. The demiurg were emerging onto a wider galactic stage.

Then it all ended.

Once more the forge god spoke in their dreams, this time not bearing a gift but a warning. Soon a great, divine catastrophe will overtake this entire region of space. None will survive. Board your ships and flee while flight is still possible.

So they refitted their existing ships and built new ones for the longest journey any of them would ever undertake, packed them full of as many people as could fit, and sent them out. Thousands of tiny metal seeds scattering into the bleak void, running as far and fast as they could. The billions upon billions left behind burrowed into deep bunkers and prayed.

Mere weeks after the last ship left, the Eye of Terror opened. Behind them the fleeing ships could see everything — their homes, their families, everything they had ever known — swallowed up by the madly yawning chasm, consumed by the cosmic abortion wound. Everyone left behind, they hoped, died swiftly. If there is any mercy in the universe, they died swiftly.

The survivors were separated from each other by the turbulence of the warp, scattered across the length and breadth of the galaxy, tiny and alone in a universe going mad. Many, most, would have been overwhelmed by the myriad horrors, and indeed many of the trade-ships-turned-arks vanished without trace. But the Demiurg as a whole adapted and endured.

They adapted to lives of strict rationing and harsh discipline. They forged their weapons into tools and their tools into weapons. They traded with those sane enough to talk to and, when necessary, fought with those who weren't. They sifted through the ashes of cinder worlds, scavenging for useful technology or resources — the Mechanicus is still a little piqued about this, even though they handed over any STCs they found as part of the terms when they formally joined the Imperium. They perfected the methods of quickly and efficiently strip-mining asteroids and minor planets, to extract the maximum amount of resources before some imminent threat forced them to flee once more. When the warp was too turbulent to risk transit, they took the long way, crawling through the long darkness between the stars with Bussard ramscoops.

Some of them turned to darker paths to try and ensure their survival. Some turned to piracy, looting peaceful and defenseless worlds. Some dug up technologies they really should not have. Some even made deals with the very dark powers which had destroyed their homes. None still persist; the Demiurg made a special point of hunting them down.

As the centuries and millennia passed, the scattered arks were able to find each other once more. The Demiurg would never really be a unified state again; there had been too much cultural and political drift during their long isolation. Even if that wasn't a factor, they were simply far too scattered for any sort of central authority to exist. Still, they raised their sights higher than mere survival and began to recover. To forge a new society in the voids between worlds.

The circumstances which lead to the inclusion of the Demiurg into the Imperium arose during the Imperial Civil War, which had left the Imperium otherwise indisposed. That indisposition made the Imperium blind to a combined force of Chaos Orks and Crone Eldar, massed for a campaign into the Imperium while the Imperium's forces was too busy fighting itself. The Demiurg stepped in to assist the beleaguered defenders along the Imperium's borders — if not for entirely altruistic reasons, as the Imperium usually acted as an effective buffer against the bigger threats in the galaxy. The combined efforts of the Imperium and the Demiurg saw the hordes of Chaos driven back, and in gratitude the Demiurg were offered the place they now occupy in the Imperium.

The Demiurg were the first non-human, non-Eldar race to join the Imperium. Though other species, like the Watchers and Kinebrach, had been admitted as vassal states, the Demiurg were the first to come in as an independent power in their own right. The Demiurg received the invitation for inclusion in gratitude for the aid they rendered to the Imperium during the Age of Apostasy, and were admitted in the midst of the post-Vandire political restructuring. That said, the treaties for inclusion had to be negotiated individually, on a brotherhood-by-brotherhood basis. The offers were accepted with great enthusiasm, as the Demiurg saw the bountiful mercantile opportunities in joining.

Today, the Demiurg retain both their nomadic natures and metallurgical prowess, with many of their great ships plying their trade across the stars of the Imperium. Though the days of their great empire are long behind them, this is hardly a singular trait amongst the peoples of the Imperium; and in this, they find an odd kinship. They are eager contributors to the efforts to push back the hordes of Chaos, their flight from their homeworld not forgotten. Though their recovery has been long and arduous, they are beginning to see the fruits of their labors; fruits they are eager to share with their erstwhile allies in the collective, unending fight for a better future for all.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Demiurg were the first non-human, non-eldar race to join the Imperium. Other species like the Watchers and kinebrach had been admitted as vassal states, but demiurg were the first to come in as an independent power in their own right. Demiurg got the invitation for helping the Imperium during the Age of Apostasy and were admitted in the midst of the post-Vandire political restructuring. However treaties for inclusion had to be hammered out on a brotherhood-by-brotherhood basis. The best idea for the reason the Demiurg were invited so far is that either the Orks or Crone Eldar massed for a big push on the Imperium while the Imperium was too busy forming a circular firing squad due to the Imperial Civil War. Demiurg stepped in to help fight because the Imperium usually acted as a buffer against the big threats and if they went down all hell would break loose. Accepted the offer because they saw the mercantile opportunities in joining.

Faruul

The identity of the Demiurg's now-dead forge god Faruul is a matter of some debate. Some Eldar believe it to have been Vaul, pointing the the Demiurg's proximity to the Crone Worlds of the Old Eldar Empire, the mastery of the warp demonstrated by the Kybernetes, and foreknowledge of the birth of Slaanesh.

Some heterodox Mechanicus sects suggest it was a facet of the Omnissiah, pointing to the massive adoption of cybernetics among Demiurg society, whereas Vaul was never associated with such augmentation in the slightest. Such an opinion is considered heresy by many on Mars; to them the Omnissiah is a god of human technology and only human technology, not Xenos.

Although whether all technology or only human technology is the holy domain of the Adeptus Mechanicus per the will of the Omnissiah is a subject of theological debate still argued over by Mechanicus tech-priests to this day, the Demiurg are still forbidden entirely from approaching within a million kilometers of Mars, officially to preserve its holy sanctity. Since similar restrictions apply to nearly all Xenos species, nobody regards this as unusual.

The Guardians of the Dragon take no chances.

Diasporex

More of a religious movement than an actual species, the Diasporex are a nomadic fleet-bound civilization encountered by the Imperium during the Great Crusade. The Diasporex were first discovered by the expeditionary fleet of the Dark Angels, who were surprised when they accidentally stumbled upon what appeared to be veritable fleet after dropping out of warp around what they thought was a dead star. After an initial awkward misunderstanding, diplomatic contact with the Diasporex was made, and after turning down initial overtures at joining the Imperium the Diasporex pointed the Dark Angels in the direction of the nearest uncontacted human world.

The movement of what would come to be known as the Diasporex began during the Age of Strife. The founders of the Diasporex were native to a planet that was devastated by the warp storms and other psychic phenomena common to the Age of Strife and were forced to leave their homeworld to the relative safety of voidspace in order to survive. It was here in space that the Diasporex had what could be considered a religious revelation. They realized that here, in void space, not on a planet, not in the Immaterium, it was peaceful. Upon further thought, it seemed obvious in retrospect that the Void represented the true nature of the universe, given that the Void made up the vast majority of the universe, with the only significant phenomena being the movement of the major heavenly bodies across the cosmos.

Today, the Diasporex are a nomadic civilization, constantly moving from star to star across the cosmos. One of the only reasons they ever stop are to refuel their ships at the hydrogen collecting space stations they have set up at various waypoints across their pre-planned journey. The Diasporex travel through space using a unique type of engine of unknown origin. It is still debated whether Diasporex engines are of xenos design, represent a modified pre-Warp Dark Age of Technology engine, or are a mixture of both. Although the Diasporex engines work well for their purposes, they are maddeningly useless for any Imperial use. Diasporex engines are no better than their Imperial counterparts for in-system travel, and although being to accelerate to slightly faster than the speed of light, their slow speed means that it can often take the better part of a year at minimum to move from one inhabited system to its nearest neighbor.

In times of peace, the only other time the Diasporex ever stop their journey is to visit inhabited worlds, to trade with the locals for goods that they cannot grow or manufacture aboard their ships, and to proselytize others to abandon terrestrial life and join their creed. The Diasporex are a veritable menagerie of sapient species, including humanity. It is not clear if the original founders were human, xenos, or a mix of both. The Diasporex have deliberately obscured the true origin of their founders as a point of pride, to show that their creed is open to people of any species.

The Diasporex creed follows several simple rules: 1) Warp travel is forbidden, or at least restricted to an absolute minimum. Although Diasporex ships are capable of Warp travel, they only use it if the fleet is under direct attack. According to Diasporex beliefs, warp travel irritates the universe and makes it more difficult to hear the Harmony of the Spheres. 2) No violence except in self-defense. The Diasporex exalt peace and self-harmony, though they realize the galaxy is unlikely to conform to their beliefs. Peace-loving does not mean unarmed. 3) Relinquishment of worldly possessions. In addition to the simple reasoning that if everyone brought their belongings on board there would be no room for anything else on the ship, the Diasporex believe in asceticism in order to keep focused on the nature of the void. However, the Diasporex are not cruel. They often allow new initiates to bring on objects that have personal value or could benefit the fleet, such as a picture of family members or books.

As can be expected, the Void Born like the Diasporex and their way of thinking quite a bit, although not enough that they are willing to part with their worldly possessions and join them.

The Imperium mostly lets the Diasporex survive unmolested for several reasons. First, as the Diasporex travel from world to world, they trade and barter for goods with the inhabitants of each planet they visit. The Diasporex essentially act as a trade convoy for the worlds in their region of space, one that the Imperium does not even have to expend resources to maintain.

