We'll skip over the introduction - if you don't know what's happening regarding the Nachmund Gauntlet, then you probably have been living under a rock or something. Needless to say, planets and systems get swallowed into the Empyrean surrounding the Nachmund Gauntlet, and these are called tidal worlds or something. Daethe - an Exodite Aeldari maiden world - is located in the Zykathura System, which itself lies upon the liminal boundary where the realspace of the gauntlet overlapped with the warp storms beyond. A warpsmith named D'vok, who was a former Iron Warrior who took his Forgeborn and deserted the IV Legion after killing his former superior, Jagoth, joined the Black Legion. Because...the Black Legion are the Chaos posterboys and are on par with the Ultramarines as the strongest and most numerous Chaos Legion. In any event, he wanted to win Abaddon's favor, so he went to Daethe to grab all the Aeldari spirit energies and world spirit in the psychocrystalline matrix in there to create more powerful daemon engines.
To do so, he constructed an octagonal fortress near Daethe's world spirit and began the long and arduous process of dismantling the stuff to absorb the spirits for his daemon engines. The fortress has psy-baffles, Geller shields and solid-flux power shields (no void shields?) to protect it, so yay, I guess? As expected of a former Iron Warrior. Anyway, D'vok also built a ring of Noctilith Crowns to create a warp energy siphon that he called the Lens Empyric.
The Exodites are all dead by this point, but they managed to preserve the world spirit with sacred runes and stuff. So poor D'vok is stumped because he's unable to break through the last circle that is protecting the world spirit. Unfortunately, while he was stripping away the world spirit's defenses, it was able to call for help.
The Craftworld of Saim-hann received the distress call, and though they were like, "hey, is this a trap or something? Maybe we shouldn't answer it." Autarch Medevyal Ghaelyn stepped forward and said that she had sworn a blood oath to the Exodites and would see it fulfilled. She took half of her Zephyrborne Hunt to execute a rescue mission. Farseer Kearth remained behind to guide the Vaethyr Kurthanil and help them elect a new cheftain if Ghaelyn failed to return. Very grimdark and ominous.
Long story short, they flew through the warp-torn region and faced lots of dangers on the way there, blah blah, suffered assaults from warpborn void-predators and pirates, blah, but finally reached Daethe. Unfortunately, by now Daethe was well on its way to becoming a daemon world. Ouch. Worse, there was an approaching warp storm that might trap the Zephyrborne Hunt on the planet and prevent them from leaving or receiving reinforcements. This put them on a timer, and Ghaelyn was like, screw it, we don't have time, let's strike! Because she knew her dudes would follow her command and seek vengeane on the morons who tainted the once pristine maiden world.
Ghaelyn and her Zephyrborne Hunt attacked the cultists and warbands on Daethe, killing lots of them and disrupting the activities there. Far from being annoyed, D'vok was delighted. As I said earlier, he got stuck at the last protective circle and despite sacrificing lots of human pyskers and mortals, he was unable to break through that final defense protecting the world spirit. However, he thought that securing himself an Eldar Farseer might finally break the last defensive circle - a skeleton key to the spiritual lock, if I'm not mistaken about the wording.
So what does the scheming Chaos Warpsmith do? Set a trap, of course! So basically D'vok sent all of his men away and only had him and a small band of Forgebond Chosen work on maintaining a chained Daemon Engine, giving the impression that he was alone. Oh, and he basically pretended that all his shields were down because of the approaching warp storm.
The Eldar Warhost blundered into the trap. At first it seemed like they were winning because they were massacring the cultists, who weren't warned of the thing and were caught entirely by surprise (y'know, because Chaos is evil and ruthless). D'vok realized that he had underestimated the Aeldari and panicked for a moment, but then the trap was sprung. The Lens Empyric unleashed warp energies and took the Eldar by surprise. Aspect Warriors basically died from headaches, and others convulsed and mutated (into Chaos Spawn, heh). Grav-tanks ground to a halt and wobbled, the Wild Rider jetbikes spiraled around and exploded, crashing into each other and against the ground.
Basically, lots of Eldar died. They were pretty much screwed by this point.
As some sort of a last-ditch effort, Autarch Ghaelyn charged forward with the ragged survivors of her remaining Warhost, attempting to assassinate D'vok. Apparently she believed that if they took out the leader, they could stop the whole damned thing (somehow I doubt that - that's awfully naive. Wouldn't D'vok's successor just take over and continue whatever he was doing?). She and her Dire Avengers and Striking Scorpions - still not yet in plastic - slew lots of Black Legionnaires (or ex-Iron Warriors?) and wrecked a lot of daemon engines on their way to D'vok. She dodged D'vok's thunder hammer, but got tentacled by his writhing mechadendrites/mechatendrils (I'll leave it to your imagination) and knocked unconscious by a blow to her face.
The story ends there. On a bloody cliffhanger. Well, I guess there's very little room for what transpires after that. Clearly Ghaelyn lost, the Zephyrborne Hunt got massacred, and D'vok got what he wanted. He probably would use her spirit to pry the final defenses open and obtain the world spirit, powering his warp infused creations and constructing more powerful nightmarish daemon engines than ever. Or maybe the survivors of the Zephyrborne Hunt would attempt a rescue later. Who knows? I doubt these stories would be explored in greater detail. They weren't for Hexfire, Shadowthrone and the other box sets, so yeah. Never knew what happened to Castellan Crowe or the Genestealer Patriarch. Kind of sad. Speaking of which, I did write a post for the Hexfire lore, right?
It's a great time to be a Chaos player! Chaos is on the ascent! Ah, screw the meta and the tournament rules, who cares about all that?! I'm more interested in the story and lore. And that's what we got here.
The irony is that if Ghaelyn didn't answer the call, D'vok wouldn't have gotten the key he needed to break through the world spirit's defenses. Or he might have eventually, but she still literally delivered herself to him on a plate. That...sucks. Oh, well.
My friend speculates that the story might actually continue in the Corsairs Kill Team boxset, which is rumored to pit Corsairs against Cultists (new sculpts! Yay!). That would be really cool! The Corsairs attempting to rescue Ghaelyn and save Daethe! So there might still be hope, after all!
Anyway, if I get hold of more information, I'll update you guys on it. Not that anyone will be reading this blog, and I know that most people aren't interested in the lore and story, but...yeah. Oh, well...until next time.
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