Stories of the Braxxis Campaign

[Caladai Doomblade]

Hieronder komen vanaf komend weekend de verhalen achter de 40K campaign: The Braxxis Campaign. Elk leger heeft zo zijn eigen verhaalen, maar het begin ligt bij de Eldar. In een ander topic (http://www.hivenovio.nl/viewtopic.php?t=1516) komt wat er in de campaign gebeurt te staan.

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue; part 1

Craftworld Shai Tan, Farseer Ke'sar's chambers
M41.092.03.13

Ke'sar was sitting on the floor, her legs crossed, her head hanging limp. She had been in trance now for almost 2 day-cycles and she was almost ready. The floor around her was bare save for a few items of importance. On the left of her lay her spirit stone, it's dark blue colour like a lone rock on the bare wraithbone floor of Ke'sar's chamber. On her right her long farseer staff, undecorated and blank save for the etched dragon curving around its top. Finally, in front of her lay a silk pouch, it's delicate leather binding undone and a few runestones spilling from it.

Ready. She felt the final barriers of time falling before her concentration. Time's many paths lay before her, and she could see their grand design, the patterns curving, entwining, veering wildly in dimensions beyond the normal three, the possibilities and probabilities unclear and misty in all their complexity, but visible nonetheless. Her mind floated through the strands of fate and future, brushing the strands with imaginary fingers, catching visions of the lives and futures these strands held, looking for the futures related to her people. After what seemed like hours she finally found it. There were a bundle of lines, so close together that they appeared like a single strand from further away, yet Ke'sar knew that the thread was made up of millions of probabilities. All of them could happen. All of them related to the decisions that all of her people would make within the next cycle and beyond.

She followed the bundle of probability, skipping months ahead at a time. She was not looking for anything specific, just the general future of her craftworld. To look for specifics was like finding a single grain of sand in the endless sea of the galaxy. The further she went, the thinner the line became, strands of fate swerving away from it in all directions. Small decicions were unclear beyond the immediate future, where only the bigger picture remained as a definite probability. She almost grew scared when she spotted an intersection up ahead. Another large probability strand intersected the strand of Shai Tan, almost merging with it. A future almost impossible to steer away from, as Shai Tan's threads of fate had not made a mayor split yet. She supressed her emotion, knowing that emotion led to doom when watching the future. Only cold reason could survive the trance intact. Emotion could come at a later time.

[Caladai Doomblade]

continued...

She picked at the threads of fate with imaginary hands, pictures flashing in her mind, pictures of the family life of eldar, pictures of a dark city, pictures of her craftworld. She was looking for visions to give her clues as to what would happen. Then a vision of a tunnel. Brighly lit. She recognized it for a corridor of an Eldar space-ship. From the other side of the tunnel came gunfire and the vision faded. War? Were her people heading inexorribly to war? Another vision, further along the threads of fate, her craftworld under attack by sleek black space-craft. Looking further Ke%u2019sar saw that the thread of her craftworld remained thick and alive, so there was no end of her craftworld soon. More threads were spinning wildly away from the two intertwining bundles of craftworld Shai Tan and it%u2019s apparent enemy. War did that, war always made the future uncertain. War carried to many important decicions for the future to remain coherent. But the main thread of Shai Tan remained thick, so the path was set.

Then, far away, in the mist of the far future, she spotted something that made her heart skip a beat. The thread of her craftworld met with many other threads, and then split into many paths. She closed on the explosion of future probabilities and tried to survey them all, looking for paths that ended, meaning death, destruction, and paths that continued, meaning life and continuance. Almost all paths continued for many more years, but a lot of these paths started thinning and blurring after a few years of distance, and others ended abrubtly. Ke%u2019sar observed this now without a thought, only taking in the images she was receiving from the threads. War, death, blood. All path%u2019s were violent. She picked one of a small group of bundles that eventually intertwined away from the rest and seemed to continue into the mist of a future to far to see. She looked back at the thread of her craftworld, trying to gauge the amount of time into the future. At least a 100 year ahead of the present, but it was difficult to see at such lengths of time.

She started touching the threads, looking for visions that gave a clue to the salvation of her people, anything to make her discern what could happen and how she could make it happen.. She saw a planet, a beautifull planet, she saw greenskins, killing her people, she saw space marines crushing the corpses of eldar beneath their boots, she saw crude imperial tanks blasting falcons out of the sky, she saw eldar warriors killing other space marines. All of these images were burned into her mind now. She went a little further along, and there she saw her people, her warriors, drawing up on a vast plaza, the grand central plaza of her craftworld, many miles across, and a giant shape towered over her people. She saw the enemy would make war on her people for many years before the Orks, before the space marines and before the imperial guard. Dark Eldar. Their dark brethern would make war on them, and the battle she was seeing was the last stand of her people. She felt in the hearts of all the warriors present in her vision. Dark Eldar warriors were racing towards them, and suddenly the giant shape moved, a red glint flashed in the shadowy light, and she knew that glint to be the key to their victory on this day. The key she must secure for her people to stave off destruction. To stave of death.