Additionally, the Diasporex serve as an important early warning system. The path of the Diasporex is well known and can often be predicted years in advance. If the Diasporex caravans scatter, it means that something unusual is going on. Furthermore, despite being largely non-aggressive the Diasporex have proven to be tenacious in the defense of their way of life, helping the Imperium during several Black Crusade by channeling the power of the stars they absorb energy from into devastating beams of destruction. The Diasporex are also skilled voidsmen due to the amount of time they have spent travelling voidspace, often able to outmaneuver Imperial ships despite their relatively antiquated technology.

The Diasporex and the Imperium have only come into conflict over two specific issues. The first is when an individual, usually an Imperial Navy officer, tries to join the Diasporex and brings Imperial property such as an Imperial Navy voidship with them as a gift. The situation is usually defused by the Diasporex denouncing that they have any claim to the ship, although they are willing to accept new converts and new voidships, they will not do so at the risk of angering the Imperium. The other is when someone tries to disturb or destroy the various hydrogen collecting waystations scattered throughout the galaxy. Although the Diasporex are typically placid and unconcerned with the actions of those inhabiting the solar systems they travel through, they will vigorously defend any threat to their way of life.

The Diasporex occupied quite an awkward position in Imperial politics for many years. After it became clear that the Diasporex were a theocratic democracy, and that they had only sent humans to meet with Imperial representatives because they felt humans would be comfortable talking with human ambassadors, it was clear that the Diasporex could not be simply admitted into the Imperium in the same manner as Colchis or the Interex. However, the Steward did not want to allow free trade with the Diasporex as a non-Imperial power, as that might give other systems a legal excuse to trade with more unsavory entities. At the same time, it was clear that it was not possible to stop the Diasporex migration and trade with other worlds without resorting to open war. In the end, the Diasporex were named an honorary member state and protectorate of the Imperium, albeit one that kept to themselves and never interfered in Imperial politics. When the Imperium began accepting non-human, non-Eldar member states into the Imperium in M36, the Diasporex finally had a place to fit into the Imperium’s political structure. Nevertheless, the Diasporex still almost never exploit their status to affect Imperial politics, preferring to sail the same route through the stars their ancestors plotted centuries before.

Kinebrach

The Kinebrach are a heavy-set, simian-like species of Xenos. Native to the Segmentum Pacificus, it is thought that many of the fortress worlds scattered around the segmentum were originally built by them. In many ways, Kinebrach appear very similar to Old Earth gorillas. Like gorillas, the Kinebrach are ape-like, have mostly herbivorous diets (though biologically speaking they are omnivorous, often moreso than gorillas), and prefer to live in humid swamps and jungles. Unlike gorillas, Kinebrach are bipedal and walk with their spines erect, though their extremely long arms (which extend below their knees) betray their tree-dwelling habits.

Kinebrach have a tripartite jaw with well-developed grinding plates, which they use to grind vegetation and crush fruits and nuts. A deep slit between the two upper jaw plates contains the Kinebrach’s oral olfactory organ, which lies at the front of the roof of their mouth. Kinebrach will sometimes flare the two flaps of their upper “hare-lip” apart, to better smell an unfamiliar individual or object. A Kinebrach’s skin resembles a hippopotamus' or wild hog's — thick, dark blue-black skin covered by a thin layer of wiry-brown or russet fur.

The Kinebrach are most famous throughout the galaxy for their skill as metalworkers. Metalworkers occupy an almost legendary status in Kinebrach society, to the point that the Kinebrach are actually led by a Council of Warsmiths. To the Kinebrach, to be a decent leader you must also be a good blacksmith, as a good metalworker exhibits all the traits that must be present in a good leader. They must have vision, in order to be able to shape the metal to their liking. They must have patience, in order to be able to perfect their work into the form that they desire. And they must have strength of spirit, in order to endure the heat of the forge and the physical toil of hammering the metal into shape. Disputes between major Kinebrach political figures are often settled by forge-offs, with each party trying to forge a superior work to demonstrate the righteousness of their belief or grievance.

This obsession with metalworking even extends into the Kinebrach’s method for dealing with daemons. Like many sentient species, the Kinebrach have figured out that a daemon is bound to one place can be easily accounted for and thus cannot roam freely to corrupt others. As a race of metalworkers, it seemed natural to the Kinebrach to bind troublesome daemons within forged weapons, as opposed to ordinary objects or living beings. These cursed weapons, as the Kinebrach call them, are then sealed in such a way that none can access them or be tempted by the daemon sealed inside. Such cursed blades include Drach’nyen and the cursed blade stolen by Erebus during the chaos of the War of the Beast, which was later broken by the Dark Prophet and forged into the eight Anathame, the so-called “Splinters in the Eye of Reality” that plague the Imperium to this day.

There is some evidence to suggest that a number of Kinebrach have gone rogue and joined the Chaos-worshipping Davinite warrior lodges, bringing an unholy armory of cursed weapons with them. The Kinebrach are not happy to hear this news.

Kinebrach names are written as a series of hyphenated syllables and spoken in a steady cadence, almost like a drumbeat. This is apparent even in Kinebrach writing, where individual names are written in a distinctly different script than the words that surround them. This appears to be due to the modern Kinebrach writing style being resultant from a fusion of two previously distinct Kinebrach cultures many millennia ago. Although the Kinebrach seem like a monolithic culture now, evidently their customs and traditions were considerably more heterogenous before the Age of Strife.

Like all sentient life in the galaxy, the Kinebrach were hit hard by the Age of Strife. After the end of the Age of Strife and the birth of Slaanesh, the Kinebrach believed themselves to be a dying species. This fear was only magnified when they encountered their nearest neighbors, the Interex. Communications broke down between the two species soon after first contact, and the two empires went to war. This war would prove devastating to the Kinebrach, who feared that the conflict merely confirmed their imminent extinction. However, after about a century of conflict, the Kinebrach were contacted by diplomats from the Interex. The Interex claimed that the breakdown in communications was due to imperfect translation technology on the Interex’s part, and they had never wanted to exterminate the Kinebrach in the first place. The Interex thus wished to end the conflict, and proposed the following conditions; in exchange for a complete cessation of hostilities, the Kinebrach would become a protectorate of the Interex, providing the Interex with their advanced technology and metalworking in exchange for the Interex’s military protection, and the Kinebrach would demilitarize and be forbidden from raising armed forces of their own in perpetuity unless specifically levied by the Interex in times of war.

The Kinebrach, for their part, did not care. They had been more concerned about the survival of their species than their ability to bear arms. Indeed, despite being led by a Council of Warsmiths, the Kinebrach were a rather peaceable people and did not mind if another, more vibrant species went to war on their behalf. What’s more, the conflict had become so heated that some of the Council Warsmiths had almost been tempted to take up the cursed weapons out of desperation, something that the rest of the Kinebrach knew could have easily destroyed both civilizations. The Kinebrach were glad that such a worst-case scenario had not come to pass.

Like the Watchers in the Dark, the Kinebrach came under the aegis of the Imperium much earlier than other minor Xenos races, entering as a protectorate of the Interex. However, with the official admission of minor Xenos races into the Imperium in M36, the Kinebrach became an officially recognized independent member state of the Imperium, albeit one with close political and economic ties to the Interex.

Today, the Kinebrach are highly respected throughout the Imperium for their ability as metalworkers, representing one of the Imperium’s few non-Adeptus Mechanicus sources of technology, along with squats and Earth Caste Tau. However, unlike the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Kinebrach are first and foremost artisans and metallurgists, rather than manufacturers; the Kinebrach are more interested in making new alloys and crafting new masterpieces than in mass-production. Although the Kinebrach have the knowledge to build starships, most find the intricacies of large-scale machines less interesting. Your average Kinebrach would be more interested in a wall made of rare, high-quality, or particularly well-crafted metal than a highly-complex machine.

Given their similarities, many have wondered if the Kinebrach are somehow related to the Jokaero, another simian-like race with an affinity for crafting and technology. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the Jokaero are a subspecies derived from the long-lost descendants of the Kinebrach that existed outside the Segmentum Pacificus. However, genetic testing has shown that the Kinebrach and Jokaero are two completely unrelated species, and their ape-like similarities evolved completely independently — a galactic-scale example of convergent evolution. When asked about this, the Kinebrach replied that they had once wondered the same thing regarding Eldar and humanity.

Kinebrach Blades

The Kinebrach’s main contributions to the Imperium, and its long war against Chaos, are not the soldiers they send to the front lines — although the Kinebrach can be quite physically formidable when pressed, by weight of numbers they are insignificant on their own — but rather the weapons they can forge; specifically, it is Kinebrach blades that the Imperium craves from them.

The Kinebrach have tendency to put a great deal of themselves into their work — and the description is not entirely figurative. The Kinebrach as a species are all latent psykers, but their ability is limited to what they can do with crafting and metalwork. In some ways this is a good thing, as it allows for the expression of psychic abilities in a more stable, controlled fashion, and if a daemon does possess a Kinebrach what the daemon can do with its host is limited.

There is a lot of ceremony and ritual to the forging of a blade, but a master Kinebrach smith can beat a blade to contain parts of their very self — their hate, their anger, their sorrow — and the finished blade will carry a portion of its maker's soul as power, hungering for war and vengeance on their behalf. The Inquisition is always willing to pay vast sums for a genuine Kinebrach work, as such swords make for unrivalled weapons in vanquishing daemons; even for all their Chaos god-granted power, a daemon skewered with a Kinebrach blade will suffer for it.

