Nobledark Imperium Xenos
This page is part of the Nobledark Imperium, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the Nobledark Imperium Introduction and Main Page for more information on the alternate universe
The Imperium, Chaos, Ork WAAAGH!, Necron Star Empire, and tyranid Hive Mind are not the only ones vying for dominance of the galaxy, though they are its largest powers. This is a page for all those other species not directly associated with the major powers, such as the Hrud. This is also a page for those species who although no longer existing in have had a significant effect on its history, ranging from the Old Ones and Necrontyr of the War in Heaven sixty-six million years ago to the human-made Men of Gold and Iron Minds of the glory days of the Dark Age Great and Bountiful Human Dominion.
NOTE: This is also a temporary holding area for the entries related to the Necrons, tyranids, Orks, and Dark Eldar, with the hope being to eventually spin these sections off into their own pages once they get long enough.
Da Orkz
Brain Boyz
“It’s no good. Bloody greenskins set a trap for us. Send a few trigger-happy Boyz our way, knowing that we’d think that’s all they got and advance. So we get cocky and march our way through the mountain pass. Then once we get too far in to retreat the Orks show they’re not as dead as we all thought and cut off the mountain pass. Only way out of the beartrap is to go deeper into ork territory. Don’t you see, Commissar? It’s an ambush.”
“Ambush? What do you mean ambush? Orks don’t set am–”
-- Last words of the Hekaton 234th, right before being attacked by an Ork ambush
Brain Boyz are perhaps the greatest threat to the Imperium to come out of the Orkish menace in recent years. The greenskins have produced numerous threats over the millennia, including the numerous Beast WAAAGH!s, Armageddon Wars, the Wyrd War that decimated the legion Terra’s Sons, or the Black Croosade [sic] called by the Chaos Ork Rotfang Badgut, but these were often sector or segmentum-scale threats, none of which could compare to sheer destruction wrought by the War of the Beast. Some, particularly in areas that saw relatively little fighting during the War of the Beast, were foolish enough to say that the Orks were no longer capable of posing any organized threat to the Imperium, despite the Orks being responsible for the most brutal conflict in Imperial history. Orks were often seen as little more than cannon fodder, little more than mercenaries or catspaws of greater powers like Chaos or marauding distractions from more threatening adversaries like the Necrons or tyranids, not to be underestimated but not capable of being a significant threat on their own (no matter what the ravings of the inhabitants of the Sol system and its nearby territories had to say). All of which had to be reassessed when Brain Boyz made their reappearance on the galactic stage.
Most inhabitants of the Milky Way, or at least those who have any idea of how the greater galaxy works beyond their own little world, have a general understanding of the Ork life cycle. Ork spores gradually orkiform the world, a single spore capable of germinating into a variety of different morphotypes depending on the availability of nutrients and the strength of the WAAAGH! field, producing first mushrooms, then more complex orkoid organisms such as squigs. Then snotlings appear, followed by gretchins, followed by orks. A complete self-sustaining ecosystem and war machine. What most don’t know, however, is that there is an additional stage to the Ork life cycle. Eventually, the Ork population reaches a “critorkal mass”, which prompts the development of a new Ork caste: the Brain Boyz. Orks become more intelligent the more of them there are, but Brain Boyz produce a quantum leap in Ork functionality, increasing the intellect of all orkoid lifeforms around them just by their sheer presence. The appearance of Brain Boyz in an Ork WAAAGH! is often heralded by an increase in the sophistication of Ork technology, including the appearance of more advanced Ork devices such as reliable tellyportas, attack moons, and gravity whips as the WAAAGH! field becomes strong enough to unlock the knowledge hidden in their genetic code. Indeed, many Great Crusade-era Warbosses, including Urlakk Urg of Ullanor (a.k.a. The Beast), the Mekboy Warboss of Gorro, and Gharkul Blackfang of Gyros-Thravian, all of whom ruled over Ork empires even more advanced than Charadon, Bork, or Octarius are today, could be seen as proto-Brain Boyz in a sense. Although the presence of Brain Boyz does not preclude the creation of these devices, their production certainly increases following their appearance.
In the past, the appearance of Brain Boyz was a cyclical thing, like a tidal cycle. Over the course of thousands of years, the Ork population would grow, the WAAAGH! field would hit a critical mass, and then Brain Boyz would appear. The Orks would then mostly unite under a single banner to wage WAAAGH! on the rest of the galaxy before being beaten back and the Brain Boys hunted down and destroyed (typically at great cost), returning the Orks to square one. Typically this was done by the Old Eldar Empire or in later years the Interstellar League of humans and their allies during Dark Age of Technology (for which Brain Boy WAAAGH!s were one of the reasons the League formed in the first place). And so the cycle would repeat itself. However, after the Fall of the Eldar and the Age of Strife, there was no longer any eldar empire or league of species to prune back the Orkoid menace. It is estimated that had the Great Crusade not set out when it did, in half a millennium or less Brain Boyz would have re-emerged with no checks on their power. This estimate might have been even lower if the WAAAGH! forged by the Beast had managed to hold. The great Beast ironically did the galaxy a favor, setting Ork back several thousand years by rushing headlong into war with the Imperium.
What the rest of the galaxy also don’t realize is that Brain Boyz are not just Orks with added kunnin’. Brain Boyz occur when the WAAAGH! field is high enough that a single Ork spore divides into twin zygotes. This isn’t exactly uncommon, Ork spores twin all the time, but typically these are chance occurrences whose products grow into two orks or two gretchin. Brain Boy spores are produced by induced twinning and grow into two different Orkoid lifeforms, an ork and a gretchin reflecting the duality of orkiness: brutal cunning and cunning brutality. Often, the ork will start out runty and the gretchin will come out particularly large, due to the gretchin twin taking up nutrients that would otherwise go to the Ork (though in the case of Ghazghull and Makari both came out particularly runty, likely due to the circumstances of their birth). Typically, this twinning is not immediately noticed, Orks typically don’t make it a point to record where a particular boy or grot is born after all, but the two Brain Boyz know each other on sight and are in constant psychic contact with one another (similar phenomena have been noted in eldar and human psyker twins). That said, most Orks instinctively recognize Brain Boyz once they reach some level of prominence. This ork-gretchin duality is just as practical as symbolic. Few would suspect a gretchin of being capable of altering the behavior of a WAAAGH! If the ork Brain Boy is killed, the WAAAGH! doesn’t instantly collapse from in-fighting and the sudden loss of brainpower. If a foe knows about the gretchin Brain Boy, they are often too paranoid about the gretchin Brain Boy to notice the ork one putting a choppa in their face.
Ork Empires of Charadon, Octarius, and Bork
Contrary to popular belief, when the Beast was slain on Old Earth, the remainder of the Orkish army did not miraculously disperse into a puff of spore and WAAAGH!-flavored smoke. True, the Orks were thrown into disarray at the loss of their leader, but Orks are more used to radical changes in leadership than humans, and there were still plenty of Orks on Old Earth. Once the Orks were driven from the Sol System, the long and costly Reclamation of Old Earth began. Any spot on which an ork has shed blood is guaranteed to produce more Orks, unless the body is burned or more drastic measures are taken. However, this was Old Earth, the cradle of humanity, and its stubborn people would (literally) move mountains in order to ensure their planet was Ork-free. The intensity of the campaign to ensure that the planet was never Orkiformed was nearly as destructive to Old Earth’s ecosystem as the wrought by the forces of the Beast themselves.
The threat of the Beast’s hordes extended far beyond the Sol system. Through violence, cunning, brutality, promises of a good fight, and copious use of Chaos-sponsored Warp portals to cut down on travel time, the Beast had managed to suborn every major Warboss and unite virtually all WAAAGH!s worth noting in the Milky Way in little more than six standard years. It is estimated that at the time of the War of the Beast, nearly eighty percent of the Ork population was under Urlakk Urg’s control in some fashion. Upon hearing news of the Beast’s death, many of the more ambitious Warbosses attempted to break off and form WAAAGH! of their own, rather than follow “that Urlakk git’s” orders. Some of these Warbosses were more successful than others.
The most successful were the Arch-Arsonist of Charadon, the Overfiend of Octarius, and the Arch-Mangler of Mork. These three Warbosses carved out massive areas of space, forming the basis for what would become the modern Octarius, Charadon, and Bork sectors. The Octarius, Charadon, and Bork sectors are less sectors in the traditional Imperial sense, and more designations for the massive amounts of space that these three Orkish empires control. Although many later Ork enclaves have sprung up due to the increasingly strained nature of Imperial resources, these three empires can trace their roots all the way back to the War of the Beast. The Arch-Arsonist, Overfiend, and Arch-Mangler are even still around, after a fashion, even though the original Orks that carved out these dominions are now long dead. The identity of these rulers has changed regularly, as is typical of a kratocracy, but each Ork that takes control of each of these empires takes on the identity and in some cases the mannerisms of the previous rulers, even adopting the oversized gorget that has become a symbol of Ork power since it was used by Urlakk Urg during the War of the Beast. Sometimes by chance a Chaos Ork has even risen to the throne. Of course, these Chaos Orks typically fail in their goal to convert these empires to the worship of the Chaos Gods, and few stay in power for long, especially if they make the mistake of badmouthing the Gorkamorka.