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue; part 2

Craftworld Shai Tan
History log of the council of Riel Zar
By Kel Anon, Warlock, M41.094.06.30


Farseer Ke'sar has seen probability, and she has seen many things in it. War was coming, and the sacrifices that had to be made to avoid it were to steep, so we prepared for war with our dark cousins. Ke'sar saw an end of the war, and it could end with our destruction, but she also saw a way to save us. The Maider World Braxxis holds the key to our victory over the Dark Eldar, but it is now a human world and the key to our victory lies beneath a human fortress, so Ke’sar ordered a diversion. Doon Kcar, exarch and leader of our striking scorpion temple was sent to plant on the planet, on the jungle island the mon keigh have dubbed 'Jadin', a canister.

Gods forgive us for what we have unleashed on our beautifull Maiden world, but Doon Kcar has placed the spores of Orks on Braxxis. It will take many years for the spores create larger numbers of Orks, but after decades there will be many, and as soon as the Orks launch an attack against the humans we will be ready to strike, using the Ork attack as a diversion to secure our key. Now we can only wait, and prepare for war.

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue; part 3

Craftworld Shai Tan
History log of the counsil of Riel Zar
By Kel Anon, Warlock; M41.068.03.11

The war with our dark cousins continues still. It has been almost 60 years since their first attack, and many of our people have died defending Shai Tan and it's citizens. So far we have managed to stave off the evil ones, but they are tenacious. We are still unsure of their motives, for they have managed to capture very few prisoners, so what are they up to? It seems all they are fighting for is our total destruction. They do not seem weakened by the many battles over the years, while our cadre of warriors is slowly diminishing.

As for our plans on Braxxis, something strange has come up. The Orks have multiplied in the jungles of Jadin, but they are still unnoticed by the humans, and they seem rather peacefull. They have discovered very little in the way of technology and seem to live rather calm lives for Orks. They fight each other all the time, but war is a strange concept to them. Ke'sar has proposed to remedy this by capturing a few orks from a warzone somewhere else and dropping them with the Orks. They might just teach the Orks of Jadin to start a war against the mon keigh, we need them to distract the mon keigh forces soon. Shai Megal en Shai Hento, the twin exarches of the temple of the Dire Avengers, are sent by Riel Zar to find and capture two warlike Orks and transport them to Jadin. How they plan to capture one of those brutes is beyond me, but they are experienced warriors and I am sure they can succeed. They must.

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue; part 4

Craftworld Shai Tan
Mission log of Shai Megal & Shai Hento
M41.073.04.04

Mission accomplished. We had to follow the Ork whaaagh for two weeks before the oppurtunity arose to implement our plan. We were laying close to the Ork camp picket line. They were in the midst of assaulting an enemy stronghold and had camped down for the night. After a few hours a large Ork, called a Nob by these savages, and one of his small grot orderlies came to brutally awaken the sleeping Orks that were supposed to guard the camp. We followed them on their tour, and once they were between two more distant pickets, we struck. The Ork didn't even notice the needles of the dozen tranquilizer darts, he only noticed something was wrong when his grot orderly dropped asleep. The tranquilizers actually took a minute longer than we anticipated to effect the Ork.

After we had subdued them, we quickly called an anti-grav platform to transport them to our viper. We used all of our tranquilizers to make sure the ork stayed subdued. The grot we just hit on the head when he became consious again. After transporting it to the craftworld our warlocks implanted the Ork with subliminal messages, making him believe he was sent by one of his crude gods to start a whaaagh of his own. The difficult part then came in that we had to enter space near the Braxxis system with one of our ships, out of the sensor range of the Imperials, and use incredibly sensitive targeting to launch a pod with both prisoners at Braxxis, making sure it landed near the Ork settlements, at night and not in the ocean. With the help of fate, we managed to succeed and land the pod within a mile of one of the Ork settlements on Braxxis. Now we can only wait and see if the passengers survived the landing.

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue; part 5

Braxxis, Jungles of Jadin, Clan Krusha settlement
By Ghur, Ork Runtherd; M41.095.05.11

O'right runtz! Listen up! Most of u know da tale of da Krusha, but for doze of u who don't, I am gonna tell it one last time! So gather round and shut up!

