Hexos Crisis IC

0675.138 M42

For a full year, chaos had been on the defensive, desperately fighting off attack after attack from imperial and eldari forces. With the war heating up and resources stretched thin, they could no longer afford to do so.

As such, the scheming heads of the chaos hydra came up with a plan. A broad series of daring raids, some aimed at devastating the populace, others at spiting their enemies.

The first raid would be discovered by accident. Amidst the riots and carnage that followed the Mutant Rights vote, with Militia and arbiters clashing with lynch mobs on a daily basis, a strange offer of rapprochement arrived from the imperial government.

The Genetor had pulled strings, leveraged her influence to send the newly arrived Mechanicus investigative team and millions of pounds of food to the mid hive. There was significant debate about whether to allow them in, but ultimately the offer of food and the technicality that Hexos was not in rebellion against the Mechanicus, won the day.

The Mechanicus investigators took the riots and their suppression in stride. Their investigation cited dozens of minor technical infractions, broke open a xenotech smuggling ring, stole several Tau drones and a Necron tomb scarab, and declared that the central lighting system for the entire hive was based on a processor declared tech heresy fifteen hundred years ago, and as such would need to be replaced with an approved model.

It was pure coincidence that, as the Kurultai prepared to vote on military centralization, an investigator opted to stop and search a hooded youth aboard a train with an interesting radiation signature in her backpack.

A radiation signature that turned out to be three, live teleport homers.

Chaos broke out immediately, as genestealers emerged from luggage compartments aboard the train and attacked. The investigators fought free even as the Alicia brigade and the local PDF moved to respond.

But before they could get into position, the teleport beacons activated. Lord Hexaros, two dozen chaos space Marines, each ten thousand years veterans of the long war, and entire companies of traitor guard, appeared suddenly on the train. On a one way trip towards the Kurultai.

The defenders, pre-mobilized in the name of riot control, acted quickly to stop the trains in impromptu raids and armored ambushes. But whenever one train stalled or was destroyed, Lord Hexaros would lead his strike force onto the next train in an attempt to reach the Kurultai before it could be evacuated.

Even with the defense stymied by spontaneous, peaceful protests in favor of peaceful reunification and against Gulian, moderated by swift-acting Tau diplomats, the chaos strike wasn't quite quick enough. By the time they arrived, the only representatives in the building were those who had chosen to stand and fight.

Still, Lord Hexaros had a plan. The chaos strike team punched through the first lines of fortifications, power swords and chain axes ripping through defenders even as their genestealer and traitor allies fell. Twice, bold representatives attempted to duel Hexaros. Twice, they were cut down in the attempt.

Then, finally, the chaos Lord breached the grand chamber of the Kurultai. His goal, a podium emblazoned with a face he had surrendered long ago, faced him. The only thing between him and it, First Comrade Despyre, wielding a lightning claw that dated back to the heresy, and the two dozen members of his bodyguard.

Their battle was brief, but fierce. Half a dozen bodyguards fell fighting Lord Hexaros and his chief sorcerer. The two leaders locked blades once, twice, but man against marine was no contest.

Slowly, surely, Hexaros took the advantage, reminding the First Comrade that his betrayals were why the chaos Lord was here. That Hexaros had taken this world during the heresy, and would do so again. That there was nothing he or his doomed bodyguards could do to stop Chaos.

Then, a lobotomized genestealer slammed into Hexaros' flank. Followed by a dozen more. Hundreds flooded into the building, swarming the chaos space Marines with an irrepressible lust for gene-seed.

Their momentum broken, their message unsent, Lord Hexaros sounded the retreat. The material tore asunder and the chaos strike force returned to their waiting vessel, while the Broodlord gene stealers fled into the murk.


Within hours, the Pinnacle of Spite tore out of the warp. It burned into a bombardment orbit as drop-pods and warp portals rained upon the upper spire. Genestealer broods crawled out of supply shipments and smuggler's dens, scuttling towards the ever-growing form of the eternity gate.