But there is a price.

Strands of fate twist through the metal, binding the blades' destinies to war and bloodshed — and its wielder bound along with it. Even an inanimate object has a minuscule reflection in the Warp, and Kinebrach blades take this to extremes; the histories that empower the blades are impressed upon the present in turn — a vicious cycle of fighting and death. This makes little difference in the Dark Millennium, for all who wield one of these blades are already on the warpath. Perhaps, in some distant future, the powers of the Kinebrach blades will be regarded as curses rather than blessings. For now, though, there is the war.

Watchers in the Dark

The Old Ones left much of their webway-making equipment on Caliban, leaving a bit of a hole in the fabric of reality. This slowly allowed Warp energy to leak through into the Materium, something that was distinctly unhelpful for a planet already so close to the Eye of Terror. Warp exposure over the course of generations mutated the local flora and fauna, changing the planet's ecosystem into a hellscape and making much of the planet uninhabitable. Although Warp-exposure-mediated natural selection granted the native sapient species a great deal of resistance to Warp energies and Chaos-related mutations, it was not enough to protect them from the great beasts and detestable flora that covered most of the planet. Out of a sheer desperation for survival, the native sapient species of Caliban developed into a society fanatically obsessed with opposing Chaos and reclaiming their planet. Because of their limited physical prowess, these natives — whom are now referred to as the Watchers by the Imperium at large — were unable to do much more than keep their few remaining bastions of civilization untainted at a great cost.

The Dark Angels, being the first legion sent out beyond the Sol system to look for survivors of the Age of Strife, were the first to encounter Caliban. Upon meeting with the Dark Angels, the Watchers saw these visitors from the stars as an opportunity presented to them by fate, and entreated the Dark Angels for help. Luther, more worried that the Imperium was going to carve up Franj while his back was turned, was dismissive, whereas Lion, ever the idealist, saw the Watchers as people — a Chaos-opposing people no less — in need and stepped in to help. Lion and the Dark Angels made short work of most of the Chaos Beasts on Caliban, and in gratitude the Watchers pledged their fealty to Lion and the Dark Angels. The Dark Angels left a small garrison on Caliban — which notably did not include Lion or Luther. The garrison’s task was to help the Watchers rebuild their planet, but it was difficult; neither the Watchers nor the Dark Angels could find the source of the Warp corruption, and thus could only keep the number of beasts to a minimum.

The Watchers in the Dark are essentially the reason the loyalist Dark Angels even survived the schism. When two-thirds of your forces turn on you at once, it is difficult to even survive under normal circumstances. Although the Watchers couldn’t physically fight against the traitor Space Marines in direct combat, they could relay information and help loyalist Marines find one another in the disarray, even helping loyalists tell friend from foe. And in a pinch, if you don’t pay attention to a Watcher in the corner with a knife while fighting your loyalist brother, he will seriously mess up your day. Regrettably, Caliban was destroyed in the course of the fighting during the schism, and the Watchers in the Dark were left without a homeworld. Some say the Watchers intentionally blew up their homeworld, to deny the Fallen the use of the Chaos Beasts and the artifacts beneath its surface.

The Watchers are a very minor Xenos race, even in comparison to the other minor Xenos races of the Imperium. Their homeworld is gone, and there are only just enough of them to act as support staff for the loyalist successor chapters of the Dark Angels. At first, the Watchers were a secret to the rest of the Imperium — admittedly, a rather poorly kept secret. However, when the Imperium started allowing minor Xenos races to join the Imperium, the Dark Angels were among the first in line to present a petition on behalf of the Watchers. Though certain people were... nonplussed when the petition was presented, the Watchers were nevertheless incorporated into the Imperium. It is likely that the Steward knew of the Watchers’ existence and their contributions to the fight against Chaos before they were officially known to the Imperium at large (probably from the Lion himself), which is probably the reason why the Watchers were admitted into the Imperium despite being a group of mysterious Xenos attached to the descendants of the legion most infamous for going rogue.

Even as an official part of the Imperium, the Watchers are rather enigmatic. Watchers in the Dark can occasionally be seen on hive worlds and other metropolitan areas, but are almost always running some kind of errand for their chapter. Their biology and social structure beyond “warp-resistant, long-lived, and hate Chaos” are only known to the Dark Angels — and a few Ordo Xenos Inquisitors, who have found out through 'alternative' avenues. Even the gender or age of a given individual is not clear. The Watchers do not technically pay a tithe, but since the entire species is essentially a vassal race nigh inseparable from the loyalist Dark Angel successors, nearly every adult member of the species serves in some fashion.

Despite — or perhaps because of — this lack of information, a whole host of rumors have appeared regarding the Watchers in the Dark. As with all rumors, it is almost impossible to tell where these stories came from and if there is a grain of truth in them or not. Some say that the Watchers one sees today are the same Watchers that served during the War of the Beast, and there have been none born since the destruction of their homeworld. Others point out that the Watchers would have become extinct by now through simple attrition if that were the case, even if they had life spans longer than the Eldar. However, exactly how the Watchers are reproducing is unknown. Some say that they are simply nomadic creatures now, forever moving with their Astartes masters and making their homes in starbases and fortresses and ships, whereas others say they haven’t died out because they have one last secret breeding ground, deep under one of the hives of Old Earth.

Other rumors are perhaps more farfetched. Some of these rumors, bordering on conspiracy theories, say the Watchers are able to travel through the darkness itself, or are able to know the names of everyone they meet, or are the only creatures besides the Eldar who know how to navigate the Webway, or that they sing beautifully but they won't let anyone hear them, or are Imperial sword Hrud. Some theories are fanciful, claiming the Watchers hand out present to good little boys and girls on Sanguinala under the command of "Cypher Claws". Some theories are conspiratorial in nature, saying the Mechanicus uses the Watchers to spy on your comings and goings, and to see into your dreams. Some are downright eerie, claiming that though the Eldar have forgotten who they were, the Watchers remember — much more than the Eldar would like. As with all things, the Watchers never confirm or deny any of these tales.

Tarellians

The Steward's forces first encountered the Tarellians during the Unification and the Great Crusade. Though their race had never risen to match the levels of the Eldar, the Tarellians had a modest interstellar confederation of loosely aligned agri-worlds. At first, things went well enough. The Tarellians were cautious, and after a few inconclusive skirmishes, were receptive to human ambassadors. In fact, they scorned worlds that were not self-sufficient enough to be able to survive off of their own food supplies, meaning they did not contest Imperial settlers that took the barren (if mineral resource rich), unexploited rocks in systems surrounding them. But, eventually, one Tarellian governor got greedy, and attempted to enslave a human colony en masse to manufacture weapons for his soldiers. In response, the Imperial Navy sent a ship to free the colonists and dissuade the governor from repeating the incident. In defiance of rationality and good sense, the governor ran back to his confederates pleading for aid against an unjust invasion, and a war started.

The Tarellians fought cunningly and ferociously, and managed to seize a few victories against their technologically- and numerically-superior foes — aided as they were by the bickering and overconfidence of Imperial generals. The incompetence displayed in the Imperial forces' initial engagements proved intolerable, and new resources were directed to combat the Tarellians. Those new resources soon arrived, in the form of a Primarch. Fortunately for the Tarellians that Primarch was Rogal Dorn, who was disinclined to slaughter the children of his enemies and burn their homes to ashes, but the Tarellians suffered catastrophic losses all the same. The Tarellians were quickly forced into a white peace with mild reparations, but the shame of the loss shattered the Tarellian Confederacy. The dissolution of the Tarellian Confederacy saw the formation of a fractured mosaic of independent states, collectively dubbed "Tarellian Space", which were largely left alone to became yet another lawless backwater.

Then the Tyranids came.

The Imperium intervened on the Tarellians' behalf, even over the protest of some particularly proud Tarellian despots, sending arms and men to save the Tarellian people from annihilation. By the time help arrived, however, the Tyranids had long made landfall. Though ultimately an Imperial-Tarellian victory, the damage to the Tarellians was disastrous; over a full quarter of the Tarellian population had fought and died on the consumed worlds, leaving a battered and tired amalgamation of former Confederacy worlds to rebuild and repair.

Nowadays, the Tarellian sector is a peaceful one, providing mercenaries and foodstuffs to the galaxy at large. They're likeable enough, and cautiously judged by the Inquisition as mostly loyal subjects — even if some Tarellian mercenaries are found among Ork and Chaos warbands, and the rest tend to mutter about how Tarellia will rise again from time to time. It is generally considered bad form among Imperial officers to remind the Tau of the Tarellian histories — though Tarellians themselves seem to regard the Tau quite fondly, particularly for their resistance to joining the Imperium.

The Tarellians are a highly adaptable and variable people, showing a remarkable plasticity in response to their local conditions. They can, for example, range wildly in body size — ranging from Tau-sized to slightly taller than a baseline human — based on the environment and ecology of their planet. The variation they exhibited is not limited to the physiological; when the Tarellians spread out from their homeworld they developed a number of highly divergent cultures, each practically unique to the planets they colonized. Even during their most unified periods, Tarellian culture and social norms could vary wildly depending on locale. Hence the Tarellian Confederacy instead of the Tarellian Republic or the Tarellian Empire. Nevertheless, there are enough cultural similarities between them that the Tarellian cultures see themselves as distinctly Tarellian, much like the different Greek or Mesoamerican city-states saw themselves as a distinct cultural unit.