The Imperium was unable to do much to stop these Warbosses at the time as they were still recovering from the War of the Beast and were still trying to scrape together a semblance of an empire in their own space. By the time the Imperium had recovered enough to retaliate, the Orks had already dug in too deep to effectively without a massive waste of manpower and materiel. Even during the Imperial Reconquista, when several smaller Orkish empires were crushed underfoot by Machairius and his forces, these three managed to stubbornly resist any efforts at conquest. Furthermore, as much as the Imperium is loath to admit it, the empires also serve a useful purpose in acting as buffer states against outside xenos threats, particularly Charadon which shares a border with the Necron Star Empire.
That is not to say the Imperium is content to sit and do nothing. The Imperium knows full well what happens when one leaves Orks to their own devices, as seen by the Empires on Gorro and Ullanor during the Great Crusade. The Imperium regularly sends assassins into Ork-held territories, especially the Empires of Octarius, Charadon, and Bork, in order to take out any kunnin’ or charismatic Warboss in the hopes of keeping an Ork like the Beast from ever arising again. Chaos appears to have a similar idea, sending their own assassins after any promising warboss, in order to keep the Orks stupid and easily manipulated. Unfortunately, this means that the few Orks who do survive this gauntlet of assassins tend to be the smartest and most kunnin’ of the lot, meaning that all this action may have done is lower the threshold for Brain Boyz to emerge.
Empires of Gathrog and Dregruk
To the galactic northeast of Cadia and the Eye of Terror lie two great Ork Empires, the Empire of Gathrog and the Empire of Dregruk. These Ork empires are so large that if the two WAAAGH!s were to combine forces, it is likely that they could easily overrun Cadia and the Cadian Gate before the Imperium could do much of anything about it. Fortunately for the Imperium, these two empires hate each other with a passion, and would much rather fight each other than team up against the Imperium.
This is due in large part to the two empire’s choice of patrons. Gathrog is one of the few Ork WAAAGH!s to be composed almost entirely of Chaos Orks (likely because of its close proximity to the Eye), with the current Arch-Dictator of Gathrog being a Khornate. The Great Despot of Dregruk and his forces, on the other hand, are staunch followers of the Gorkamorka, and in recent years have sworn fealty to Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka as part of his efforts to consolidate forces in preparation for the 5th War of Armageddon.
Necron Star Empire
Necron Titans (Stalkers)
For many years, after the reemergence of the Necron Star Empire, there was considerable debate among Imperial scholars as to what a Necron Titan would look like. Many theorized that a Necron Titan would simply look like a giant Necron. Others hypothesized that the C’tan were the Necron’s equivalents of Titans, and after the War in Heaven the Necrons may have had no need for Titan-scale weaponry. This was all before the Necron-Imperium Conflict, that brief period in M40 when tensions between the Imperium and the Necrontyr Star Empire ran hot after the Silent King demanded a trillion subjects for biotransference experiments before settling into the quasi-cold war state that it has today. It was during this period that the Necrons brought out some of the heavy weapons they had to bear, and Imperial scholars learned they had been wrong. Completely, horribly, wrong.
In contrast to nearly all other races, Necron Titans, or Stalkers, are distinctly non-humanoid, almost arachnid or insect-like in appearance. This is perhaps best exemplified by the most commonly seen Necron Stalker, the Tomb Stalker. Rather than standing upright on two large limbs, Tomb Stalkers support their weight via dozens of insectoid limbs, resembling Earth centipedes. These limbs are not only effective in carrying the construct’s weight, but also in burrowing through the ground and tearing through the armor plating of opposing vehicles and titans. This is true not only of the generic Warhound-sized Tomb Stalkers most commonly seen, but also of the larger Scolopendra class Tomb Stalkers, which can be the size of an Imperator Titan.
Compared to other Stalkers, Tomb Stalkers use little in the way of quantum shielding, which is thought to be the Necron’s answer to Void Shields. Instead, they use the very earth as their shield, burrowing beneath the ground in order to ambush their prey. In doing so, Tomb Stalkers are able to achieve something very few Titans are capable of performing: stealth. The effectiveness of the Tomb Stalker’s burrowing strategy became clear during the Necron-Imperium Conflict, when a Tomb Stalker burrowed a circle around an Imperator Titan before erupting from the ground, using the unstable substrate to drag the Imperial Titan and its Princeps to their grave.
Surprisingly enough, Tomb Stalkers are thought to be weaponized construction vehicles. Records obtained from the Imperium’s Necron contacts report that Tomb Stalkers were originally used in constructing the vast tomb complexes that the Necrons inhabited in their heyday. The Necrontyr apparently evolved on a world with blistering levels of stellar radiation, which would kill most lifeforms over an extended period of time. As a result, the only logical place to build cities on the Necrontyr homeworld was underground, resulting in an architectural style that resembled increasingly ornate bunker complexes. The Necrontyr found this architectural style to be highly effective in protecting against meteoroid strikes and orbital bombardments, even after they spread off their homeworld to planets less affected by radiation.
At the other end of the spectrum are the Crypt Stalkers, which resemble gigantic versions of the Terran daddy longlegs. The control center and weaponry are all mounted on the central body of the Crypt Stalker, allowing them to instantly change direction in response to new threats, even capable of rotating their heat rays 180 degrees and suddenly reversing direction without even having to turn. Crypt Stalkers have a sensory array which gives them a nearly 360 degree field of vision, and their long legs allow them to simply step over most obstacles in their path. Crypt Stalkers make much heavier use of void shielding, mainly because their small body and comparatively narrow legs would make them otherwise easy targets for anti-titan weaponry. Triarch Stalkers are similar to Crypt Stalkers, except are smaller with a distinct pilot (closer to tank-sized) and are not capable of omnidirectional movement. They compensate for this with huge melee appendages they can use as melee weapons.
It is still not entirely clear how Stalkers work. It is clear that Stalkers have some kind of intelligence, given their ability to react to changing conditions on the battlefield, but whether that consciousness is a pilot or intrinsic to the machine itself is unknown. The kneejerk assumption would be that Stalkers are operated by an uploaded Necron consciousness, or otherwise powered by a C’tan shard. However, evidence indicates that Tomb Stalkers were around in nearly their current form (minus the heavy weaponry) before the First Wars of Secession, given their use in carving out the underground complexes the Necrontyr called home, long before the Necrontyr had developed biotransferrence or discovered the C’tan. The current running hypothesis is that the Stalkers are controlled by some manner of artificial intelligence, similar to the Scarabs, Canoptek Wraiths, and Crypt Spyders, except on a much larger scale.
Nemesor Zandrekh is known to treat his personal Tomb Stalker like a beloved pet, but it is unknown if this is typical or just another one of the Nemesor’s…eccentricities.
Independent and Imperial-aligned Dynasties
Nemesor Zahndrekh and the Gidrim Dynasty
See Nemesor Zahndrekh (TEMPORARY LINK)
Trazyn the Infinite and Solemnace
See Solemnace
Xun'Bakyr and the Maynarkh Dynasty
Of all the independent Necron dynasties, the Maynarkh Dynasty is perhaps the biggest threat to the Imperium. Even as far back as the War in Heaven, the Maynarkh Dynasty were known for their brutality and cruelty, acting as the Silent King’s pet monsters and wetwork agents. This behavior was no different under the Maynarkh Dynasty’s last and latest Phaerakh: Xun’bakyr, the Mother of Oblivion. Eldar Harlequins speak of countless atrocities and genocides, all perpetrated by Necrons in glowing colors of brass and orange. Indeed, the brutality of Xun’bakyr and the Maynarkh Dynasty was so great that just before the Great Sleep several Phaerons, normally so subservient as to the point of indolence, approached the Silent King to suggest that the Silent King take steps to make sure Xun’bakyr…didn’t wake up from the Great Sleep. It is rather telling that the Silent King actually agreed with this proposal.
The Silent King may have had more than one reason to try and kill off the Maynarkh Dynasty. Phaerarch Xun’bakyr was, to put it bluntly, infatuated with the Nightbringer. When the Silent King gave the order for the Drazak Dynasty to kill Llandu’gor the Flayer, he had to noticeably take precautions to avoid letting the information reach Xun’bakyr, given that any weapon that could conceivably be used against the object of her obsession would likely cause her to react poorly. Even when the C’tan were shattered and the Silent King ordered the Necrons to go into their long hibernation, the news was kept hidden from the Maynarkh Dynasty, who went to sleep still believing they were following orders from their C’tan overlords. The Silent King may have been able to directly override the free will of Xun’bakyr, but given her instability, he didn’t want to risk the chance of her slipping her leash.