They were met by legions of necron immortals and infuriated local militias. Immortals manned barricades, raining tesla fire upon genestealer swarms. Indiscriminate orbital fire flung into hastily-manned defensive positions and jury-rigged void shields as the militia poured lasfire at the oncoming storm of the 3rd host. The Nine Aeon Salon's treasury was stretched to its limit, desperately getting any shred of military equipment they could grab to the beleaguered militia and pushing reinforcements up-spire as fast as they could go.

The Pinnacle drew deep on its reactor, preparing to intensify the bombardment, flush out the defenders, and turn the Upper Spire into a sacrifice to Khorne.

Then, the Mythwright's holofields dropped and it unleashed a volley of Pulsar Lances into the Pinnacle's flank. Torpedos soared and the Pinnacle swiftly burned into an ascending orbit, trying to fend off the Eldar ambush. At once, the chaos assault stalled, then withdrew. Uncertain what other vessels the Mythwright might bring to bear, and whether they could push home a strike on the gate if the Mythwright began bombardment.


Where circumstance and external meddling had stymied Chaos' previous offensives, they would allow no such surprise in their most important offensive of the year. Near every chaos cult in the system deployed everything they could muster to the Siete Coast. The coast, already pushed to its limits with riot control, had no real chance of stopping what was to come.

They struck through the fisheries. The push to feed the millions of refugees in the Hive, or still making their way there, was a constant stress on the Coast's ability to feed itself. Any source of new, sustainable food was a celebrated thing and the fungal-rations distributed by chaos cults recieved less scrutiny than they perhaps should have. After all, with rioters trying to hunt mutants in the streets or attacking Free Hexos and Levellist party offices, why question charitable patriotism.

There were hints. Warnings and whistleblowers. Outbreaks of disease in the refugee camps. But all were deemed secondary concerns, tragedies to be solved but that couldn't take precedence over the war effort.

Then the first warp-rifts opened in a fishing village, an onslaught of plaguebringers slaughtering half a million people in an hour.

The reaction was immediate, the fleet and PDF mustering to throw everything they could at the nurglite swarm. Then more portals opened, disgorging cultists, the possessed of the Gods-Touched, and Vordrai Twelve-Armed. The titanic bloodthirster wielded titanic weapons in each of its twelve arms, cutting through the first reaction forces and throwing itself into bunker-complex after bunker-complex. Nurglings and possessed champions dove into the sea, cutting their way into hidden redoubts.

Surviving the assault, containing the raid, was all that the defenders could manage. Millions perished, and more didn't follow only because the Profane refused to hold the field. They burned and slaughtered millions, then fled back through the portals from which they struck. The defenders, overwhelmed and stretched across half a continent, now raced to contain hordes of nurglite daemons before they could finish what their masters started.

Their efforts would contain the threat, but fail to expel them from the coast. The Arrogance and Pride of Newtonia would be sunk by the Great Unclean One, though a vicious airstrike campaign paired with offensives from the Pseudocomitatenses would at least contain the nurglite swarms to the beaches around their rifts.

0535.M42

The first half of the year had left hundreds of vital administratum clerks stranded within the orbital guns. This had originally been part of a calculated risk, gambling that a clear shot at a mass of rebel troops was worth the potential loss of the clerks. Political developments within the Imperium would quickly mandate their rescue, and a covert extraction was approved. The Excruciator, and its demi-company of Sable Swords, sat ready in case of catastrophe.

Catastrophe was swift to arrive.

Minutes into the operation, the privateers and rogues commandeered to guide the Administratum to safety reported that they'd been made. Kroot and Vespid were hunting them through the valleys and peaks of the high mountains, the dustoff and their shuttles already overrun.

With little time to waste, the Sable Swords leapt into action. Drop pods and thunderhawks plunged through curtains of fire towards the fray. Reiver and Eliminator squads landed first, aiming to assassinate key rebel officers and detonate ammunition to facilitate the escape.