Of course, it is entirely possible that there are many different groups of lizardmen out there in the galaxy, of which the Tarellians are but the best known because they developed the most extensive interstellar network. The Imperium, lacking imagination, might refer to the species as a whole as Tarellians, even though the term only really applies to the worlds of the Tarellian Neo-Confederacy.

Like some groups of Native Americans (e.g. Comanche, Sioux), Tarellians are well known for their mobility in war, able to move hundreds of miles from base camp at a rapid rate to strike their targets. Where the Native American tribes did this through the use of horses, however, the Tarellians do this on foot. Tarellians originally evolved in an arid environment, where they had to keep pace over shifting sand dunes and the uneven terrains of arroyos in extreme heat. Marching through a relatively flat environment in balmy weather is near literally a walk in the park for them. The Tarellians don’t really have riding cavalry; it's hard to see a need for it when you can run as fast as a racehorse, though they do domesticate heavier draft animals.

General Tarellian Society

Describing Tarellian society in broad strokes is difficult task, as Tarellians — like humans — do not have a unified cultural baseline. The Tarellian planet of Maza’s decentralized rule by a Council of Tribal Elders is very different from the highly stratified society ruled by the Xibalaniqan mage-priests on Tikan, and so on and so forth. However, the following type of social structure is the commonest variant, practiced on the Tarellian homeworld after the Age of Strife as well as Nova Tarellia, the current cultural heart of the Tarellian Neo-Confederacy in the wake of Hive Fleet Kraken. In addition, this type of societal structure is present in some form on many of the lesser colony worlds founded by the Tarellians, most of which were settled by colonists from Tarellia during the time of the Tarellian Confederacy or as resettled refugees following the attack of Hive Fleet Kraken. Therefore, this particular social structure is the closest one gets to a “generic” picture of Tarellian society.

The basic functional unit of Tarellian society is the hunter-pack — a group composed of several associated individuals from a military unit — and their offspring. Each hunter-pack lives in a 'hauden', a structure made of an artificial cement-like mixture that is part barracks, part homestead, and part domicile. Each pack is expected to be responsible for their own needs, be it producing and hunting their own food or maintaining their own equipment. The individuals that form a hunter-pack may or may not be genetically related, as hunter-packs are often at least partially composed of more familiar family units, but individuals may leave or join new packs upon bonding with another individual. Most Tarellians on Nova Tarellia and the colony worlds will be part of at least one pack at some point in their lives.

Tarellians are fiercely meritocratic. The leader of a hunter-pack is elevated to that position based on the consensus of their peers, usually on the basis of the glory they have won. The process of elevating one to a position of leadership is called “shield-raising”, so termed from the historical practice of raising the chosen leader upon the shields of the hunter-pack to symbolize both the unity of the hunter-pack and the worthiness of the leader; a prospective leader could not be hoisted on the shoulders of their comrades if the majority of the pack did not cooperate, and an individual could only be raised up if they trusted those around them. By these traditional values, individuals are not to be elevated to leadership status solely based on their ability to slay their foes, but rather on their perceived ability to lead and command others. No Tarellian wants to follow a leader they do not trust to make good decisions, after all. The leaders of a group of hunter-packs are then organized into their own group, who choose their own leader, and so on and so forth until one reaches the highest levels of Tarellian society. As a result, every Tarellian is aware of their place in the social hierarchy at all times, but it is a societal structure that allows for a great deal of social mobility and individual say. These meritocratic ideals are present on many other worlds, like Tikal and Maza, even those which differ dramatically in social structure. Maza, for example, has little social organization beyond a Council of Elders drawn from the Matriarchs of each tribe, but nevertheless retains this meritocratic tradition in various forms.

This system makes the division between civilians and military in Tarellian society exceedingly murky. Almost every adult Tarellian is capable of picking up a weapon and defending themselves in times of war — although the same thing could be said of many human and almost all Eldar societies as well. Does this mean the Tarellians are nothing more than an authoritarian system where civil society is merely an outgrowth of the military? Or is Tarellian society primarily a civilian militia that simply happens to be organized into a highly stratified fashion? Tarellian leaders are subject to the will of their citizens, something which is typically not present in a military dictatorship. An argument could be made for either. The Tarellians would say those who debate such things are far too fixated on the details, it is what it is and should be considered on its own merits.

The meritocratic nature of Tarellian society is one reason for the Tarellians' dislike of the Imperium. While not ungrateful that the Imperium was willing to provide assistance in the rebuilding of the Neo-Confederacy, they do not appreciate the Imperium summarily imposing their will on them afterwards. The idea of having a leader imposed on them, rather than chosen, is to the Tarellians something akin to an immoral or taboo act. If the Imperium had presented the rescue of the Tarellian race as evidence for their ability to perform as leaders, some Tarellians might have even considered this enough of a valid argument to voluntarily shield-raise them. But the Imperium did not. Instead, they unilaterally assumed control. As social pack-hunters, the idea of unfamiliar outsiders having power over them on any level is vexing.

This long-standing issue dominates Tarellian interactions with the greater Imperium. Tarellians are well known for their caustic, contrarian attitudes in Imperial politics — though despite their stereotype of being bitter and grumpy, Tarellians are more than capable of forming positive relationships with individual humans (Tarellians have a rather common saying that roughly translates to “beyond more than two degrees of separation in the chain of command, everyone is a grunt”). Rather, the political actions of the Neo-Confederacy are due to the Tarellian custom of subordinates being expected to voice dissenting opinions to the leader of their hunter-packs, for the dual purposes of ensuring their leader is both answerable to those they command and open to the ideas of their subordinates. To the Tarellians, their contrarian behavior is smugly considered to be fair play. After all, since humanity waltzed in and declared themselves in charge, they'd best take charge — and everything unpleasant that accompanies it.

Tarellian Weapons

The Tarellians' weapon of choice is the disruptor rifle. Invented and primarily used by the various Tarellian worlds, the disruptor is a weapon which quite literally boils the molecules of its targets. Aside from disruptors, Tarellians also make some use of autoguns and lasweapons when available. Mazans in particular tend to prefer wearing chainmail and arming themselves with longbows and other light skirmish gear.

Kultarr

Aside from their disruption weaponry, perhaps the most distinctive weapon of the Tarellians is the kultarr. The Tarellians' melee weapon of choice, kultarrs resemble a cross between a polearm, a pickaxe, and a hatchet. At the far end of the kultarr is a simple spike, which is used for blunting cavalry or infantry charges, or finish off a downed foe. Behind this spike is a second, recurved spike which functions as the primary blade of the kultarr. Typically, a kultarr is swung downwards like a tomahawk to brain a foe or impale them, thus allowing said foe to be dragged closer to the wielder. The spikes can also be used as a hook to drag cavalry from their mounts or pull an opponent off balance (their more traditional use, seeing as the Tarellians did not have cavalry until the Industrial Era).The kultarr was originally thought to have started out as a simple hand tool repurposed for war, developing over time into the weapon used today.

The kultarr's battlefield successes led the Tarellians to produce numerous derivations upon the basic design, each to fill a specific niche upon the battlefield. The most prominent of these is the mahukultarr, which replaces the recurved spike of the kultarr with several backwards-slanting blades appressed together to form a massive cutting edge. The purpose of a mahukultarr is to leave large, jagged wounds that bleed readily and are difficult to easily close. The cutting edge itself is composed of numerous smaller blades — as opposed to the single, complex piece of metal seen in other kultarr designs — thus making the weapon both sturdier and more easily repaired, as the broken smaller blades can simply be replaced. Although resembling a broadsword, the sheer weight of a mahukultarr means that it is more likely to be wielded like an axe or club — though it is nevertheless quite deadly in this role. However, this same weight also means that it is almost impossible for a Tarellian soldier to carry both one of these weapons and a rifle at the same time. As a result, mahukultarr wielding-soldiers are relatively rare.

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.

Worlds of the Tarellian Neo-Confederacy

See The Tarellian Neo-Confederacy

Tarellian Religion

EDITOR'S NOTE: Per original writer, section with Be'lakor could use some rewriting/expansion

The Tarellians, in a rather roundabout fashion, worship the Old Ones as their gods. The Old Ones, from what little we know about them, seem to have some sort of connection to the Tarellians. However, the Tarellians are not direct descendants of the Old Ones. The Old Ones, despite having dry and leathery skin, were still semi-aquatic and had to return to the water to breed. In contrast, the Tarellians have scaly skin, and lay eggs independent of water. Instead, the Tarellians appear to be descended from components of the Old Ones’ biosphere, likely spread to other planets in the Old Ones’ first attempts at terraforming. In human terms, it would be as if a race of sapient rats rose to power long after the extinction of humanity, only to find human artifacts and thus came to believe humans represented a race of gods.

The Tarellians did not evolve on the original homeworld of the Old Ones. Whatever planet the Old Ones originally hailed from, it was lost long before the War in Heaven even began — although there are numerous fringe theories as to where said planet might have gone. The Tarellian world with the greatest concentration of Old One artifacts was Tarellia, the planet where the Tarellians originally evolved sentience. Unfortunately, most of the Old One technology on the planet was rendered non-functional beyond any means of repair, and only the simplest, most resilient objects — statues, tablets, stone carvings, and the like — remained intact. Ironically, the few Old One artifacts that have survived the millions of years since the War in Heaven tend to be either exceedingly primitive (e.g. stone carvings and tablets) or ridiculously advanced (e.g. the Blackstone Fortresses, the Webway, three of the four Ruinous Powers). According the Tarellians, the writing on these Old One artifacts inspired their own writing system and they can even translate it to a crude degree, though modern Tarellian differs greatly from the language used by the Old Ones.