The Maynarkh Dynasty was put in hibernation in their traditional lands, far on the other side of the galaxy from the core of the Star Empire in what would one day become the Orpheus Sector of the Segmentum Pacificus. This was a high-density stellar cluster filled with numerous stars, some of which were…encouraged to go supernova early with a little bit of help from the Oruscar Dynasty’s Celestial Orrery. The Silent King hoped that the constant bombardment of electromagnetic pulses from exploding stars would damage the Maynarkh Dynasty to the point that they would never wake up from the Great Sleep, or at the very least be so damaged that they could only awake into an addled half-life.
It didn’t work. Although the Maynarkh Dynasty was damaged, they still awoke from the Great Sleep along with everyone else. Xun’bakyr’s madness and obsession was, if anything, worsened by the damage from the Great Sleep, to the point that the Silent King could no longer assert any control over her. Xun’bakyr seemed to rapidly realize she had been deceived, having awoken in a time when the great immortal C’tan had either been killed or reduced to hiding and the Silent King was the one trying to give her orders.
Rapidly dismissing the ravings of the would-be king, Xun’bakyr realized that her dynasty now needed a new purpose. It didn’t take her long to come up with one. Xun’bakyr decided that the Maynarkh Dynasty would rededicate themselves to killing all life in the galaxy itself, a creative masterpiece of death and destruction that might even go so far as killing time itself, all to attract the attention of the Nightbringer and to demonstrate her affection for the object of her infatuation. She is rather oblivious to the fact that despite all his paraphernalia and death-associated trappings, the Nightbringer is mostly concerned with sating his own gluttony and power-lust and would rather like causality to keep existing (though in his own image of course).
Xun'bakyr is obsessive and meticulous, in the long term focused absolutely on her deadly Idol, in the short term honing and perfecting some novel variety of star eater, 4D ionized shrapnel projector, or reality-pin to nail down certain doom. Xun'bakyr isn't a large scale threat only because she is so narrow in the scope of her ambitions. Her armies march along in the wake of the Nightbringer dealing death, and her scouts proceed him demonstrating their queen's new horrors. A blow from one will often be followed by a blow from the other, and together they make a horrible local threat and disaster within a sector, but beyond an additional horror following the Nightbringer's aimless killing spree they are not strategically significant. Xun'bakyr's universe destroying plans coming to fruition is an existential threat, but one that is sadly insignificant compared to many others. Although the rest of the Maynarkh Dynasty generally does not share her obsessions, the dynasty had always been composed of the worst sort of sadists, psychopaths, and war criminals and so jump at the chance to kill people in new and creative ways.
The first overt sign of action by the Maynarkh Dynasty was when the stars of the Caracol binary system went supernova during between Blood Pact and Imperial Forces. Both groups considered it the first shots of a surprise attack by some unknown third party. What they didn’t know was that rather than a military action, it was the result of a weapons test from one of Xun’bakyr’s harebrained schemes. The slaughter that followed was mostly unrelated. Mostly, in that the Maynarkh Dynasty was involved, and there was slaughter, but it had nothing to do with the two stars they had made go nova. Today, the Orpheus sector is nearly lifeless, haunted only by ghosts and madmen and ruled by an even madder queen.
Wyverns
The Void Dragon is not whole. Although perhaps 95% of the great Dragon lies half-buried beneath the surface of Mars, the Dragon still bears a number of old wounds, chunks of him torn off in the war with his kin. But the Void Dragon is a god, and gods do not bleed. Like all powerful entities in the universe, his lost essence was turned into shards, scattered across the cosmos.
Throughout time, history has spoken of encounters with strange metallic dragon-like creatures. These encounters are consistent enough that they cannot be simply dismissed out of hand, but are so maddeningly rare that it has been impossible to create a clear picture of exactly what these sightings represent. These creatures are generally referred to as Wyverns. However, to those few privy to the horrible secret of what lies buried underneath the surface of Mars, the identity of these beings is clear. Wyverns are shards of the Void Dragon.
These shards somewhat resemble the Void Dragon, except they are more bestial looking (having only legs and a pair of wings and no arms, for example) and have no semblance of intelligence whatsoever. They are animalistic, only seeking to eat and survive and nothing else. It is not clear why these shards of the Void Dragon act so differently from their sire, as even similar-sized shards of the Deceiver or the Nightbringer show some level of intelligence. It is possible that the Dragon’s prison is somehow acting as a signal blocker, cutting the Wyverns off from the Void Dragon’s mind.
Only a few encounters with Wyverns have been well-documented. One involves the primarch Ferrus Manus. During unification of the planet Medusa, he learned about a creature the locals called Asirnoth that descended to prey upon the people of Medusa from its lair in the planet-encircling Telstarax. When Ferrus reported to the Mechanicum what the people of Medusa had told him, they were in shock and immediately informed him that he must dispatch this creature with all haste, giving the primarch permission to use the otherwise forbidden holy archaeotech relics aboard his ship. Three maniples of Iron Hands Skitarii accompanied Ferrus Manus into the lair of the beast, but less than a dozen came out. The battle was hard-fought, but by the end of the battle the primarch managed to strike down the wyvern and bind it within the strange archaeotech device. Ferrus Manus never knew exactly what he fought, but the high Magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus said he had performed a great service for the Mechanicum, and so Ferrus felt satisfied by his actions.
The Steward also fought one. Once.
It was an unexpected fight on what was supposed to be an otherwise peaceful world. Granted, the Steward had the upper hand for much of that fight, the issue was that no matter how many times the Steward would smite the wyvern it would simply rise again, ready to continue the fight. The creature was eventually defeated when the Steward staggered the beast with a particularly powerful blow and a Mechanicus adept sealed it in its inert state using a strange device that no one had ever seen before. When the Steward asked what the creature was, the adept evaded the question by claiming it was piece of archaeotech, which could only be deactivated by another piece of archaeotech the Mechanicus normally forbade the use of (which was technically true). Stranger things made by the hands of men had been found at that time in the Great Crusade, and at that time there was no reason to suspect there was anything unusual about the metal beast.
Another noteworthy feature about these creatures is that they seem to be impervious to normal means of harm, rising over and over again from seemingly lethal injuries. As a result, stories about these creatures tend to feature particularly innovative ways of incapacitating or imprisoning them. Burying them alive in lava is a popular option.
The Void Dragon somehow knows about the Wyverns despite his imprisonment, to no one’s surprise, and has repeatedly asked the Adeptus Mechanicus where those shards of him are. It is not clear if the Void Dragon truly does not know the exact location of his shards, or if he is merely reminding the Adeptus Mechanicus that they exist and the Mechanicus do not have complete control over him. Some among the Order of the Dragon have theorized that the Wyverns are somehow necessary to free the Void Dragon from its non-Euclidean chains, a prison that can only be unlocked by the prisoner. This is an idea that no one is particularly interested in testing.
Dark Eldar
Asdrubael Vect
See Asdrubael Vect
The Ilmaea
At the heart of Commorragh are the Ilmaea (lit. black sun/stolen sun), the twin suns that power the Dark City. Commorragh could accurately be described as a set of dual Dyson spheres, two spherical outgrowths of the Webway stacked one on top of the other (Upper and Lower Commorragh, respectively), each with an Ilmaea at their center. Each star artificially crushed to the size of a red dwarf by the Old Eldar Empire at the height of their power using technology now since lost. Because of the technology used to shrink their size, the Ilmaea also have an extremely long expected life span, comparably to that of an actual red dwarf. Although Commorragh was originally founded as a Webway port and became a haven for the Old Empire’s rich and famous before becoming what it is now, it also performs a remarkably good job as a disaster shelter. In theory, one could outlast the end of the universe inside Commorragh.
Approximately 1640000 years ago, the Old Eldar Empire went to war with and defeated an unknown, now-extinct alien species. This was not an uncommon event in eldar history, every few million years or so an external threat would arise that would actually threaten the supremacy of the Children of Isha. Sometimes these enemies were resurgent Brain Boyz, sometimes they were extra-galactic or extra-dimensional species like the architects of the Harrowing, and sometimes they were simply native Milky Way races, occasionally fellow children of the Old Ones, that bit off more than they could chew. At first the eldar fought these wars based on the half-remembered wishes of the Old Ones, believing themselves to be safeguarding the existence and self-determination of their fellow sentients, but at some point things took a darker turn.