Unfortunately, the plan called to face a rebel operation, rather than a Tau one, and the kroot-and-vespid auxiliary formation hunting the retinue saw them coming. The first wave of marines quickly found themselves in a bounding, brutal retreat, calling in precision orbital strikes to hold off pursuers until the rest of the demi-company arrived.

Fortunately, the main drop proved exactly why Space Marines have long earned their reputation. Supported by airstrikes and artillery support from the 1st Armored Regiment, the Space Marines punched a surgical hole through Tau lines, extracted the Administratum Retinue from the ambush, and reached friendly lines almost without incident.

The near-catastrophe pushed other Imperial operations to move ahead of schedule. The moment the retinue was away and clear, every armored and mechanized transport asset the II and III corps could muster joined the loyalist tanks of the 1st Armored in an attempted intercept of the 1st Shichi. It was hoped that a large, armored thrust could intercept the Shichi before they returned to their fortified complexes in the Metroplex, destroy them in the field and neutralize the Metroplex's military contribution to the war effort.

This proved...ambitious. The rushed start of the raid saw it run into determined resistance that blunted its first strike, while its second reached the expected evacuation route for the 1st Shichi only for them not to arrive. Reconnaissance flights and strikes followed, slowly revealing that the revolutionary cyborgs of the 1st had not west to the hive, as expected, but east to a hidden landing site. The raid was out of position to try and intercept, and could do little but relay telemetry to the fleet as the 1st safely took shuttles to the waiting Spinetail Command.

There, at least, the Imperials were ready. The Vow of Sacrifice burned hard to low orbit, using the telemetry from the ground to weed Spinetail Command's exit vector from the myriad false signals clogging its auspex. The Sororitas warship managed a clean intercept, braving railgun and ion cannon strikes as it closed into gun range. Torpedos flew, shields flared, and as the Vow's shields dropped in the face of concentrated fire, the trap closed its jaws.

Dropping like rocks from the shipyards, the 13th Torpedo Squadron and 22nd Scout Cruiser squadron swarmed the Tau flotilla. Sporadic but intensifying fire flew from the planet, the orbital guns deploying what shells they had to deter the attack, but to no avail. Boarding parties launched and, soon, assault shuttles docked with every Tau ship in the system.

There, they found that the 1st Shichi and up-armored Tau breacher teams were waiting for them. Equipped with the myriad supplies meant for a pitched battle over the Orbital Guns, they proved a brutal challenge for the naval boarding teams. The boarders captured a trio of Kass'I-class gunships, but as the Tau flotilla broke out of the engagement boarding teams on larger ships were forced to flee back to their boarding vessels or die where they stood.


More than two months would pass before the rebel response arrived.

It began as another wave of fighting in the shadows. Corpses appearing in mining towns. Detonations in the deep tunnels. This time, however, the Imperials responded. The 1st Armored and III Line Corps leapt at each incursion, quickly entering battle with Sab'a Sapper and Liminatei commando teams in the deep tunnels. Unconfirmed reports rose of stranger things in the depths of the mines, hordes of miners picking up weapons and throwing themselves against the oncoming raiders. Nests of monsters destroyed in cave-ins.

After days of skirmishing, a convoy of miners and stranger things broke west from the mines, fleeing to parts unknown. They moved under the cover of darkness, relying on Imperial air cover (Or at least, hostility to rebel air strikes) to protect their retreat.

It was the last mistake they would make. Sigismund Squadron, newly christened, would take to the skies on their first operation since Theah was appointed Lord Marshall. The rebels best aces would streak through the sky, shooting down any who dared fly against them and strafing airbases. They cleared the way for a massive bomber-strike against the convoy, eradicating the entire formation in a flare of prometheum and plasma warheads.