After Tarellia, the Tarellian world with the greatest concentration of Old One artifacts was the colony of Xibalanique. Xibalanique was a harsh, dry world even by the Tarellians' standards — which is one of the reasons why so many artifacts preserved for so long in the first place. Said artifacts were just about the only reason the world was of any interest to the Tarellian Empire, as the world was barely habitable otherwise, and its population before the Age of Strife was almost entirely composed to researchers studying the Old One artifacts. When Xibalanique was cut off from the rest of the galaxy during the Age of Strife, the Tarellians stranded there had to either adapt or die. Xibalaniquans are short and stocky compared to other Tarellians and tend to be relatively heavyset, which is thought to be due to genetic adaptations towards conserving energy for times of famine in harsh environments.

The inhabitants of Xibalanique were also notable in that all were psykers; a situation somewhat analogous to a Tarellian Prospero. It is not clear if this is because of something the Old Ones did to Xibalanique, or if it was simply due to a founder effect from the original population of researchers having a higher-than average proportion of psyker genes relative to the rest of the Tarellian worlds — Tarellian psykers are not unique to Xibalanique, it should be noted. Tarellian psykers are normally so stoic and dispassionate as to appear almost emotionless, interspersed with huge spikes of emotion whenever they use their powers. There are a variety of Tarellian idioms and proverbs that allude to this, common in the Imperium is "past years' passions land fast as lightning," in reference to these sudden onsets of emotional impact. On the one hand, this behaviour makes Tarellian psykers noticeably less susceptible to daemonic attention than the psykers of other races. On the other hand, this also results in a tendency to use their powers in quick bursts and thus become rapidly exhausted when attempting to do anything strenuous afterwards, as the stress of the moment becomes entangled with emotionally-depleting psychic highs and lows of feeling and realization. Nevertheless, this safeguard was insufficient to completely avoid the attentions and depredations of hostile forces, and Xibalanique was destroyed shortly after the end of the Age of Strife.

The Xibalaniquans that survived their planet’s destruction migrated to the other Tarellian worlds, where they were eagerly assimilated with open arms. The Xibalaniquans were of interest not only for their psychic abilities, which were of value to any Tarellian warlord, but also for any potential lost knowledge that had been lost to the wider Tarellian Confederacy. Due to their psychic powers the Tarellians viewed psykers as being closer to the Old Ones, and on many worlds these psykers (typically Xibalaniquans) were organized into councils of mage-priests who would often served as advisors to the resident warlord. This arrangement varied from world to world; where Maza has no mage-priests in any administrative position, the mage-priests of Tikal became the direct rulers of the planet at some point in their history. The organization of mage-priests into councils was not simply for symbolic reasons, as it also allowed for the organization of mage-priests into choirs similar to the human Astropath system for interstellar communication. Even today, the Tarellians remain one of the few non-human, non-Eldar races to use their own methods of faster-than-light communication. The practical concerns of this system have likewise influenced Tarellian politics, as these councils are clearest in casting their messages when they are in unanimity as to the content, thus encouraging local cohesion as a necessary prerequisite for wider organization.

The Tarellians know the bare basics of the War in Heaven. They know that their gods were in a war with a pantheon of anti-gods and that their gods spawned a race of dark gods to help them. They know that the gods made lesser beings to act as soldiers. However, this is where the Tarellians get a few things wrong. They believe that they were the race created by the gods to fight in their war, when they were not. Indeed, in terms of age, the Tarellians are closer to humanity or the Kinebrach than the truly ancient races like the Eldar or Orks.

The Tarellians believe the stylized bipeds in the Old One hieroglyphics at the right hand of their gods — figured to the same scale that peasants are often figured relative to gods and royalty — are the semi-mythical ancestor kings and queens, from who the Tarellians claim their descent. They’re not, but don’t bother try telling the Tarellians that. They’re actually representatives of the various gods of the mortal races the Old Ones uplifted during the War in Heaven. Isha recognized herself in the carvings, as well as Kurnous and Qah. Actual mortal representatives of those races are nowhere to be seen.

The Tarellians also believe that their gods walk among them, though perhaps not in a physical fashion. When Isha discovered this fact in M30 this, as well as the general physical similarity between the Tarellians and the Old Ones, it was enough to excite the then recently-freed Eldar goddess about the possibility of finding fellow survivors of the War in Heaven and Age of Strife. Although still acclimating to the current situation in the galaxy, Isha made plans to travel to Tarellian space at the first opportunity. The mage-priests were excited at the prospect of an outsider taking an interest in their gods, and eagerly escorted Isha to the nearest temple to “show her their gods”. However, Isha’s hopes were dashed. Instead of finding living, breathing Old Ones, she found stone statues and temples filled with a few attending devotees. Isha, furious at having her hopes raised at and having that hope robbed from her just as quickly, almost lashed out at the “horrid little newts” in her grief and rage, before being calmed down by the Handmaidens. The mage-priests at the time were confused and did not know what they had done to make the outsider so angry. It is thought that later priests figured out what had happened and were slightly bitter to the Eldar about it, as they saw Isha’s reaction as a dismissal of their gods.

When the Daemon Prince Be’lakor, the last of the Old Ones, found out that the Tarellians worshipped the Old Ones, he realized he had a potential means to take control of the Confederacy. It has long been known that Be’lakor has a habit of setting himself up as the power behind the throne in a number of empires, both human and Xenos, in his attempts to break free from the machinations of the Chaos Gods — though typically his involvement with these petty empires was visible only in retrospect. Be’lakor often likes to cover up any evidence of his existence — or better yet lay contradictory evidence, or trick his enemies into destroying the evidence for him. However, in the millennia following the Age of Apostasy, Be’lakor began to find he had fewer and fewer civilizations naïve to Chaos to work with, with most either being absorbed by the Imperium, subverted by other aspects of Chaos, or being outright destroyed. When Be’lakor discovered the Tarellians worshipped his people, being the last of the Old Ones he decided he was by default their rightfully inherited master.

When Be'lakor felt he had gathered enough information, he made contact with the Tarellians and enunciated his demands. At first, the Tarellians were surprisingly receptive to Be’lakor, apparently believing his claims and requesting that he meet their mage priests at their peoples’ traditional sacred meeting grounds to consecrate his reign. However, when Be’lakor and his court of Warp anomalies manifested in front of the Tarellian mage-priests, the Tarellians dropped the act. In that moment, Be’lakor realized that for the first time in millennia he had miscalculated. Despite worshipping the Old Ones, Tarellian society is largely meritocratic and achievement-based, to the point that social advancement is based on personal deeds. For Be’lakor to appear and claim that the Tarellians should fall to their knees and worship him because he is one of their long lost gods simply because he is a god, rather than what he has accomplished with his godhood, was highly insulting. The mage priests told him as much to his face.

This, according to Kroak, leader of the Tarellian delegation, meant one of two things. Either he was a fake god who knew nothing of Tarellian culture and was stealing someone else's title and accomplishments for his own ends, or he was a terrible god with no glory to his name and did not deserve to be worshipped in the first place. On that note, the Tarellians revealed that the so-called “sacred meeting grounds” Be’lakor had met them at was actually a fake (which, the Tarellians added, if Be’lakor had really been one of their gods he would have realized was a fake in the first place), built above a vast cavern and wired with explosives. The trap sent Be’lakor and his retinue screaming down the mile-deep crevasse. Kroak himself dealt the final blow, striking the daemon prince with a house-sized rock as he tried to fly out of the rockslide and burying Be’lakor beneath the debris.

Unfortunately, the Tarellians paid a terrible price for their accomplishment. The Tarellians had maintained their freedom, but they had done so by humiliating Be’lakor, someone to disrespect at your own peril. Be’lakor would not tolerate such disrespect from the younger races, but he was patient and more than willing to play the long game to get his revenge. Less than twenty years after the Tarellians banished Be’lakor, Hive Fleet Leviathan made galaxyfall. It is rather noteworthy that despite coming from the same general direction as Behemoth, something made the Hive Fleet change course at the last minute and caused it to take a different path through the galaxy — right through Tarellian space.

Thexians

See The Pale Wasting and the Thexian Trade Empire

Nicassar

The Nicassar are a species of gasbag sophont, in which their organic components are wrapped around bladders or other containers filled with a lighter-than-air gas (usually hydrogen or helium) to form what is effectively an organic blimp. The Nicassar also supplement their natural hydrogen buoyancy with their psychic powers.

The Nicasssar themselves are best described as broad, furry saucers with bear-like heads and six arms spaced evenly around the 'disk' of their bodies. Their bellies are covered in tough plates of skin — similar to an armadillo's carapace — which allows them to drop to the ground to rest or hibernate unharmed. Their reproductive biology is similar to that of Earth marsupials; the young are born small and underdeveloped, and crawl into the mother’s pouch during their frequent hibernation bouts. They will suckle in the pouch while the mother’s deflated body hangs from the ceiling like a bat, and will remain in the pouch until the mother reawakens. Because of their status as gasbag sophonts, the Nicassar tend to have a rather ethereal, “breathy” voice, even when communicating telepathically.

Through an unusual quirk of evolution, life on the Nicassar homeworld evolved in such a manner that their physiology produced hydrogen gas as a waste product. The development of bladders that allowed this waste gas to be captured rather than dissipated resulted in a whole evolutionary radiation of floating organisms. Lightning strikes are 'fun' on this world. The Nicassar homeworld’s gravity is higher than that of Earth (which actually improves the flight ability for large animals due to the denser atmosphere).