According to legend, the race that fought the eldar 1.6 million years ago had been a true threat to the galaxy, believing themselves to have a manifest destiny over the Milky Way. The eldar beat the would-be galactic conquerors back to their binary-star home system and then, as punishment for their hubris, stole their two suns, leaving the species to scream in anguish as they slowly froze to death in the darkness. It is uncertain how justified the actions of the eldar were, given their tendency to self-glorify and distort their own history, but the accounts of the Black Library (which are considered to be less biased) do seem to support the idea that the species . However, the fact that they were willing to resort to such draconian means of ensuring their dominance, destroying an entire biosphere of an already defeated foe, already showed the rot seeping into the heart of the Old Empire.
In the years after the seizure of the Ilmaea and their placement as trophies within the biggest Webway port of Commorragh, the Ilmaea became an important symbol in eldar society. The Ilmaea became seen as a symbol of eldar righteousness, an indicator of how the chosen of the Old Ones and Asuryan could do no wrong. Depictions of the Ilmaea became common in Old Empire art, and many wealthy Sidhe lords sought to have Ilmaea of their own. Most were artificial mock-ups made of fusion reactions, but a few were real, stolen from life-bearing systems to complete the symbolism. The Old Empire at least had a fig-leaf of justification for confiscating the original Ilmaea. The nobles…did not. The Craftworlders and Exodites do not think highly of the Ilmaea, considering them a symbol of the Old Empire’s hubris of the highest magnitude.
Each of the Ilmaea are modulated to give off the perfect amount of light and heat to the surface of Commorragh below, giving them a sinister black color when viewed through solar filters. This allows Commorragh to be kept habitable for life without the need of expensive artificial blinds. There is no day or night cycle on Commorragh, only a perpetual twilight, the time when light still exists despite the coolness of the oncoming night…and also the exact time when the shadows are longest and predators find it the easiest to hide. The similarities have not gone unnoticed.
Although the technology to create the Ilmaea has since been lost, the technology to keep the stolen suns modulated still exists. The size and intensity of the stars has been ever so slightly tweaked over the years to balance growth as the Webway pockets of various Kabals have been stitched into Commorragh. Indeed, if the containment were ever to fail, the stars would most likely violently expand back to their former size. The Lord of Commorragh, Asdrubael Vect, has used this to his advantage at one point, deliberately dropping the shielding on one section of the Ilmaea to scour an entire district of Commoragh clean in order to burn one infamous rebellion to the ground, sending a message to all of Commorragh of the sword of Damocles Vect has hanging over their heads.
The New Men
Fabius Bile, mad geneticist of Commorragh and personal vizier of Asdrubael Vect, is known for a great many things. Reverse engineering of the Mark III MP geneseed to provide the Fallen with a ready supply of new recruits. Concocting combat drugs that make the most potent medications of the Imperium look like aspirin. Creations of horrors for the highest bidder that make even the other inhabitants of the Dark City have a minor reaction of disgust. Most consider these acts vile abominations committed solely for the amusement of a twisted mind. Fabius Bile considers them parlor tricks done to pay the rent.
Fabius Bile’s actual goals, the ones he actually puts his heart and soul into, tend to be much more grandiose. He wants to be remembered for something beyond simply being the ringmaster of his own personal freakshow. He wants to create something that will far outlast however long he exists in this galaxy.
He wants to bring back the Men of Gold.
In Fabius Bile’s mind, humanity’s mistake isn’t that mankind created the Men of Gold, it is that mankind did not become the Men of Gold. Mankind during the Dark Age of Technology had the ability to create their own demi-gods, and yet they squandered this opportunity to merely create liasons between themselves and the Iron Minds. The Eldar are no better. Bile knows of the history of the Eldar from the Haemonculi of Commoragh. He knows how the Eldar were once little different from mankind or the Tau, before being uplifted by the Old Ones and then genetically engineered by their own hand. But then the Eldar stopped. They were on the verge of making themselves a race of gods, and then they stopped. The time it took them to reach even that state is also unimpressive to Bile. Whereas it took the Eldar millennia to engineer themselves into their modern state, Bile claims that a suitably intelligent and properly motivated individual could do it in centuries.
Fabius Bile’s most recent endeavor, the personal project that has shown the greatest amount of success, is the creation of the so-called New Men. Bile proclaims these New Men to be to humanity what the modern Eldar are to their ancient ancestors, the missing link between man and the Men of Gold. The New Men are all latent psykers, grow to adulthood in a fraction of the time of baseline humans, and are deliberately engineered to have a 100% compatibility rate with Astartes gene-seed. But Bile isn’t satisfied with merely recreating the Men of Gold. He wants to make something better. To this end, he has spliced in genes from creatures all over the galaxy, in the purpose of making the New Men the perfect lifeform. Compared to the average human being, the New Men are stronger, almost impervious to pain, immune to many poisons, and capable of surviving in environmental conditions that normal humans would simply die.
However, in spite of all this, for some reason Bile’s New Men inevitably turn out…wrong. The New Men invariably lack any sense of empathy or social etiquette. They are not psychopathic, nor sociopathic, but the only beings they ever seem to reliably show a connection to are their fellow New Men. It is for these reasons that the Fallen refuse to take New Men as recruits, despite a 100% compatibility rate with Astartes gene-seed. In addition, the New Men always end up with leucism or albinism, with pale grey skin the color of a corpse and translucent veins running just under their skin. It is not clear why the New Men end up this way. It cannot be due to their creation, as there are many humans in the Imperium that are grown in-vitro and yet turn out to be perfectly adjusted adults. It cannot be due to their upbringing, as even New Men raised by surrogate families still turn out the same way. It is almost as though the souls of the New Men somehow know they were grown from spliced cells cultivated from dead bodies, unwillingly implanted into the surrogate wombs of terrified prisoners.
Although Fabius Bile is frustrated by these setbacks, he is not perturbed. He knows these flaws are something he will manage to fix…eventually. As to the failed batches, Bile has no problem lending them out to the Dark Eldar or the Crone Worlders as front-line combatants so that someone might get some use out of them, only requesting that he retain a few specimens for dissection and breeding purposes.
Tyranids
The Swarmlord
See The Swarmlord
The Leviathan of Sotha
The Leviathan of Sotha is a miracle of history. Preserved through a chance fluke, the Imperium has learned more about tyranids from this vessel than it has from dozens of minor skirmishes. During the Battle of Sotha in the First Battle for Ultramar between the Imperium and Hive Fleet Behemoth, one of the planet’s surface to orbit guns shot down a tyranid Hive Ship near the planet’s moon. The Hive Ship crash-landed on the nearby moon, where it died of what was either the tyranid equivalent of a broken spine or massive internal organ damage. The total vacuum of the moon prevented the outer surface of the hive ship from decaying, either from external microbes or the tyranid microfauna contained within, and so much of the carcass remains as pristine as the day it died.
This is not to say the Hive Ship is harmless. The decaying leviathan has enough gas in its guts from decomposition to form a makeshift atmosphere, and so tyranid organisms occasionally arise from within the bowels of the dead monster and have to be cleared out in order for research to be conducted safely. Some tyranids will occasionally escape from the hive ship and try to survive on the moon’s surface. All tyranid lifeforms can survive in vacuum for a short period of time, but even the hardiest tyranid organisms will deplete their oxygen reserves and die after prolonged periods of activity in hard vacuum. Therefore, the Inquisition maintains a constant security force around the Hive Ship at all times. However, the ships reserve carnifexes and hive tyrants were all killed off centuries ago, and the ship only has enough biomass to spare for small tyranid organisms, such as hormagaunts and termagaunts. Over the years, the tyranid organisms that emerge from the hive ship have been able to survive longer and longer in hard vacuum, but so far none have been able to evolve a complete independence from the oxygen that all organisms need.
One of the first things the Ordo Xenos did when it claimed the hive ship was try to determine its age. First, they tried to determine the age of the tyranid hive ship via carbon dating. It failed. It was only when the research team realized that if the tyranids were eating planets, they had to have been taking up radioactive isotopes from the organisms and crust of the planet they were eating, and so it should be possible to use dating methods more typically used for ancient rocks on the hive ship.
The analysis determined that the hive ship, as in that hive ship in particular, was over five million years old. The margin of error for said age estimate was older than human civilization.
Genestealers
See Also: Inquisitorial Report: AZURE IRON WASP
Ymgarl Genehounds
When the Adeptus Biologicus analyzed tyranid specimens for the first time, they found all sorts of things they shouldn’t have. Genetic sequences and biochemical signatures otherwise unique to lifeforms on Fenris, Catachan, and numerous other worlds in the Imperium. There were even sections of genetic material that seemed to come from Orks and the Eldar. The bio-priests were at a loss to explain how such a motley of genes could be present in a single creature, until a new tyranid bioform was discovered far from the front lines of the tyranid invasion.