In the aftermath, a psychic malaise would clear from much of the system. Long-lost brethren returning to the genestealer churches and halls of power across the system. The Broodlord was dead.

0755.138 M42

While the rebels political troubles had grabbed the system's attentions, the Imperium's would prove just as devastating. The anti-Imperial propaganda propagating to nearby systems would provoke a variety of investigations, ranging from brutal witch hunts to more measured affairs. The anti-Imperial propaganda within the system, however, would be treated as an afterthought.

In the asteroid belts, the order of the day was avoiding a repeat of previous assassination attempts against Brunern. Internal purges against chaos were rampant, with even suspicions of impropriety (Common, considering the mercantile nature of the concern) resulting in firings and arrest. They were chased by a wave of assassinations, dozens of officials murdered by invisible assailants with xenos weaponry that prompted ever higher security for Brunern himself.

Though the security measures, and an ever-increasing fortification of the asteroid belt, kept the Concern's interest alive, in much of the belt Imperial governance devolved into a legal farce. Entire habitats had seen their arbites dissolve in the wave of assassinations and purges, with replacements slow to arrive. The only good news, such as it was, was that Brunern's purges had burned a genestealer infestation out of the asteroid mines.

In the midst of this, the Eldar continued their work. Asuryan's Arrow, a deceptively small device, was extracted from a grand asteroid deep within the belt. A public broadcast would echo throughout the system, Jea'ni aboard the Mythwright, the Arrow upon her lap. It was too late to resist. It was too late to strike back. The weapon was hers and, come the new year, it would fire.

The only question was the target.


The aerostats would spearhead the search for out-system propaganda. Even as illegal film reels and newspapers spread throughout the underclasses, Mechanicus forces would deem these a secondary priority, spending their time triangulating signals and testing methods by which the propaganda might be broadcast and fortifying the aerostats against potential raids.

A breakthrough would come after months of research, when sensor logs from captured pirate ships and imperial patrol ships were referenced against the aerostats own sensor arrays. A station in the asteroid belt was performing the transmissions, and doing so psychically. The only possible culprit, according to the Mechanicus, were the Drukhari.

While not enough to pinpoint the transmission's source, it was enough for the Magos to devise a jamming device. A lab-grown null beast hooked to a torturous amplifier, projecting a null field that gave every astropath in the system a headache but, mercifully, stopped the transmissions.

Sector command was grateful, though Hexos' government-in-exile was increasingly concerned with the openly contemptuous view of common workers towards it. Though mechanicus representatives remained respected, Arbites were increasingly refusing to enter the lower decks of many aerostats and tax evasion had gone from rampant to downright endemic.

Weeks after the jamming began, its culprit made herself known. Sraelian Juud announced herself across a dozen communication channels, blaring across the system:

The Mechanicus had opposed her, thwarted her, for the last time. Their jamming of her broadcasts was an insult that could not be forgiven. Vengeance would be hers, and it would come swiftly.


Unfortunately, these were the quiet fronts for the Imperial loyalists. The Spaceyards, still healing from the short-lived chaos occupation, would prove far more troublesome.

Faced with xeno collaboration and riotous dockworkers, the loyalist government would find itself split. After much debate, and the governor's abstentation, the decision would be made.

The traditional rulers of the spaceyards, faced with waning influence even after the imperials reoccupied the yards, would be given all their old privileges and nobility back. Investigations would be curtailed, crimes forgiven, on the simple expectation that the dockworkers would be Handled and the tithe resumed. In reference to the recently demoted Admiral Isabella, the eldari construction would continued undisturbed, as moving the space docks in light of fully functional planetary defenses remaining in rebel hands seemed advisable.

However, Admiral Isabella had other ideas. When the orders came down, she mustered her naval armsmen and ordered the arrest of the local civilian government, declaring the workers the true imperial loyalists. Fighting was immediate, as the nobles were warned by traitors in the 13th Torpedo Squadron, and the feuding factions would deadlock over control of the docks in a net of accusations, arrests, and impromptu sieges of airlocks.