Nicassar are driven by an insatiable curiosity, and are compelled to travel and seek out new experiences. This is as much rooted in biology as anything else; as large airborne organisms, such behaviour encourages them to disperse further than their ground bound evolutionary competitors. Between their psychic powers, ability to hibernate, and three-dimensional thinking, it was rather easy for the Nicassar to develop space travel. They had spread out pretty widely — but thinly — over the area near Ultramar and the Tau cluster when they were first discovered by the broader galactic community, and were well-known to the Imperium before they began allowing alien races join.

Even after the Imperium began incorporating other species, the Nicassar were almost deemed Xenos Independens because of their wanderlust and curiosity. When the Tau were still a power independent of the Imperium, it was hard for Tau authorities to keep the Nicassar out of Tau space. In many respects they were like the Hrud, except unlike the Hrud one could get the Nicassar to repeat a task they were capable of — if they really had to. The primary fear at the time was that the Nicassar would travel to an off limits Chaos-corrupted system, become corrupted themselves, then spread their corruption to the rest of the galaxy. Some even worried that their curiosity and desire for new experiences was a ready-made gateway for Slaaneshi subversion. Though there are Chaos Nicassar — like there are Chaos everything else — the isolated nature of their conclaves makes it difficult for Chaotic corruption to spread between them, and the initial fears of the Nicassar being a vector for Chaos corruption seem to have been unfounded. Indeed, as the Nicassar are a psychic species, they had long known about Chaos — and that its dark touch is ever but a shadow’s width away. To the Nicassar, Chaos was never some forbidden fruit tempting them to come into its embrace. They had gazed upon it already, and turned away.

The Nicassar are an inquisitive and cerebral species by nature, requiring a consistent stream of interesting ideas to consider and peculiar thoughts to ponder. Indeed, there is speculation that the Nicassar felt they had exhausted the potential for this on their homeworld and developed space travel purely to stave off the boredom. To this end, the Nicassar are fond of stories, as stories offer a multitude of ideas and thoughts to contemplate — and due to their psychic nature, consider people to be walking storybooks. The Nicassar are a common sight throughout Tau space — not because they consider the Tau to be a more interesting group of people in and of themselves, but rather because their homeworld and primary breeding grounds are located on the border between the Tau Empire and Ultramar. The Nicassar region was never extensively developed by either civilization, and thus is only intermittently travelled by Tau or Imperial ships — thus the novelty of psychic floating bear saucers looking for a good story has not quite worn off for the Tau. The Imperium, for their part, barely bat an eye at Nicassar ships passing through Ultramar's space — the long and 'colourful' diplomatic histories between the Imperium and the Tau proved ample opportunity for the Nicassar to introduce themselves, and the Imperium as a whole are no strangers to the bizarre. Overall, the Nicassar operate in a manner similar to the Diasporex, in their tendencies to wander endlessly and their nature as traders — though the Diasporex travel predominantly in the northwestern corner of the galaxy whereas the Nicassar are centered on the Eastern Fringe, so actual interactions between the two are relatively rare.

In more recent years, the Tau have utilized the services of the Nicassar as a method of training humans and other species in their domain as psykers when no alternatives are available. The problem with this approach is that the Nicassar are often unreliable and somewhat flighty — though they are more than happy to allow interesting new people onto their ships they won't usually stop their ships in any one place for long, thus prospective psykers will more than likely complete their tutelage on the other side of the sector. Nicassar ships are not particularly fast but are capable of travelling without stopping for extended periods of time, as they are extremely efficient and low maintenance, which suit the hodophilic Nicassar just fine. The upshot of the Nicassar psyker training is that it's free; the presence of the new person on the ship is a new book to read and a new ear to listen, and the Nicassar love to tell stories as much as they love to hear them. Gifts of sugary food are likely to please any Nicassar playing host. Honey in particular.

The ships of the Nicassar are not the most advanced in the Imperium, as they are built for efficiency and rugged durability over most other concerns. For much the same reason they aren't the most well-armed or armoured. The Nicassar prefer to run their ships at minimum capacity, thus they typically do not travel very quickly. When startled, Nicassar ships are more likely to flee than fight; though the Nicassar might appear somewhat frightening in their bizarre countenance, they are not naturally aggressive or belligerent. In this, at least, the Nicassar are quite adept; Nicassar ships have a surprising turn of speed when commanded to do so, as the crews can shape their minds and psychic presences into something akin to giant sails to harness the deep warp currents — deeper into the warp than most will go — to travel with remarkable quickness.

The technology that allows for this method of warp travel is non-transferable, as it is linked directly to the Nicassar's psychic ability in some way. Attempts by both commissioned adepts, hereteks, and Earth Caste specialists to build an analogous system for human or other species have met with only failure.

Ulmeathic League

The Ulmeathic League was a collection of world protected/subjugated (the League did not see the need for a distinction and thus had a single word for both concepts) by the Ulmeatheans, a species of large (typically eight to nine feet tall, when unarmoured) semi-aquatic reptilian xenos that resemble crocodilians or marine iguanas. Ulmeatheans are primarily herbivorous but still retain the sizable claws and fangs of their progenitors, having evolved from more carnivorous ancestors — if relatively recently. Ulmeatheans hides tend to be coloured in variations of green, ranging from a bluish-green to a yellowish-green and covered by white, calcified callouses similar to those seen on marine iguanas or whales — making the challenge of penetrating their considerably durable hides even more difficult. Ulmeathean skin grays with age, becoming more leathery to the touch and with more prominent scales as time progresses.

Cold-blooded (in the biological sense) and long-lived, individuals typically live for 100-120 years barring major illness or injury, with the recorded longest-lived individual passing at 168. They also possess remarkable regenerative ability, able to recoup from injury or trauma with incredible quickness. Given time, an Ulmeathean will even be able to regrow severed body parts — though a limb will still take a few years. The species is sexually dimorphic — that is, they do have two biological sexes — but the distinctions between males and females are typically lost on outsiders; the tendency for males to dress in brighter colours is about the only clue to the uninitiated. Despite persistent rumours, Ulmeatheans cannot smell dishonesty; their sense of smell is no better than the average human's. Similarly, their visual range does not extend into the infrared. They can, however, distinguish between colours better than baseline humanity, and thus are brilliant at spotting holofields, cameleoline, camouflage nets, and other such attempts at concealment.

Ulmeatheans operate on a very authoritarian way of thinking, with heavy emphasis on the notions of dominance. This is thought to be due to their evolutionary history and social structure; to the Ulmeatheans the strong deserved to rule, and the Ulmeatheans ruled the Ulmeathic League because they were strong and therefore deserved to be at the top of the social hierarchy. Ulmeathic tradition further dictates that the strong have a duty to fight to protect those under their care who are not as strong as them, and the Ulmeatheans are the strongest — physically at least — in the Ulmeathic League. Thus, those who are conquered by the Ulmeatheans almost universally found themselves a protectorate of the League. The Ulmeathic League was primarily governed under a caste system composed of the Ulmeatheans and a few other xenos client species. The Ulmeatheans were exclusively rulers and warriors within the League, whereas other species served the Ulmeathic civilization as functionaries, civil servants, and otherwise performed all the other menial tasks associated with governance. Those species subjugated/governed by the League had the right to challenge their benevolent overlords for dominance. If their challenge had been successful, their roles could have been reversed — and the Ulmeatheans would have been fine with that. Such was the basic structure of Ulmeathic society, which remained in place for the entire duration of the Ulmeathic League's existence

Ulmeatheans tend to be slow and hard-hitting in battle; an inexorable advance culminating into an overwhelming strike. It is important to note that 'slow' in this context means that Ulmeatheans advance and maneuver on the battlefield steadily and deliberately: opponents thinking them lumbering and awkward in close-quarters are in for a rude awakening. Swords serve as the Ulmeatheans' weapons of choice — though their appearance more resembles metal scavenged from a construction site — which they wield with terrifying speed and a grace belying their heavyset stature. On average, Ulmeatheans have marginally slower reflexes than smaller species — though any who rely on this trait in combat will likely lose limbs quite quickly. Somewhat surprisingly, the Ulmeatheans are also highly proficient at poetry and stonemasonry; the latter to such a degree that even the Eldar begrudgingly note they have a talent for it. This talent is not expressed for any mercantilist or functional purposes, per se, but rather because proficiency in poetry and stonemasonry is expected of the station, much like how noble or warrior classes on ancient Earth were expected to possess ability in etiquette or calligraphy; their duty as warriors necessarily entails these skills.

For most of their shared history, the Imperium never engaged with the Ulmeathic League beyond token diplomats and a few Rogue Traders. The Ulmeatheans were between the Ghoul Stars and Tarellians space on the edge of the galaxy, stayed out of other the Imperium's business, and acted as a good buffer against more unpleasant galactic entities; as far as the Imperium was concerned, the League was the epitome of a good neighbour. The Imperium thus left the Ulmeathic League to themselves and focused on more pressing concerns.

Then Hive Fleet Naga came.

The first real contact the Imperium had with the Ulmeathic League was therefore a refugee fleet, fleeing from the onslaught of Tyranids and informing the Imperium that the League was gone.

Just gone.

To their credit, the Ulmeatheans themselves had fought to last and, bar a very few Ulmeathean children and essential personnel, their refugee ships were packed to the gills with members of their vassal races. The Imperium offered the refugees settlement rights to a few systems with habitable — if not especially pleasant — worlds, gifts the League survivors accept with tears of gratitude (well, Passeri tears at least; the Ulmeatheans remained as stoic as ever).