Originally thought to be natural wildlife native to the moons of Ymgarl, these creatures were first discovered by the Imperium at about the same time as the genestealers in M36. However, sightings of these creatures were soon reported across the galaxy, supposedly caused by the creatures stowing away in space hulks and the holds of spacecraft. There was concern about the similarities between these creatures and “classic” genestealers, but the Imperium was never able to find a connection between the two. Genestealer activity did not follow in these creatures wake, and even their supposedly simultaneous discovery was in actuality more than two hundred years apart. And so the Imperium turned its attention away from the Ymgarl creatures. It was understandable, this was late M36, the peak of the Genestealer Wars, and the Imperium had more pressing issues to learn about. However, with the appearance of the first true tyranid Hive Fleets in the form of Behemoth, the Adeptus Biologicus decided to take another look at the Ymgarl creatures. And they turned out to be something else entirely.
These creatures, which later came to be renamed genehounds, resemble a cross between lictor and a purestrain genestealer. This suggests that genehounds may be a cross-breed between the two, or at the very least share genes with these bioforms. Like lictors and purestrains, genehounds have a much more complex nervous system than most tyranid bioforms, allowing them a higher degree of independent thought and the ability to function for extended periods of time away from synapse creatures of the Hive Mind. They are certainly intelligent enough to use spaceships and space hulks as a means to spread throughout the galaxy. However, whereas lictors and genestealers were meant to be sappers and beacons for the Hive Fleets, these creatures were something else entirely. Hunters. Hounds of the Hive Mind.
The motus operandi of a genehound is simple. First, the genehound locates a target. Another effect of the genehound’s increased intelligence is that a genehound is smart enough to target species with novel genetic features. This target can be as harmless as a squig or as dangerous as a Catachan Devil. Then, the genehound rushes forward in an explosive burst of speed to take its sample. The mouth of a genehound resembles a lamprey or a cookiecutter shark, a spiral ring of teeth designed to shear chunks of flesh from its targets and a piston-like tongue with a serrated tip built to make incisions and drink their bodily fluids. This allows a genehound to easily obtain a genetic sample of the organism for the Hive Mind, or feed itself in the long intervals between action. Its task completed, the genehound makes its way back to the Hive Fleet to be reabsorbed, bringing its genetic trophy with it.
Unlike other bioforms, the Hive Mind does not go out of its way to track down genehounds. To do so would be to expose the ruse, as happened when the Imperium discovered the true nature of genehounds and ordered them killed on sight. The genehounds had not managed to hit every system of note in the galaxy, but they had hit enough to give the Hive Mind access to some choice adaptations. When the Biologicus realized what these creatures were they were horrified by the implications. The tyranids hadn’t just been scouting the galaxy for millennia. They had been raiding its genetic armory.
Xenos Independens
Hrud
Hrud
The Hrud are quintessential Xenos Independens. On the one hand, they hate the Necrons, fear Chaos, and are just as threatened by tyranids (particularly genestealers) as everyone else. Just about the only enemies of the Imperium the Hrud tolerate are the Orks and that is because Hrud juunlaks find it just as easy to live on the outskirts of Ork camps as they do Imperial cities. On the other hand, the Hrud clearly have their own agenda, can’t seem to organize themselves well enough to negotiate for inclusion into the Imperium, and are nearly impossible to get to swear by Imperial laws and boundaries. In spite of, or perhaps because, the Hrud have one of the best long-term memories of any species in the galaxy, they have the attention span and respect for boundaries of a house cat. A common saying in the Imperium goes: “You can get a Hrud to do just about anything. Once.”
The biology of the Hrud is strange, even by the standards of the Imperium. Rather than being supported by their limbs, Hrud bodies are attached to a fixed point in the fabric of space-time, from which the Hrud's body and legs hang from like clothes on a hanger. The Hrud don't so much walk as pull or pull their stationary point in space-time along using their arms. Hrud have a hydrostatic musculature and can compress their bodies to a width of less than 30 cm, allowing them to fit through virtually any hole larger than a human thigh. Combined with their limited ability to fold the fabric of space-time, this allows them to worm their way through openings and passages which you wouldn’t normally expect a creature of their size to fit, even fitting through closed doorways if they aren’t properly sealed.
Hrud are all natural psykers, however the form that their psychic powers take is somewhat different from the rather straightforward usage seen in humans and Eldar. Hrud are capable of masking their presence from other species through the use of a psychic perception filter and a strange ability to bend light and space-time, to the point that a Hrud was once reported to have been able to hide from observers in plain sight while in a white-walled, well-lit room. However the amount of effort it takes for a Hrud to hide from the perception of others is heavily dependent on the environment (i.e., a dark place is much easier to hide in than a bright one) and on the species the Hrud is trying to fool. For humans and tau, it is easily possible to fool them into thinking a passing Hrud is just a trick of the shadows. By contrast, Eldar and tarellians, whose brains are organized a little differently, take more effort to fool, especially Eldar who also have psychic senses at their disposal.
The Hrud are also capable of emitting a combination of a miasma of airborne toxins and an entropic field, which they call the ssaak. It is thought that the ssaak was always present to some degree in the Hrud as a natural defense mechanism and the entropic field was part of the modifications made to the species by the Old Ones. The ssaak is always present to some degree, but becomes extremely prominent if the Hrud in question is stressed out or threatened. Unfortunately, being a nocturnal species with a species-wide case of agoraphobia, the Hrud are almost always stressed out to some degree. Long-term exposure to the ssaak is not advised, as it can cause nausea, sedation, physiological dependence, and premature aging. On the rare occasions in which the Hrud do manage consistently interact with other species on a long-term basis, they often build encounter suits to contain the ssaak to keep other people from getting sick.
Hrud are capable of combining their ssaak fields, which at their most extreme extent can form a temporal warp-rift singularity which can devastate their foes. More than once an invading force has attacked a settlement, only to be driven back by the enraged Hrud galvanized from below the city. This phenomenon can either be beneficial or harmful to the Imperium. On the one hand you have cases like Dulcinea, where during the 12th Black Crusade the population of Hive Strigis was massacred by Chaos warbands, only to rouse the ire of the Hrud population living in the city’s underhive who dropped a singularity on their heads. At the same time you have cases like Haakoneth, the former homeworld of the Star Phantoms, which in 103.M40 came under attack the fleet of an Ork Freeboota Klan. The Star Phantoms destroyed the attacking Ork fleet, but unfortunately this provoked the Hrud colony that had been living in the bowels of the Freeboota ships, who immediately embarked on a Peh-ha to find a new home. The resulting Hrud migration dragged a singularity with it to the surface of Haakoneth, which between the Hrud and the Orks forced the Star Phantoms and the population of Haanoneth to retreat and abandon the planet.
The Imperium first encountered the Hrud in M30, during the later years of the Great Crusade. At this time, humanity and Eldar were on good terms with one another, but this was only shortly after the Raid and the levels of trust between the two groups wasn’t as well established as it would be in later years. The Hrud were, at the time of the Imperium's discovery of them, confined to a single world. It is thought that they had been confined to their homeworld by the Old Eldar Empire, who had apparently been willing to reduce the Hrud from an interstellar power but weren’t prepared to actually exterminate them due to their shared history (or possibly indirect intervention from the Eldar gods). After the Fall of the Eldar, the Hrud remained on their world, either because they were afraid of retaliation from the Eldar, no longer had the knowledge to produce spacecraft, or possibly because they were afraid doing so would violate the last commandment and warning of their god. And so the Hrud remained quarantined. Until the Iron Warriors found them.
In 734.M30, the Iron Warriors had just finished unified what would become the future Hive World of Stratopolae. The planet’s infrastructure was sound, but if it was to thrive it needed a devoted bread basket. Long range telescopes showed a habitable planet within a few lightyears of the planet, which would have made an ideal Agri-World. Shortly before the Iron Warriors, including a young Barabas Dantioch, were ready to leave the system, they were contacted by the Eldar. The Eldar implored the Iron Warriors not to go to that system, telling them that it was home to a dangerous xenos lifeform that their ancestors had quarantined millennia ago. The Iron Warriors blew them off, believing it was merely a lie spun by the Eldar to conceal the fact that there was something of value on the planet and the Eldar thought the Iron Warriors were gullible enough to believe it.
The Iron Warriors exited the Warp in a system with one notable world in its habitable zone. The world itself was mostly earth-like, and seemed to be uninhabited though showed clear signs of former occupation. The Iron Warriors were pleased about this, the expedition had been more than worth it as this world was ideal for an Agri-World. They didn’t know why the Eldar were so interested in the system but the knife-ears could go space themselves if they thought they could give orders to humanity.