All the while, Inquisitorial, Naval, and Mechanicus investigators would continue their sweep for chaos cults. Stymied, admittedly, by the rising tensions. Fortunately, they were aides by the Eldar who were more than happy to spirit away suspect officers and return them days later, dazed, confused, but unflinchingly loyal.

All the while, rebel propaganda and weapons spread across the docks. With Imperial response varying between lackluster and occupied, revolutionary cells spread and prepared their brethren to join their planet bound cousins.

Then, on Sanguinalia, they struck.

Workers on a dozen ship berths put down their weapons. Mobs stormed conscription ships, freeing thousands of their fellows, dragging their guards off the ships, and beating them to death. Noble estates were stormed, firefights erupting between overwhelmed guards and furious rioters.

And consistently, across the shipyards, Admiral Isabella was heralded as an icon of the revolution.

0890.138 M42

The Kurultai's decisions to back Mutant Rights and the Hexan Creed would be immediately explosive. Riots, attempted pogroms, and even peaceful, orderly protests erupted across the planet in opposition to the reforms. The government was, however, ready for it: Enforcers and soldiers in full garb took to the streets, ready to suppress outbreaks of violence or retaliate in kind.

In the Hive, retaliatory attacks on mutants were met by the Knights Mastiff and swelled ranks of enforcers. Locked ranks of shields and batons, outright brawls, and on occasion low-intensity warfare between rioters and enforcers sprawled across the Hive, but even with the Chaos attack, they were largely contained with mere thousands of casualties. Most surprising were the peaceful protests, grand demonstrations against the moral rot at the heart of the Kurultai that were met with a sort of strange bafflement and distrust by enforcers looking for pogroms. Violent repression of those protests happened, but were relatively rare, with most deciding that this was definitely an improvement over traditional forms of dissent like 'Burn a Mutant Day'.

In the Siete Coast, dissent was muted and shadowy after the first days of rioting. Murders in the night, attacks on mutant activists, arson attempts against Creed Churches. Investigations were swift and effective, at least until the chaos raids, and violence began to spread further as the military was engaged with the Nurglite swarms erupting from the rifts. The Shichi Metroplex was more fortunate, crackdowns were effective and immediate, many of the most overt rabble-rousers had already been tried as counter-revolutionaries or scared into shutting up, and no outside interference worsened matters. Indeed, by year's end the Levellist causes largest internal issue was the growing suspicion by its radical members that they were not, in fact, going to be purging their political enemies in the kurultai in the immediate future.

The Yedi Wastes ignored the worst of the chaos, the tribesmen (And a growing population of Asaa refugees) declared that their traditional methods of worship were in line with the Creed, and mutants were always a less controversial subject in the wastes than they were in the Hive. The most immediate effect was a series of blanket pardons for voter fraud, as in several subterranean dome-cities local politicians had already registered their small mutant populations while taking credit for the PDFs sudden lack of wanton atrocities.

Tensions were high as the Kurultai reconvened after the chaos raid. It had taken months, the casualties from the raid and results from anti-corruption investigations opening enough seats to warrant special elections before business continued.

The investigations were a combination of bombshell and expected, but embarrassing, annoyance.

Petty corruption was a time honored part of Hive politics, with most nobles blithely operating under the assumption that mere rules didn't apply to them. That many Bluegreens and Free Hexos officials were engaged in various schemes was unsurprising, and while technically illegal, many avoided a jail sentence by dint of large bribes and a swift resignation. Others lucked out: though wildly corrupt and criminal, their activities weren't actually related to the elections, and so they kept their seats and their position at the cost of disillusioning many true believers.