Today these survivors regard the League as a fading memory of better times. The Ulmeatheans — once proud, dominant leaders in the League’s prime — are now a grim and stoic (well, more stoic) people, out of place in a dangerous and unforgiving galaxy. The younger generation are more accepting of their lot, either unhatched when it all ended or too young to remember their people's lost glories beyond their elders' tales of the League's might. Soon a generation will be born and raised without any contact with The League: Imperial Ulmeatheans. The old grey-scales remember and do their damnedest to keep those memories alive. But they too understand that the League will live only in memory now, so they live as best they can in their strange new worlds. The Ulmeatheans have not tried to regain any of their old authority; their whole society is about knowing your place, and they know theirs in the Imperium. They do make very good soldiers.

The combined facts that the Ulmeatheans are reptilian, that their ancestors were carnivorous, and that their homeworld was very close to Tarellian space raises the possibility that they are yet another lost Tarellian colony, ones that became “ab-tarellian” in the same way that Ogryn are abhumans. The Ulmeatheans are incredibly offended by the idea that they were just an offshoot of those tiny pipsqueaks (six feet being pipsqueaks by their standards); they forged their empire themselves, thank you very much. Younger generations are also prickly about it, though some are at least willing to entertain the idea. The Tarellians likewise bristle at the suggestion of being related to Ulmeatheans, as the Ulmeatheans' heavily authoritarian system clashes with Tarellian meritocratic sensibilities: Tarellians leaders are chosen on merit, not because they've sufficiently punched their subordinates in the face. Actual geneticists consider an Ulmeathean/Tarellian shared descent possible, but ultimately difficult to prove given the propensity for Tarellian genetics to shift to fit their environment and reluctance from both peoples towards a definitive answer. It is nevertheless considered an avenue worth investigating — if only as an offshoot of their main project of seeing if Tarellian malleability can be used to create some scaly super-soldiers.

Passeri

The Passeri are an avian race located in roughly the same region of galactic space as the Ulmeatheans, though their tech was universally ahead of the lizards, if still comparable. Even so, they were friendly and a bit naive, so they played buddy with the big lizards and helped them onto their interstellar feet. The two races saw each other as equals- Ulmeathics perhaps begrudgingly, but if the strongest should rule, then those of equal strength should be of equal standing, and the fact that their technology was the source rather than physicality didn't really affect that- strength is strength is strength.

Then some other race in the local galactic neighborhood started expanding, and began targeting the worlds of the Passeri. While their name isn't remembered, their savagery and brutality most certainly is, as well as their penchant for taking slaves to serve as labor and "entertainment." The Passeri fought and fought hard, but while their ships were advanced they had never needed to pump them out on a war footing, and the aggressors had absorbed other races before them and was experienced in the art of killing. World after world fell as their fleets burned and tales of the horrors being inflicted on those who could not flee filtered through, until every Passeri world had fallen and the survivors fled in burning ships into Ulmeathic space, gleefully pursued by the ones who even now caged their families and made them perform for their twisted entertainment.

Their assault on the Ulmeathians can be likened to slamming headfirst into a wall.

The Passeri had not hidden their plight from the Ulmeathians, and had been sharing all of their information on the invaders, especially once it became clear the end was coming. Technology once reserved to stay competitive was now given freely, along with the scientists and scholars who could teach and implement the new knowledge. They knew the Ulmeathians well enough to understand that doing so meant they would never again be free, that the Ulmeathians would demand their subjugation as they were no longer equals, yet they chose to at least sell their freedom to the masters who would not slit their throats in front of their families and laugh. For some, it was simply passing on the torch in hopes that maybe their neighbors would survive the onslaught in some fashion, unlikely though it seemed. Those who thought so grimly were unprepared for the Ulmeathian response.

Unlike their plucky neighbors, the Ulmeathians were prepared for conflict, and had already set their war machine into terrifying motion, the steady beat of a heavy drum announcing their slow but steady march upon the warpath. Asteroids were ground to dust for shipyards that worked beyond their designed parameters, every male and female unnecessary for production drafted and pressed into service, and generals and admirals meeting daily to review new information, give orders, and draw up battle lines and strategies.

When the enemy came, they found fleets triple the size of any they had faced before, worlds hardened and prepared to endure sieges for years, and cold reptilian minds unflinching in the face of their vessels decorated with the corpses of their victims. The fight was long and bloody, the Ulmeathians never hesitating to sacrifice lives if it created an opening, never failing to go for the kill on a fleeing opponent, never falling back or giving so much as a single inch.

Then the Ulmeathians began to push the invaders back.

Their advance through what were once Passeri worlds was slow but inexorable, their industrial might combined with Passeri advances meaning their losses were always replaced by stronger, improved forces. Ship by ship, world by world they advanced, each world retaken immediately being mined for resources and fortified against counterattack, the rubble of a destroyed civilization being used as bricks in defensive walls.

The Ulmeathians had taken prisoners at first, respecting those who submitted to those stronger than them. Then they reclaimed their first Passeri world, and saw what had been wrought. There was no more mercy after that.

The once-haughty invaders began to crack against this onslaught; once-timid races they had subjugated began rebelling once more, their leadership bickered and set upon one another with pointed fingers and bitter accusations that may have robbed them of their finest minds. They saw the stone boulder rolling towards them, and could not comprehend why their slaves could not match the efforts of a numerically-inferior force. They did not understand the unquantifiable multiplier of a willing workforce who did not need to be whipped to work long beyond when their bodies should give out.

The end was a long time coming, but inevitable. Whatever it was the Ulmeathians had seen that so incensed them has been lost, or rather destroyed. Their march did not stop at the worlds of their former neighbors, but onward through the stars claimed by these aggressors, freeing many who had been under them so long they did not know the taste of freedom, and accepted their new masters willingly.

Their crusade was unforgiving and absolute; the vile homeworld of the aggressors was burned to uninhabitable rock, and their works and knowledge ground into dust, even their name struck from all records to erase all trace of who they were. Considering speculation that they had fallen to the Ruinous Powers, this may have been for the best.

It was a bitter victory for the Passerians; while their friends had won, the nation founded by their people had burned, their worlds broken and their cities reduced to rubble that had now been used to build fortresses and machines of war. No longer were they caged, but shackles still weighed their ankles, and now if their new masters chose to they could easily inflict the same pains upon them, and this time there would be no salvation. Many wept bitter tears as they braced for the victorious Ulmeathians to turn their gaze from the broken enemy back to their new possessions- for that was surely what they had been reduced to, a prize to be taken for having bested the adversary.

Their tears fell anew when the Ulmeathians pressed tools into their hands, and bid them build not bunkers and bullets, but homes and cities of Passeri design. Where they had braced themselves for an iron fist, they found an open hand upon their back; controlling, yes, but also steadying and pushing them back onto their feet. Their brightest minds were accommodated for and recognized, and while they were ruled they were not unrepresented, electing parliaments and senates from their own to implement laws not far removed from their own.

Somewhat ironically, the Passeri probably have better records of Ulmeathian history and culture than they do about their own; life was good under their rule, and they still remember their debt. Plus they love singing, so writing ballads about the exploits of Ulmeathian heroes is something they genuinely enjoy.

For the Ulmeathians are not slavers, just authoritarian. Though they have no qualms about ruling over their once-equals, they still remember when they stood side by side, and would not allow the kindnesses shown when they themselves were weak to go unrepaid.

F'feng

The F'feng are a desert-dwelling humanoid species. Mostly nocturnal and spent the daylight hours in borrows. They had primitive firearms, some success with agriculture and a very limited industrial base when the Ulmeatheans discovered them. In their way the Ulmeatheans took pity on them and conquered them for their own good, as is their way. All in all they were better off under League rule and in the end, when Hive Fleet Naga came calling, the lizards fought hard to buy some of the F'feng time to escape their doomed world. Technically, the term "F'feng" isn't the name they call themsleves, it's actually derived from a slightly obscene word in base-Ulmeathic that translates to moron. The planet was called Nok-F'feng which was Idiot Town for all intents and purposes. The F'feng had no word for themselves as a species that didn't just mean "people" (and therefore excluded everyone not from their world and quickly fell from common usage) and had no actual word for the planet as a whole.

The Chief Commander who took over the running of Nok-F'feng was unusual and was almost certainly given the "great honour" of being a planetary overseer fore being so unusual. Jovial Ulmeathics do not exist or if they do they are so rare as to be not a consideration and are considered by their peers to be damaged in some way. Krupfoth was possibly a female of good cheer but it was channeled into the usual displays of power and authority that so characterize her kind. Having been given rulership of the Worst Planet in the League she set about making it less shitty. She made all wars illegal on the planet without her permission and declared that she would eat the chief of which ever tribe instigated hostilities. After a few F'feng chiefs being invited to dinner the message was taken seriously.

The energies of the tribes were then set to more constructive uses. Mostly this consisted of diverting or damming rivers, building vast irrigation systems, and generally maximizing the usefulness of what water the planet had whilst simultaneously getting the orbiting patrol boats to nudge chunks of space ice into the path of the planet. As the first stages of the work were reaching completion fruit trees were planted along the banks of new waterways and lakes to hold the earth together.