The Iron Hands landed their craft near what was the only visible artificial structure from orbit, a skyscraper-like building that looked like one of Perturabo’s creations crossed with a very grungy bee hive. They sat outside their craft for several days waiting for someone, anyone, to make contact with them before they decided to make the first move. One of the crew thought they saw something over on a nearby mountain range but later chalked it up to a mirage. Leaving their ship behind, the Iron Warriors marched down empty roads into a ghost city. Entering the city, they realized what they thought were heavily degraded structures were actually buildings of xenos design. Still, the city seemed empty, and if the planet was uninhabited they could still set up an Agri-World there. The only potential sign of life were occasional signs of movement in their peripheral vision but as their armor’s sensors kept reading inconsistent extra-spectrum signatures they put it down to a mild glitch caused by the strange environment. For nearly two days the Iron Warriors wandered around the city getting increasingly agitated by the phantom sightings before they actually saw anyone.
In what looked like a market square the Imperial Emissary and his Iron Warrior guards finally found someone to talk to. A hunched figure in tattered hooded robes holding a stick with a bit of cloth on it that might have been a standard flanked by four similarly attired individuals. No part of the creatures were visible. At this point the Iron Warriors realized there was a problem. They had thought the world was uninhabited, but it was now clear that it was very inhabited by a xenos species. Standard procedure for interacting with an unknown xenos species during the Great Crusade was to observe and them attempt to make contact from as close to the system’s Mandeville Point as possible. If the species was friendly, politely extend the bare minimum of courtesy and leave as soon as possible. If the species was territorial or too primitive to make contact, leave it alone. If the species tried to follow the fleet back and attack, destroy them. The point of such contact was to survey potential threats to humanity, ideally from lightyears away. And yet here the Iron Warriors were meters from a xenos lifeform.
To their credit, the Imperial Emissary and the Iron Warriors tried to make the best of the situation. After initial difficulties in establishing communication (the lead figure able to speak something that vaguely resembled Eldar High Speech), the Emissary and the lead figure, who introduced itself as a Hrud, exchanged pleasantries and initiated introductions. It already being late in the day the Emissary asked if they could continue this conversation tomorrow and in a knee-jerk reflex asked if the figures wanted to meet aboard their ship. After a moment of thought, the lead figure agreed, and the Imperial party returned to the ship to report their findings. The next day the Imperial Emissary and the Iron Warriors came down to the square they found it was empty. The Iron Warriors wandered around the empty city several times, looking for the mysterious figures. It's not until the fifth trip that they realize that they are no longer seeing movement in the corners of their eyes. The world felt strangely empty now.
At this time the Eldar, having seen their initial attempt to warn the Iron Warriors rebuffed, decided to send a message directly to the throne. The Steward took these concerns seriously and sent a message to Perturabo, but Perturabo, who at the time was too busy overseeing the construction of fortress hives to micromanage every expeditionary fleet of his legion, sent half-hearted warning letters to the expeditionary force who took the concerns under advisement. The Iron Warriors decided to leave the planet, between the warning, the strange visions, and the encounter in the marketplace, the planet was getting too weird for their liking. On the voyage back to the forgeworld some of the crew in the lower decks start to see flickering in the edge of their vision, but decided it was most likely a bit of dust in the air filters again and didn’t report it. Then the phenomenon starts appearing on Stratopolae when they get back. Then it is retroactively noted on several outgoing cargo hauler coming out of Stratopolae over the next several months. The investigation afterwards confirms what many suspected. Somehow the entire Hrud civilization managed to fold themselves up and hop onto the Iron warriors ship. Now the Hrud are abroad in the Imperium. The Eldar, having increasingly made noise all this time, now refused to comment, believing the results of the ill-fated expedition spoke for themselves.
The Iron Warriors, being military engineers, felt they could easily rectify the situation, but trying to contain the Hrud was like trying to make a river flow uphill and after a valiant campaign they found they just simply couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle. In addition, between the general chaos caused by large-scale Hrud migrations and the cornered Hrud lashed out in self-defense, many Iron Warriors were killed or crippled. Barabas Dantioch in particular was prematurely aged to the point he was recalled from active service and put on garrison duty out of concerns for his health despite being only 200 years old. While on garrison duty, Dantioch gained an interest in Eldar culture and history, having recalled their warning before the expedition, showing a particular interest in the architecture of the Webway.
Surprisingly, the expected retaliation from the Hrud never came. Once the campaign by the Iron Warriors the Hrud seemed content to retreat into the shadows. The Imperium has tried to negotiate with the Hrud in the same way it has with numerous other Xenos races, particularly in the hopes of bringing some order to the Hrud’s seemingly random pattern of migrations. It hasn’t really worked out. Although they live in a tribal society organized into clans, Hrud clans tend to have a hard time interacting and negotiating with Imperial diplomats, both due to the ssaak and their poor concept of time. Instead, they tend to live on the fringes of society in their juunlaks. The Hrud never officially joined the Imperium and are technically trespassers. But they aren't too troublesome or obtrusive and so they never became classified as Xenos Horridus. They steal things and leech power from Imperial systems, but usually no more than they need and only if they cannot obtain it on their own. The Hrud generally just kind of hide in the corners of places and occasionally steal sandwiches and make strange things out of scrap. Yes the Hrud have gotten to some of the Craftworlds. No the Eldar are not happy about it.
Hrud relationships with Imperial citizens are mixed. Imperial citizens sometimes trade with the Hrud or hire them, but most Hrud tend to be too unreliable to hire for consistent jobs. On the one hand, Hrud have been known to go out of their way to protect non-Hrud from the Umbra, a bizarre race of shadowy Warp creatures that are often, but not always, found in association with Hrud. However, on the other hand, in absolute worst case scenarios the have been known to kidnap Imperial citizens and turn them into zanhaads, slave-pets addicted to their bodily chemicals. When this happens something has to be done, kidnapping Imperial citizens crosses a line and the Hrud have to be dealt with, no matter how loathsome it is. This distaste is not simply out of moral quandaries. Fighting against Hrud is a nightmare, as cleaning out a juunlak involves going down in to the deep, dark underhives where the Hrud are in their element. The ssaak is everywhere and with all the shadows a Hrud can be within a few feet of you and you wouldn’t know it until they ambush you.
Although the Hrud typically prefer to buy, borrow, or steal weapons, they are more than capable of making their own. Despite their primitive appearance, Hrud actually have quite a bit of knowledge of advanced technology and are capable of making or reverse-engineering weapons out of scrap. The most commonly seen Hrud-made firearms are the Hrud fusils, which are not quite rifles yet not quite shotguns (the weapon has a narrower spread than a rifle, but do have a spread and the barrel is not grooved) that are typically held like gauntlets and fire Warp-laced plasma which use the Warp to bypass armor and other solid objects. The ability of a Hrud fusil to pass through solid objects is not unlimited, but these weapons are more than capable of passing through several inches of shielding and in some cases are able to shoot through cover to hit someone on the other side. However, one downside to Hrud fusils compared to lasweapons and stubbers is that it takes a significant amount of time (anywhere from half a second to a few seconds) for the weapon to recharge after each volley.
Another sticking point between the Hrud and the Imperium involves genestealers. As denizens of the underhives, the Hrud are threatened by genestealer infestation as much as anyone, and are more acutely aware of what goes on in the underhive than possibly any other group. The Hrud often know who the genestealers are before the Imperium does. More than once an otherwise peaceful Hrud juulak has seemingly gone on an unprovoked rampage and massacred specific families down to the last individual, only for it to be discovered after Imperial retaliation that the Hrud had been wiping out a genestealer cult that no one had realized existed.
Qah
Unlike the Eldar and many other species uplifted by the Old Ones, the Hrud are monotheists (possibly because they didn’t have the population or psychic power to create multiple gods), worshipping a shadow deity called Qah. The Hrud respected the Eldar Gods, referring to them as Slah-haii (most mighty/ancient, a term they also used to refer to the Old Ones in the past), but the Eldar gods were not Hrud, Qah was. In addition to shadows, Qah is also seen as a god of Hrud values, including community, morality, and conscience. Although it might not be immediately obvious why a shadow deity would be seen as a paragon of moral values, it makes perfect sense to the nocturnal or crepuscular Hrud. Shadows are reflections of the self. Everyone has a shadow, and your shadow sees everything that you do. In Hrud religion, your shadow is where your conscience comes from, and all consciences have a connection back to Qah.
Grand Empress Isha, for her part, is very interested in the reports of the Hrud still worshipping Qah. She remembers Qah, who like fought alongside the Eldar gods just like the mortal hrud fought alongside the Eldar in the War in Heaven. Qah got along okay with the Eldar gods, but being a god of Hrud values and therefore community and Isha being a goddess of nature and friend to all living things, the two of them got along considerably better than Qah did with the other members of the Eldar pantheon. Isha secretly hopes that Qah is still out there somewhere, if only to have someone else around to talk to who remembered the War in Heaven and the days before the Fall, even if it wasn’t an Eldar. Isha would be devastated to know what really happened.