The Redemptionists caught in the drag net, and Cardinal Pius' name in the lips of investigators, was far more noteworthy. The Cardinal had played a difficult game since the revolutions outbreak, leading the loyalist cause while actively reaching out to various rebel factions and carrying their concerns to the imperial government. Many had looked at his support of the Asaa Valley culture in the ecclesiarchy, his commitment to peaceful rapproach, and saw a principled man who wanted only what was best for the people of Hexos, and would surely be a credit to the Rebel government could he be convinced to join.

That he was now implicated in a conspiracy to frame many elected officials for blackmail, bribery, and election interference, and was actively in talks with the Redemptionist party, shook that image. However his supporters might try to cover for him, blaming his victims for being a rot in rebel politics that he had successfully exposed, this was a blow to a carefully tended reputation.

It had, in fact, entirely overshadowed the ties of many anti-Despyre tabloids and propaganda papers to Ador Burnern. Tau political campaigning through their food aid program (facilitated by many, though most notably Gulian), and a tide of smaller stories uncovered by the investigators.

The investigation results came out mere weeks before Hexos' first special elections. Polling was once again ragged and disorganized, though correctly predicted a resurgence for reactionary politics.

The Redemptionists, much of their traditional leadership dead or jailed, were buoyed on a tide of discontent with the pace of reform. Too much was being done, too fast, and many wanted it to Stop. This wave was less resolutely anti-Despyre than the original Redemptionist cadres, but viewed the Creed, mutant rights, and growing xenophilia as an assault on what it was to be human. They were an aimless mass looking for someone to represent them and, for now, the Redemptionists fit the bill.

To the surprise of some, the Levellists and Free Hexos also gained in the polls. They'd alienated many traditionalists, yes, but in the process won themselves a die-hard voting base of mutants in their millions. The Free Hexos Alliance has found itself a new problem in the process, with many more independence minded voters concerned that they'd become a vocal fringe in the party they'd adopted early. Meanwhile, the Levellists found that it's radical, militant wings who had pushed the party to its current success were increasingly alienated from a voting base that increasingly approved of bipartisan compromise with the Despyre government.

Of the losers, the Kurultai found many of their refugee voters flipping to other parties within the spire and their identity too geographically bound to peel voters off of the Redemptionists. Meanwhile, the Bluegreens found that they were increasingly bleeding support to the FHA and Levellists, their core constituency of utopian ecologists and the ultra rich not quite cohesive enough to weather backlash to the Mutant Rights vote.

The new Kurultai quickly plunged back into session. The Tau treaty of friendship was passed with raucous support from all parties, while the vote transferring Mechanicus treaties to the Shichi Metroplex was more contentious. Eventually, it passed with significant abstentations, but only after it was made clear that if the Mechanicus wished to resume its treaties with Hexos, this would be acceptable in principle.

The compromise pleased no-one, undermining bluegreen contracts and Metroplex autonomy while still angering the Mechanicus. In the wake of the Mechanicus being critical in thwarting the chaos assault, it was deemed politically unwise to anger them more than absolutely necessary.

Military centralization would have a harder path forward, only passing (and even then by a bare margin) after an accord with the Levellists was reached.

Finally, the Kurultai would vote to Censure Gulian for his murder of Redemptionist politicians by an overwhelming margin. The man himself did not speak in his defense, saying only that he would accept their decision.

Arguments were heated, but the winning strain was simple. All condemned what Gulian had done, but the investigators results indicated that his targets were actual traitors. It wasn't the way it should have happened, and would have to be condemned, but to exile him was overkill by far.

The redemptionists protested heavily, as did many Bluegreens who were not thrilled with only a mild condemnation of violent political purges, and some Levellists who thought that censuring Gulian for killing enemies of the revolution was tantamount to treason.

In the end, a dozen conspirators were jailed and two executed, Gulian slapped with fines and warnings and a prohibition on political office, but nothing greater.

The incident only pushed him higher in the esteem of ordinary Hexans. While he would never take an official title, by years end most rebels considered him their spiritual leader. This, naturally, enraged the traditionalists.