Okey, so it woz a pieceful night, many suns ago, when we were waked up by some boy jellin about seein lights in da sky. Now u say there is always lights in the sky, but dis was different. Something was falling out of the sky in a flaming trail of lightning! It woz a sign of Gork, dats what is woz! It woz da Krusha! He landed near us, and we went to look. Some of uz woz scared, but I woz not cos' I knew it was a good sign! From the great burning hole in da ground he came, da biggest Ork we had ever seen! He said to us, are u da boyz who don't know what da whaaagh is? And we said to him we didn't know what da whaaagh was. And he clutched his head because we were so stupid it made his 'ead hurt. He woz silent for some time, just standing there. Then he spoke to us and he said: A'right you lot, I is gonna teach you what da whaaagh is, because Gork has sent me to do that. And once u know what da whaaagh is, we is gonna smash diz world and make it orky! And when we have made diz world orky, we will build a hulk, and we will take da whaaagh to other world to make them orky too! Who is with me?!!

And we all yelled and screamed at da top of our lungs! We did not know wot he woz talking about, but it sounded very inspirin'! And from that day, Da Lightning Krusha has taught us how to really fight, and how to build buggies and big gunz and rokkits! And he has taught us da meaning of whaaagh, and now he sez we is ready for da whaaagh and we is gonna stomp through the jungle and find out where da humies are and smash em!

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue; part 6

Strike Cruiser 'Hammer of Wrath', Salamanders Chapter
Briefing Room 3; M41.095.05.11

Captain Kabor looked up from the tactical screens he was looking at to see two other space marines enter the otherwise empty briefing room. He knew them well, as he knew all space marines in the 3rd company well. Chaplain Arkur and Epistolary Grakun were wearing full battle armour. It was not necessary for them to be clad thus, but they had been at alert level 6 for 2 weeks now and he had not seen either marine out of their armour. They were ready for battle at any time, and it could come at any time. Kabor himself was clad in power armour as well, his bolt pistol locked and loaded, his thunder hammer magnetically clamped to his back.

Arkur spoke first; 'Hail brother, I assume you have news for us?' Kabor was not surprised by the directness of his chaplain. Arkur was to the point even for a space marines, and he spent no time on pleasantries. Kabor decided it best to respond in kind: 'Aye brothers, gather round and I will enlighten you to the new developments.'

Kabor's third company strike force had been in pursuit of an Iron Warriors fleet for 2 weeks now. They had first encountered in the Yrreas system, a notoriously difficult patch of space to cross by warp-travel, so apparrently both fleets had decided to cross the system through real-space. The Salamanders had entered real-space ten minutes before the Iron Warriors dove back into the warp, not to far from their exit point, and had given chase. They had identified the enemy fleet as belonging to the Warlord Iron Rule, his flagship Eternal Domination supported by 3 other cruisers and a number of escorts. Having only a Hunter class light cruiser and a single escort squadron as support for his Strike Cruiser, Kabor knew they could not risk engaging the Chaos fleet, so instead they had resolved to chase them and find out where the Iron Warriors were going in such a hurry.

Kabor waited while his brothers sat down around the holo-table displaying a three dimensional image of the sector of space they were currently traversing. As soon as he saw that they knew what they were looking at, he said: 'We have been tracking the Eternal Domination and its fleet for over 2 weeks now, and we had no clue where they were heading so far. Now, I think we might have an idea.' His companions both looked up, and he saw some small relief on the faces of Arkur and Grakun. 'I think they might be headed for the Braxxis system. It is the only planet in this immediate area that is populated. The other option is the Porais system, but since it was recently pacified it is still crawling with Imperial troops and fleet assets, so I doubt they'll want to head that way. I just can't really figure out why they would be heading to Braxxis, since it is of little importance to our war efforts, and their force can't be large enough to attempt a serious conquest of the planet.'

After Kabors words, it was silent for a few minutes, as each of them thought through what had just been said, assimilating the information, looking through data-screens in search of information on Braxxis, troop dispositions and travel times to Braxxis, Porais and other systems further away. Grakun was the first to break the silence. 'I think you may be correct brother-captain, but Braxxis is only about 3 days warp-travel from our current position, so if we have to warn them, we must hurry. Also, you must have noticed that at this time there are a fair amount of Imperial Guard present on Braxxis. The Stormguard have recently created 8 new regiments that are in the final stages of training. I see they were supposed to ship off-planet within the next year. Including the regiment of Jantine that are currently on the planet and the PDF, that should be enough to deter any attempt at conquest, unless the taint of chaos is already on the planet.'
'Indeed brother-librarian,' Kabor answered, 'but there have been no abnormalities reported from Braxxis. Tithes were paid in advance last year, and the commisariat overseeing the training of the new regiments has not reported anything out of the ordinary. If there is a taint on Braxxis, it runs far deeper than we can imagine.'