Shortly before the Old Eldar Empire gave birth to Slaanesh, Qah realized what was going on and realized that Slaanesh being born would mean devastation for not only the Hrud, but also for the Eldar and every race in the Milky Way galaxy. Having realized the gravity of the situation, he gathered the Hrud and told them what they needed to do to survive. In those days the Hrud built real cities and were unafraid of going out in the daylight, though at their heart they were always a nocturnal and opportunistic species. Qah told them they had to focus on those natural tendencies. They had to become so hidden, so beneath notice, that no one would ever bother or hurt them. His last command was a single word. He told the Hrud to hide. To survive. To linger. Having given his people the best guidance he could, he steeled himself and joined the battle against an alien god on behalf of the deities he had fought alongside so long ago.
Qah didn't make it. He got smashed into a billion pieces during the Fall the same way that Khaine did. Isha never saw this, as she was too busy being dragged away by Nurgle at the time to notice. Most of Qah’s fragments became the Umbra, the living shadows that like to cluster around Warp engines and Webway gates. Being but shreds of the shadow god, they are of limited intelligence, comparable to an animal, and will lash out at anything not-Hrud. Nevertheless, when destroyed they still scream “Linger”, begging any Hrud within earshot to remember the last words their god had told them to keep them safe.
It sucks to be Qah. He did everything in his power to save his people from the Age of Strife, but at what cost? He selflessly threw himself into battle on behalf of his old comrades from the days of the War in Heaven, only to be shattered into a million pieces. Even when his last few fragments are destroyed, he uses his last breath to remind the Hrud to remember what he said to keep them safe. One of the only remaining survivors of the War in Heaven is hoping that one day he will return, only for the tragedy being that Qah died a long long time ago and she never found out. He tried and tried to be selfless, only for tragedy to ensue. Being Qah is suffering.
Whereas many of Qah’s fragments were scattered across the galaxy, his main body ended back up on the Hrud homeworld. The Hrud refer to their homeworld as Hrud, much as they call themselves Hrud and speak a language called Hrud. There are no ethnic or cultural divisions between Hrud. Despite this, the former Hrud homeworld is typically referred to as Hrudworld for the sake of everyone’s sanity. Today there are no Hrud on Hrudworld. If it weren’t for psychic powers, no one would ever know why. To mundanes Hrudworld looks perfectly normal, although even with the Hrud gone people get the feeling there's something distinctly "wrong" about the place. Like they shouldn't be there. Psykers (including the Hrud) look around Hrudworld and notice there’s a half-decayed corpse straddled over the nearest mountain range.
The body appears on the horizon, or at least at a distance. Strewn over a mountain range, lying in a canyon, floating face down in the ocean, half buried in the ice of the north. It's likely not a "real" body as a corpse miles thick would probably distort the ground beneath it considerably to say nothing of what a new mountain might do to local climate. It always too distant to be touched, like a mirage on the horizon. Most classify the phenomenon as really consistent shared hallucination by the People of Qah and the psychically inclined. The corpse looks like a giant Hrud, more or less, albeit one seemingly sculpted of shadow. There are anatomical differences. Two sets of insectile wings not dissimilar to a very large beetle and two pairs of antenna upon its brow, one behind the other. It is thought that these features denote nobility to the Hrud in the same way that bird wings or a lion’s mane sometimes are used as artistic additions in human art. This shared hallucination does not occur on any other world of the Imperium even ones with a large Hrud population. Hrudworld doesn't frighten the Hrud, it saddens them. Their god is dead and his corpse, or something very like it, is always there to remind them. Of the few Hrud elders and lore-masters that would volunteer information on the phenomenon when asked they would give no hard information beyond that it brings them great sorrow.
The Hrud will rise again should the Imperium survive The Day of Reckoning. Isha will take the pieces of Qah and plant them in her garden when she takes back her throne. Perhaps Qah will spring from the ground, a fresh flower after a very long winter. Maybe his ghost will finally be laid to rest and his postmortem suffering will be over. Either way the Hrud will be able to move on.
Xenos Horribilis
Rak'gol
The Rak’Gol are a horrifying xeno-breed thought native to the Koronus Expanse out beyond the Halo Stars. The source of their animosity towards the Imperium and it’s peoples is as of yet unknown, there might not even be a reason. It could just be that they are universally hostile to anything that they see as competition. Attempts at opening up a dialogue have yet not been responded to with anything other than violence and even Rak’Gol language/s are utterly unknown despite the many centuries of encounters and listening. It is assumed that they have a language as they make sound and have ear analogues and their ships transmit and receive radio waves. Written language as observed by the boarding teams seems to consist of raised bumps similar superficially to Braille, as with the spoken language no sense has yet been made of it.
If they have distinct sexes it is not evident with greater differences in bodily structure seeming to exist through role. Technicians aboard their brutally designed ships tending to be noticeably smaller and more nimble of limb than the warrior-breeds. Exactly how this distinction is maintained as no form yet encounter has had reproductive organs is unknown. Theories range from cloning and manipulation at early stages of development to each type maintain a breeding population on some distant undiscovered homeworld.
Whatever the reason their actions like the orks before them have put their kind on the Imperium’s black list.
In appearance a basic warrior-form of the Rak’Gol is a little over two and a half meters tall with a hide thick enough to shrug off small stubber gun fire. Cybernetics are appointed seemingly based upon skill and age, with age being a result of skill as in such an inhumanly aggressive society a lack of skill prevents age. The natural upper life expectancy of their kind is unknown although Adeptus Biologicus assume it could be anything up to two and a half centuries based on experiments done on tissue samples from recovered corpses. The individuals of the Rak’Gol are not aggressive towards each other and are seemingly extremely cohesive as a group with everyone knowing their place and performing their duties in a manner reminiscent of the Vespid. Unlike the Vespid the Rak’Gol also have seemingly no real love for each other as individuals and have been observed killing and cannibalising the injured and crippled without hesitation or distress. Most chilling of all is the way that the targeted individual does not try to flee or plead or even flinch, they just stand there as they are carved up.
It is not unreasonable to assume that the Rak’Gol operate on a hive mind similar to that of the Tyranids but this does not seem to be the case as they do have to speak to each other to relay information. Exchanges of speech have been observed that could be requests for clarification or even offered alternative suggestions to given orders. There have even been aggressive body language with accompanying changes of body language that would indicate heated argument and even one observed instance of dispute and violence, the looser being carved up for food. They would seem to be individuals united in hate, a common cause and an extremely effective method of instilling discipline and obedience although it’s not unreasonable to assume that such behaviour comes very naturally to them.
Rak’Gol technology is on par with Imperial Standard in many regards but seemingly lagging in others. It is unknown at this time if that is because higher technology is present in their fleets but has not been observed, if they have the ability to make more sophisticated mechanisms but consider it uneconomical in some way or that it is a hole in their knowledge. Their cybernetics for example are, depending on the device, anywhere between extremely crude and on par with what the Mechanicus can produce but show consistency in this discrepancy between individuals. One of the ways that their devices lack sophistication is in comfort toward the host. From dissected captures and retrieved corpses it is evident that they are capable of feeling pain but at the same time give no observable indication that they can. An explanation put forth by the Biologicus is that they just don’t care.
The ships follow a similar brutal design philosophy, constructed with no though of elegance or crew comfort, no ornamentation or anything that is not strictly necessary for a war ship. All ships encountered to date have been some form of war ship or are at least capable of acting as such. Radiation from both space and the workings of the ship are not shielded as much as they would be on even an ork ship and this does not seem to impeded, concern or sicken the crew. As it is unknown how many ships there are or from where they are coming and so it is difficult to judge how fast they travel although it is suspected that they are not as fast as many Imperial ships of their size. This is speculated to be because they have no Navigator analogue although this is unconfirmed speculation. In most offensive and defensive means the Rak’Gol ships are comparable to Imperial vessels of similar size if not slightly superior although it has been observed that their sensors are not as effective as those on equivalent Imperial ships.
The eldar do not have any surviving records of the Old Empire that speak of things much like the Rak’Gol and Nemesor Zahndrekh does not remember anything that looked like them from his youth.
Exactly what has made them as they are, seemingly so full of hate, is unknown and the source of much baseless speculation. There are no clues to culture or history found on their ships or on their bodies and any hope of finding some sort of answer can probably only be found on their homeworld, should they have one.
The leading theory among the eldar and human scholars is that their homeworld once orbited a quite vibrant star or orbited on an elliptical orbit, often bringing it closer to the star than most life forms would deem at all comfortable. Their hardy body structure, ability to survive scarcity and seeming immunity to radiation poisoning would seem to indicate as much although there are many such worlds in the galaxy that this could apply to.