0999.138 M42

A necron diplomatic courier is a terrifying sight. A kilometers wide crescent topped with a massive pyramid and bristling arrays the mechanical diplomats strenuously insist are purely diplomatic in function. Its cavernous halls are pumped with an eery mist to maintain atmosphere, and dried delicacies from a thousand worlds line its halls.

Jofre Despyre is ushered into the courier at a freezing airbase in the Yedi Wastes, saying goodbye to the only world he has ever known. The Necrons give all present an hour to vacate the ten kilometer blast radius then, as terrified Imperial interception squadrons break for bombardment orbits, the tomb ship launches, accelerates, and disappears.

The courier would arrive at Thanatos weeks later, a blistering speed even outside of the Imperium Nihilus. Jofre would step into a bizarre, sterile nest of conflicting politics and increasingly deranged fans. The Oruscar Dynasty was under perpetual siege by the xenocidal Kardenath Dynasty, a war that saw xenos races in the area throwing themselves at the ancient dynasty for protection. To the xenos, Jofre was a human and, therefore, a terrifying creature obviously possessed of bloodlust equal to the Kardenath they so feared. The other Xenos delegations either avoided him, even after translation protocols were engaged, or viewed him and Hexos as a brutish potential defender against the Kardenath.

To the Necrons, Jofre was their first auteur/media darling in millions of years. This resulted in constant requests for interviews, hounding by fans, and drawn out parties where influential courtiers would expound for hours or days about percieved symbolism within his work. Our Comrade was, of course, the dominating topic of discussion, but many courtiers had managed to acquire copies of his earlier work and even, in one case, several college projects.

In a letter to his uncle, Jofre would describe the experience as "The greatest whiplash one might experience. It would quite put me off producing had it not given me so many ideas."


The Broodlord's death marked an immediate shift in day-to-day life for Genestealers in the system. The eternal psychic presence, the warring urges, the threat of subversion was gone. The threads of the broodmind were lighter than they were even before the Broodlord had emerged, as they shifted into something new and strange. Something yet to be experienced by a genestealer cult.

They also came with revelations. Memories gleaned from the minds of Broodlord die-hards, those who attempted to resist even after his destruction, revealed that the Broodlord was not merely a natural extension of the Hivemind. It had been provoked into gestation, at ruinous expense, by the Pauper Prince genestealer cult based on nearby Vorotheion.

The cult would not be thrilled that their catspaw in the system, and through it their ability to influence local events, had been destroyed. But for now, there was little they could do.


The year would see the Tau make two grand moves. The first was a massive dropship filled with xenobotanical experts and other Earth Caste specialists. The teams arrived in the Asaa Valley, repairing ruins, clearing daemon-tainted fields, and seeding thousands upon thousands of miles with fast-growing xenofungus in a calculated attempt to resurrect the dying biosphere. The specialists sought out surviving eelhorse herds and bluegrass fields, kicking the long, slow process of revitalizing the Steppe.

They had only just begun, but by year's end the specialists would clear the return of a million people to the Asaa Valley and a resumption of farming. Such micro-terraforming was an expensive and delicate process, and warnings abounded regarding disrupting the process, and the enormous chunk of the aid budget it was eating.

Even as the reconstruction began, Tau field command would call for Phase Two of their intervention. Stealth shuttles would spirit away diplomats, engineering teams, and espionage units. Weeks would pass, with no developments on Hexos but a series of fiery speeches on Fe'Saan promoting the right for the Hexos Kurultai to determine its government's fate.

Then the void tore open above Hexos. A Kroot Greater Warsphere, surrounded by a veritable swarm of wyrmships, nest vessels, and other auxiliary escorts, plunged out of the warp and towards the planet. Behind it, a full squadron of Tau warships and more transports. A cloud of Mantas and Barracudas swarm out around the great ship as a broadcast echos on all channels, assuring swift freedom and glorious purpose to all citizens of the Hexos system.

Notably missing, however, were any supply tenders whatsoever.