Krupfoth was not popular with the F'feng as they saw her as enslaving them to her will and denying them the freedoms they had enjoyed as little as a generation ago. But she did not care for the petulant mewling of idiots and her fellow Ulmeathic enforcers ensured that rebellions were short lived and ended brutally. It could not be denied by sensible F'feng that things were objectively better for the average subject if they kept their heads down and didn't cause trouble. They were better fed, less likely to die in skirmishes and raids, there didn't seem to be as many virulent diseases as there used to be and it wasn't as if the Chief was working them to death.

Many of Krupfoth's public speeches had such wonderful lines in them as
"Cower before the might of League engineering prowess"
"Plague and Contagion are slain without mercy"
"Resistance to my agricultural reforms are futile"
"All will tremble as I take your wastelands and beat them into gardens"
"Your petty squabbles are nothing compared to the might of League Law"
"Quake in fear as I call for rain upon the desert"
"Your homes are being protected, peace is been imposed and nothing you can do can stop this"

Nobody could tell if she was taking the piss or not because all Ulmeathic public announcements blatantly emphasize the strength of the current leader, what that strength is being directed towards and a declaration of challenge to any opposition.

Krupfoth was a 112 and very grey in the scales when the Hive Fleet arrived. She did not survive but many of her subjects did. The F'feng no longer hate her, time has changed her in the memories from a tyrant to a noble protector.

Helith

While the Ulmeathians did their best to erase all the works and identity of the Nameless Enemy, there is one piece of their legacy that could not be stamped out- not without crossing a line they could never uncross. Thus, some semblance of a legacy lives on within the race known as the Helith.

The Helith are a strikingly alien species, bearing close resemblance to an old-Earth jellyfish in some respects, with a series of air-bladders they use to float above the ground and four tentacles that split into fine cilia on the ends, similar to fingers, which they use to manipulate tools and pull themselves along. Their "head" sits on a thick, prehensile neck, and possesses six nostrils and four eyes. Their initial homeworld was a Gas Giant whose gravity was heavy enough to form a solid core but not quite enough to form a proper planet. The exact location is both lost and irrelevant, for they had only just begun to take their first steps into the Great Void when the Nameless Foe found them.

How long they were enslaved is unknown; none of their records survived, and information had to be passed on by word of mouth. It is known that at some point, their captors pulled enough of their ancestors from their homeworld to have a stable population, then forced every last one of them to watch as their homeworld was bombarded, the weaponry intentionally igniting the planet's gasses and turning the entire planet into a raging inferno bright enough to illuminate every vessel within several hundred kilometers. Some stories tell of transmissions being kept on and forcing them to listen to the screams of the dying, others tell of complete silence as they watched their home burn. As none who witnessed the event survived to be liberated, the accuracy of this tale cannot be verified. What came next, however, is all too observably true.

Flesh-crafting must have been a hobby for the Nameless, as they turned it on the Helith with unspeakable glee. The gas-people were already of a delicate biology by the standards of other races; the Nameless broke them and twisted their bodies into something grotesque, organs vital to their survival made dependent upon mechanical implants to continue functioning, if not replaced entirely. Their genetic code was altered, curled around the finger of their masters before a yank snapped it in twain, ensuring that their children would be born broken and deformed. While the exact method has been lost and forgotten, the consequences paint a grim picture of how the Nameless Foe violated them. Where once the Helith would have used their gas-sacks to float through the sky, now they require thrusters to compensate for the weight of their mechanical augmentations. The thrusters were added by the Ulmeathic; apparently the Nameless took great amusement in watching the Helith be forced to drag themselves along the ground. Several organs simply do not form for them anymore; when a new Helith is born, the delivery doubles as a surgery to install their first mechanical parts before the newborn's body dies. Without a healthy specimen to determine the makup of these organs, or what they once were, replacing them is all but impossible.

When the Ulmeathics first found the Helith, they did not immediately recognize them as sentient beings, thinking them some form of twisted fleshy design to amuse the Nameless, though whether this is a reflection on a propensity for flesh-crafting as their main technology or simply indicative of their personal tastes can only be speculated at. Upon discovering that the bloated blobs dragging themselves upon the ground were not only sapient, but fully aware of their condition, it was debated on whether the greater kindness would be to simply put them out of their misery. The Ulmeathic were not cruel, but it was late into their campaign; their renowned endurance was wearing thin, their soldiers growing weary and their ranks tattered by their ceaseless advance. The resources simply could not be spared to care for those who could not lift a weapon or constuct fortifications when their own forces were beginning to wear thin.

It was when members of the Helith were brought to Ulmeathic medical wards in order to better study their physical state that their propensity for medicine was discovered. The Helith would seek out any injured they could reach, at first by dragging themselves through the halls, then carted along by nurses once their intentions became clear. Using the multiple fibrous cilia that are their analogue to fingers, they could delve deeper into wounds than fingers could dare go, stitching veins and tissues with a precision most would require tools to achieve. Shattered bones were reassembled and properly aligned, and soldiers thought to have been put out of action for good were able to stand and take up arms once more. While they were not miracle workers and could not save those beyond saving, the Ulmeathics were quick to flood their hospitals and regimental medical staff with their newfound workers. When the Nameless counterattacked, they found the forces that should have been breaking bolstered by troops thought eliminated, and resistance stiff enough to hold out for reinforcements instead cracking from the pressure. In thanks for ensuring their campaign could continue, and seeing them through to the end, the Ulmeathics and Passeri did all that they could to help improve the Helith's lot, and restored them to at least some semblance of a normal existence.

The Helith appear to have grown kind from their suffering; their entire race knows basic medicine as a necessity for their condition, and have become known as gentle and caring healers, treating each patient as precious as family. They are meek, yet when first the Ulmeathic found them, they wasted no time in seeking to treat the wounds of their liberators, enabling those initially deemed combat-ineffective able to return to the fight. They became the League's respected doctors and flesh-weavers, growing renowned for their compassion, gentle nature, and skill at the mending of injuries. Yet for all their knowledge and skill, there was always a quiet melancholy for the Helith, for they could not find a way to fix themselves.

Considering their subservient, empathetic natures, it is shocking to note that these passive, amicable xenos were also the source of the greatest diplomatic incident between the races of the Ulmeathic League and the Imperium.

The Admech officially arrived soon after the refugees from the League were accepted into the Imperium, eager to convince their new clients of the superiority of Mars-approved designs, especially when it came to their downright-primitive augments. For a time, all went well; the Helith were well aware of their augment's failings, having started from the worst possible designs and working their way backwards towards pure functionality. Admech's insights into the craft was already revealing flaws they had not realized needing fixing, and the techpriests were pleased to have such a rapt audience willing to accept their teachings without question- or at least, without contest; the questions were many, but in pursuit of elaboration, and there are few topics as appealling for a techpriest to discuss as the virtues and details of mechanical augmentations. The relationship was shaping up to be very pleasant and amicable.

Then one of the techpriests made the mistake of replacing his own biological arm with the servo-limb he'd been preparing, to give a demonstration.

The Helith were utterly horrified. They had thought the techpriests a race like their own, twisted by others or necessity into reliance on augments, or the injured and sickly of humanity who sought to overcome their sacrifices. That they removed their own flesh willingly to replace it with wires and welding, that they SMILED as they brandished the twisting of their form into something of oil and steel instead of flesh and bone... It was an insult, a slap in the face, a dismissal of the suffering of their race, the pain they had to endure, the sense of being 'wrong' that they still felt every time the thrusters did not respond as quickly as inflating their sacks would have, the itch in their flesh from atmosphere missing something that had been abundant on their homeworld, when flight that should have made them feel free instead made them feel the downward tug of the metal within them dragging them away from the sky that was their home. Why, they asked frantically, desperately, searching for something, anything to explain why these beings hurt themselves so, Why do you do these things to yourselves when the flesh is still good?

"The flesh is weak," said the befuddled techpriests, unsure why such a normal thing had disturbed their new clients so, "and thus we forge ourselves anew, that we may be better." For surely these beings who also sought the strength of the machine, who could not have traveled the stars if not for the augments within their flesh, surely they understood the importance of improving yourself by excising the limitations of your flesh?

("Your flesh is weak," said the cackling horde that dragged them from their clouds and strapped them to tables, "and thus you are nothing. but rejoice," their hushed taunts carrying over the whirring of saws that smelled so strongly of wrong. "For we shall forge you anew- to better suit your stature.")

The main reason no Mechanicus died on that day is because the Helith are utterly unsuited for violence. Weapons drag them to the ground, and they cannot compete the swing of a blade or handle the recoil of a gun. All they had was the grip of their tentacles, knowledge of the workings of the body, and a furious, hysterical rage. The cogpriests lost many of their parts, including the offending arm, before managing to lock themselves within a room the Helith could not enter. Intervention was slow in coming; it took several hours of argument, transmittion of shaky holovid recordings, and a relating of the sequence of events from one of the clearer-headed techpriests before any authority could be convinced that the Helith, of all people, were rioting.

When it was finally accepted that the Helith were on the warpath, Nakaidos' response was swift and brutal; the Ulmeathic may not be unkind, but they have little tolerance for rebellion or disorder, even from a race such as the Helith. This did much to soothe the Mechanicum's ruffled feathers, as did the ban placed on Helith access to Imperium technology for several year's time. That this was done in part to prevent further contact between the Helith and Admech goes unspoken by those in power, both in the Ulmeathic League who wish to protect their fellow member-race, and by those in Imperial governance who recognize that the Mechanicum is at least partly at fault for skimming over the details of exactly how the Helith came to their current state. As for the Helith, their care is now handled by the Adbio, with whom their relationship has proved much less turbulent.