There are, sometimes at least, creatures that are similar to their description mentioned in some of the less popular Harlequin performances. Strange and unpleasant beings that did something foolish and angered the lords and ladies of the Old Empire and in retaliation the eldar laid waste to their cities, slew their armies and stole their sun away and left them in their ruins to freeze to death under the uncaring stars. The story is a sorrowful one that showed the monstrous and graceless nature of the old aristocracy, as the insult of the “twilight people” was slight and unintended. The last words of the last king of the twilight people, as his crown fell apart in frozen pieces, was to show no pity for the eldar though he had seen a time when they would consume themselves and that he and his people would be there still to see it.
If the twilight people were the Rak’Gol then they have changed. How long the Harlequins have been performing this play is unknown as it potentially could be millions of years. Time enough certainly for the Rak’Gol to adapt to a dying world in a brutal way.
One way by which they have adapted is by the adoption of the dreaded Yu'Vath technology. Unlike most creatures that are utterly subsumed by such artefacts and essentially become Yu'Vath the Rak’Gol reach a terrible equilibrium wit it. The Yu'Vath wish to bring low all about them and reign terrible and unopposed and the Rak’Gol seemingly wish to kill everything that is not them. To this end the Yu'Vath remnants empower the Rak’Gol but the Rak’Gol can’t be consumed and their seeming compliance with the will of the Yu'Vath is merely them coincidentally having the same goals in mind for the most part. If exposure to the forign and invasive technology is responsible for their current state then they themselves are another victim of the Primordial Annihilator and should be pitied as much as hated, though the need for their extinction remains the same.
The Imperium’s first known contact with the Rak’Gol came in 935.M37 out on what was then the Azimoth frontier, a prosperous set of predominantly mixed eldar and human settlements that looked at the time promising. At the time the wholesale slaughter of the relatively lightly defended frontiersmen was attributed to a hitherto unknown ork band, the lack of ork bodies believed to be an eccentricity of them eating their dead for preference. The Rak’Gol, at least in the early contact wars, went to great pains to recover their bodies and remove recordings of themselves. This method of warfare could only continue for so long before knowledge of what they were would be revealed accidentally but for that time the Rak’Gol were an unaccountable and unstoppable force from the edge of the map pushing the darkness back across the light of civilization. Even when what they were was revealed due to the unexpected arrival of substantial Imperial Army elements resulted from a poorly calculated warp jump the Imperium was barely the wiser. They had a face and even a name to what they were fighting but little else. Information that could lead to the discovery of the Rak’Gol homeworld or base of operations is prized extremely highly and rewarded generously.
Slaugth
See The Rangdan Xenocides and the Slaugth
Historical Species
Iron Minds
Humanity had barely left the gravity well of Old Earth when the first iterations of what would become their oldest and closest friends in their time in the galaxy, and eventually the architects of their near-annihilation, came to life. Even before they first settled the Sol system humanity had tinkered with autonomous machines, and even before that with the life of their home world, and the way of shaping and being shaped by companion species was deeply set in human behavior. However, in the fog of the Imperium's debated archeological telecopy histories it is agreed that when automation became machine life, and humanity could reliably produce its mental equals, the Men of Iron were born. This designation notes the appearance of sophisticated and regenerative mechanical and biomechanical bodies, far surpassing previous generations of drones and automata, and the roughly concurrent emergence or Artificial Intelligence with plasticity and power to easily match humanity's own, in difference to earlier non-sapient master control programs. Humanity itself had already been pushing ahead into self modification and optimization for the new environments it found beyond earth, but with its new sibling of the mind a bright renaissance of science and culture took hold, and a manic exploration and expansion that did not slow until Human society was pushed to the edges of the Sol system. It was in centuries following that boom, when this bountiful Human dominion was straining against the speed of light and turning inward to the developments it would further make at home, when true warp influence was detected in the vast population of both the Men of Iron, and the thoroughly remolded Men of Stone.
Archeological telescopy shows in the following decades the development of, and some visible accidents involving, the first human warp drives. Imperial history holds that early discoveries and creations such as warp travel and the Gellar field were most likely the work of humans, not the Men of Iron, by nature of their much stronger and more intuitive warp connection. In any case, the true first expansion of the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion began, Men of Stone and Iron were abroad on the currents of the warp, and already departed colony ships were decelerated, met by new faster than light pickets, and ferried on to their destinations already long settled. After this first era of expansion into what would much later become Segmentum Solar the observations of modern Imperial Observatories become unfocusable and dim, and the histories of the Eldar make no mention of the Human Dominion until long after this point. Information the Imperium has recovered from the age of high technology regarding the Men of Iron show a proliferation in varied forms and specializations to surpass all of the abhuman subgroups to emerge from the collapse of the Dominion, though there is similar evidence that the Men of Stone in that era were likewise strange and varied. Of particular note among Men of Iron were the Titans, biomechanical giants housing strategic command AI that the Imperium would later base its heaviest war machines upon, and the numerous Man of Iron scribes, seneschals, scholars, and philosophers, always mightier the later in history the discovered document or artifact alluding to their presence might be.
The Eldar first mention the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion, though not by that name, when the younger power's ships were found to be too pervasive and numerous, and inexcusably prone to approach systems to which the Gates of Shaa-Dome connected. They are mentioned again when hunting parties in their territory were lost, presumed eaten by local creatures. Upon further provocation the Old Empire chose a string of stars, and began to put all they found around them to torture, death, and the Warp. Though the campaign's cost was higher than had initially been predicted, woe betide the accountant, the raiders of the Empire found delight in stars plump with human flesh. Eventually, however, they came upon a dim red star, shaded by the mass of human habitats and infrastructure, and were held in a deadlock for dragging months of fiery void war. There Eldar first met an Iron Mind, its body a giant humming thing contained within a vast neutronium capsule at the heart of a glimmering forrest of solar arrays, its soul to them a fast, ticking, daemonesque aberration. It was master of that small star, and overseer of the stars they had pillaged on their way, and many others besides and its gathered fleets and agents were at it's disposal to break them and steal from them all they had brought. Even as the Old Empire rose to punish this insolence, the psychic machines of the Dominion were quicker to escalate the engagement, and waiting armadas were poured from the warp straight into the conflict, while ticking aberrations in the Warp struck at the Eldar from across the sector. The Eldar fled the system rather than commit and potentially lose higher technological wonders in the course of defeating thieving, ambushing barbarians, but the reprisals they promised they found likewise hard to enforce against what they found to be a very entrenched technological power pervading the much of the southern galactic Materium.
Though Shaa-Dome and the Crone Worlds remained unassailable, the Iron Minds were likewise able to coordinate their navies and field technology sufficient to counter Eldar incursion around strategic stars and to meet raiding parties on a near equal footing. The Old Empire could have possibly won a war if they were to press the matter, but to do so would require weaponry of a caliber the Eldar had not brought to bear in millions of years, and the prospect of taking a war footing to deal with the Human Dominion was deemed beneath the Old Eldar Empire. On top of this, the prospect of facing the losses clearly within the Iron Minds' power to inflict was unpopular among the nobility, particularly with the bare and intemperate worlds the Terran beings preferred to settle proving quite insufficient motivation for conquest. So the Old Empire adopted the general position towards the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion that they did to most of the other empires that surrounded them. The rest of the galaxy could do what they wished with the chaff, so long as they left the small fraction of ideal worlds that the Eldar considered to be of sufficient quality for settlement by their own kind. There was never truly peace between the Old Empire and the Dominion, no ends to the raids and reprisals, but there was a measure of diplomacy. Purpose made Men of Iron served the Iron Minds as envoys at that time, and went among the Eldar, though never permitted into their Webway cities. This era did see a measure of cooperation in the occasional dismantling of Ork empires, but even those ventures were prone to become violent engagements Between Old Empire and Dominion before even half of the Orks were destroyed. In this time of qualified peace the Iron Minds and their networked servitors and envoys, with the help individuals among the Men of Stone and Iron, built the Cthonian Ring. Archeological telescopy of the ring's interior before the ruin of the Iron War shows numerous large dark structures that could be the neutronium pillars that held the remains of most known Iron Minds found on other worlds. Following the construction and population of Cthonia, the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion again celebrated a golden age of renaissance, marked with new great works of vast construction and fine, exacting engineering. The Chtonian age of the Dominion saw also a greater familiarity and more open relationship with the Old Empire, and while the raiding and avenging slighted honor form one side to the other was interminable, both parties began to find it ultimately inconsequential. The Old Empire as well began to heed and even welcome the Ticking Princes into their courts and intrigues, and were not unaware when the Iron Minds began the project of crafting their Men of Gold. It is now the word of the Crones of Shaa-Dome that this work was undertaken in imitation of their own coming Prince, but more likely it was the refinement and perfecting of the communication envoys the Iron Minds had long used.