First off, the prologue, which is set in 999.M38.
This story opens up with Eldar under the command of Macha (the farseer from the first Dawn of War game) fighting against a daemon prince and a horde of cultists. Most of them are dead but some survive along with an Avatar of Khaine. Thanks to the daemon's presence in the area it is all but impossible to see what is going on which is severely hindering the Eldar's efforts against the daemon, after an attempt to close a warp rift Macha forsees the arrival of Space Marines on the scene.
Something shifted in her mind, and the eldar farseer strained her eyes into the night, struggling to fit images to the gyring confusion of thoughts that jostled for her attention. There was something else out there on the mountain, something moving with a hidden purpose. Macha could see flickering pictures in her head, a collage of past, present and future all blurred into one curdling image-pool. There were dark figures in those pictures - giant, pseudo-human warriors - and her heart shuddered each time her thoughts lingered on them. These clumsy humans were more fearsome than any daemon, in their own way, and Macha's soul was filled with dread by their sudden addition to the mix.
She's clearly not fond of them.
After that we cut down to the Eldar Storm squad facing the cultist hordes.
"For Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God!" he cried as he drew his long power sword and pushed its impossibly sharp blade through the abdomens of three humanoid cultists.
The call was returned by the rest of the Storm squad, but it was no dissonant cacophony of battle-cries. The Guardian eldar summoned their call from the depths of their souls, chanting it out in tones both too high and too low for human ears to make out. In an exquisite and rumbling harmony, the name of their god of war flooded out across the battlefield, energising each of the eldar warriors who heard it, rallying them into a renewed quest: blood for the blood god. Soon, the call was reverberating around the whole mountain, pulsing through the rock itself, making the earth move with its sonorous power. On the peak of the mountain, acting like a conduit for the chants of the Biel-Tan eldar, Khaine's avatar threw back its head and let out a scream of power, repulsing the warp clouds above it as though they were feathers in the wind, staggering the daemon prince in a moment of awe. The name was thrown up to the shrouded stars: "Kaela Mensha Khaine!"
Now where have I heard that before?
After this we get a scene of an Eldar named Jaerielle who has discarded his Shuriken weapon in favour of a power weapon and his old helmet from when he was a Striking Scorpion (his sister also got to keep hers).
the mandiblaster helmet, still edged in a deep red, was all that Jaerielle had kept from his time as an Aspect Warrior of the Striking Scorpions. It was a mark of unusual and great honour to be permitted to keep it, and he was glad of it now.
-
Like her brother, she had served her Aspect with such devotion that the Exarch had made her a gift of the mask when she left the temple, hopeful that one day she would return.
And once done with that we get introduced to a Fire Dragon.
Frqual was an eldar Guardian on the edge, slipping in and out of the service of the Fire Dragon temple so frequently that it was difficult to keep track of when he was formally an Aspect warrior and when merely a Guardian. Never parted from his weapons, he lived to fight and relished the blood that soaked his long memory. He teetered on the edge of damnation, constantly questing for battles and contests. Jaerielle was sure that he would become an exarch one day, completely lost to himself but honed as the perfect embodiment of eldar warcraft.
Something about the phrase "Eldar Guardian on the edge" amuses me.
After this and some griping from the Eldar about humans the pov shifts to the Deathwatch Space Marines accompanying an Inquisitor (and it turns out that this planet was Tartarus all along).
Tartarus was not a battle that they could avoid - the farseer had been preparing for it for centuries. Guardian squads had been formed specially, and the Aspect temples had even consented to arm some of their most exalted former members, as well as dispatching their own Aspect warriors into the fray.
...They've been planning this battle for centuries and they couldn't arrange for some heavy vehicles (or even just some weapons platforms) to go with the Avatar of Khaine?
"Eldar wraithguard!" called Trythos, turning to face the new threat as his team brought their weapons to bear in instantaneous reflex.
A volley of bolter fire punched out of the line of Deathwatch Space Marines, smashing into the advancing line of wraithguard. Great chunks of psycho-plastic splintered away into the darkness, but the strange creatures just kept coming, as though they couldn't feel the impacts. Their weapons flared with life, returning fire with a hail of projectiles that hissed smoothly through the air, ricocheting off the power amour of the Marines.
How the fuck does power armour protect against a Wraithcannon shot?
After that the Deathwatch kill the Wraithguard by smashing the soulstones in the centers of their chests.