There was silence again, as each of them contemplated their options. Finally, Arkur spoke: 'Kabor, I think our course is clear. We do not warn Braxxis of our coming or of the coming of Chaos. We will find out from their reaction to the arrival of the Iron Warriors on what side they are on. If they are on our side, we can work together with them to eliminate these traitors. If they have turned from the light of the Emperor, we will call in reinforcements, and teach them the error of their ways!' Kabor, Grakun and Arkur looked each other in the eyes, their faces hard. They each nodded almost imperceptibly. Their course was set.

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue; part 7a

Chaos Cruiser 'Eternal Domination'
Personal Chambers of Iron Ruler

'My lord, the followers of the False Emperor are still giving pursuit. We cannot outrun them.'
'Fine. Let them tag along, dear Melgior. They won't stop us.' Atop his steel throne at the bridge of the Eternal Domination, The Rule looked smug. Maybe these Salamanders would come in usefull once they had reached their this Braxxis planet. Their fleet would not be able to stop them, and those stupid loyalists were often easily misled. A little hint here, a small diversion there, and they could be wrongfooted without spending to much energy. Of course he would have liked them to attempt to attack him right away, but apparently the enemy commander had some patience and intelligence after all. It was obvious that the Salamanders small fleet was no match for his cruisers, but it would have been nice to see the fighters and bombers of the Eternal Domination scrap that little strike cruiser and the loyalists within it. No matter, now they would settle things on the soil of Braxxis.

The Rule gazed slowly at the hundreds of banners that hung from the walls and ceilings of his throne room at the heart of his ship. Each had belonged to an Imperial regiment or space marine company, and each had been captured by him or his men in the past 6000 years. For a second, he mourned the loss of the 342 banners that he had captured before that time. But they were gone when the Fire of Fury, his previous ship, was destroyed. Some of the banners had corpses or skeletons attached to them, the former bodies of the commanders of the regiments or the space marine captains commanding the companies.

His memories faded and he became aware that Melgior was still kneeling in front of him, awaiting to be dismissed. 'How long untill we break warp and enter the Braxxis system, dear Melgior?'
'Two days at the most, my lord.'
'Good.'
The Rule thought for a moment, before his rasping, augmetic voice continued; 'Make sure the men are ready. Lock the sarcophagus into the dreadnoughts, load up the vehicles and tell the savants to start awakening the Defilers. And tell the men I will lead them personally. It may be the last time I have the chance to do so as a brother. As soon as we break warp, we head for the planet, swipe away any defences and put our forces on site.'
'Yes, my lord, consider it done.' Melgior rose and turned around smartly, quickly walking to the great steel doors that lead out the throne room.

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue, part 7b

Chaos Cruiser 'Eternal Domination'
Near the bridge

Mad Melgior had put his battle-helm on to disguise his contempt for his lord. He kept it on now, as he headed from The Rule's throne room towards the bridge of the Eternal Domination. Damn the old fool. The Rule might be more that eleven thousand years old, but he really needed to get rid of him. Melgior had been trying to for the last 2000 years at least, but so far he had not succeeded. The main reasons for this were the great loyalty that the men felt towards The Rule, mainly because for some unknown reason he always seemed to pick those strategies that worked.

The second reason was the infuriating lieutenant Claw, who also seemed extremely loyal, but Melgior thought that Claw was actually thinking of disposing of his master as well. Melgior needed a better plan. Most importantly, he needed a plan to make The Rule look like a bad commander, a plan to dispose of Claw, and a plan to win the men's loyalty for himself! And he needed it quickly, because if The Rule succeeded in his mission to capture the soulstone of the Eldar warrior Ka'haine, he might ascend to daemonhood, and then Melgior could never get rid of him again.

Either way, there was nothing he could do while they were in transit. Anything he planned would have to wait untill they reached the planet. Maybe he could dispose of both The Rule and Claw in battle. A little bit of misinformation and bad advide might land both of them in a bad spot, and dead. Then again, The Rule had survived more battles than anyone Melgior knew, so getting him killed in a fight might not be so easy.

Melgior finally reached the bridge doors, and he put his thoughts aside for the moment. Patience first, victory later, that was his mantra now. His time would come soon enough!