Macha senses this and gets rather upset since she knew one of the Wraithguard.
The farseer's pain was transformed into anger almost immediately, and she focussed her rage into a searing ball of energy that rocketed up towards the main summit of the mountain as she screamed her fury into the darkness. This time it smashed directly into the form of the daemon itself, sending it staggering back towards the precipice at the edge of the peak, pursued at each step by the frenzy of the avatar's wailing blade.
Good for her, she just messed up a nearly materialised daemon prince. After that hit she readies another hit to kill the daemon prince before it can fully materialise but just as she's about to launch it-
Then a blast of las-fire punched into the back of Macha's shoulder, pushing her forward, stumbling to regain her balance. The ball of flame hissed and then blinked into nothingness, as Macha turned to locate the origins of the blast.
A group of Chaos cultists had burst through the defensive line of the Storm squad.
A Cultist horde is actually useful... for the the few seconds before she turns them all inside out.
After that we cut back to the Guardian Storm squad fighting an acrobatic Bloodletter.
The creature seemed to slip and slide around his blade, as though it were not wholly solid. Jaerielle spun with his sword, taking clutches of clumsy cultists with each turn, but the dancing, devilish form seemed to evade his every move.
After this the Bloodletter takes out the Fire Dragon from earlier in an instant before going back to dancing with the Eldar.
Jaerielle moved first, lunging at the figure's naked legs with his sword, sweeping his blade in a lateral arc. But the bloodletter was too fast, springing into the air in a breathtaking pirouette, kicking its unearthly weight off Jaerielle's blade itself.
After that they manage to catch the Bloodletter between their blades and kill it before going back to chopping up cultists while the space marines finally realise that there's more going on than the Eldar killing Chaos cultists.
After that the pov shifts back to the Deathwatch observing the Eldar and Chaos forces fight while the Inquisitor explains why they're there.
"Not today, captain. We are not here for annihilation, but for knowledge. We are here because of that," explained Jhordine, pointing towards the fallen weapon of the avatar. "Over many millennia, the eldar have created a weapon to slay daemons and banish the forces of Chaos from this world - that is the Wailing Doom of Biel-Tan. That is why we are here. Even the smallest fragment could be wrought into a great weapon for the Emperor's Inquisition."
...Of course the Blood Ravens Omnibus opens with things getting stolen.
Once we cut back to the Avatar vs Daemon fight, the Avatar is on his last legs but he isn't going down without a fight.
With one last supernatural effort of will, the avatar brought the sword round in a magnificent arc. The weapon wailed into the eye of the storm that spiralled above it, promising doom, and the avatar let out a cry to Khaine. The sound brought silence to the mountain, as all eyes turned to watch the terrible blow. The eldar warriors had stopped fighting and a painfully beautiful chant rose from the remnants of their force - Kaela Mensha Khaine.
The Wailing Doom, the ancient weapon of the avatar of Khaine, seemed to fall into slow motion, sweeping up in a vertical crescent from the avatar's feet, leaving a stream of sparkling energy in its wake. Its tip ripped into the body of the daemon prince with the sound of reality being torn asunder, and the avatar pushed it on with the very last of his ageless strength. The blade ploughed through the abdomen of the shrieking daemon, spraying warp energy and toxic liquids across the mountain, and then sliced up through its neck, smashing into the base of its skull. The daemon's head was shattered in an immense explosion, sending the collapsing skull rocketing up into the gyring storm above.
For once the Avatar of Khaine gets to give a good showing.
Of course, as the Avatar dies, a bolt of lightning strikes the Wailing Doom, shattering it. Seeing their chance, the Deathwatch swoop in to steal it from the spent Eldar force.
Prothius could not let go of the sword fragment. It was as though it was fused into his grip. He felt weak and drained, and the shard had grown heavier with every hard fought step. Heavier still after they had climbed into the Thunderhawk and blasted away from Tartarus. It was as though it wanted to be back with the eldar. And the whispering wouldn't stop. His mind was peppered with thoughts that were not his own, chattering and debating all around him. But one voice was clear, and its pain was exquisite: Human, you know not what you have done.
I see no way that stealing this poorly understood psychic object from the Eldar can go wrong.
So far I've got Eldar planning a fight with a daemon prince with incredibly sloppy prep-work as my main complaint but compared to what I was expecting (something singularly terrible) this isn't bad. Let's see if my luck holds out.
