Decrepit Dakkanaut
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Short introduction piece written by me for sluggaslugga's Dal'temn Tau faction.
Tau across the empire may openly sorrow for the deviant Commander Farsight and his misguided followers, but in the hushed tones reserved for the condemned, the Dal’temn Tau sept, are the scorn and scourge of what it is to fall furthest from the Greater Good.
Born among the dying embers of the Third Sphere Expansion before the Imperium reconquest generated by the Zeist Campaign, the Dal’temn were already considered bloodthirsty combatants. The home world wrested for their sept was an Imperium Death World much like Catachan- deep, dark jungles inhabited by various shades of nightmarish beasts. The humans who defended it blended into the tapestry of death with great skill, causing the Tau and their Kroot mercenaries to fight a bitter decade long war of attrition, ending when the last of the local flora and fauna was razed to the ground.
The sept’s long war caused many of its Fire Warriors to become brooding, introverted sociopaths that eagerly sought combat as a means of expressing their pent up rage and frustration. While other Tau methodically planned their strategies and conserved resources, the Dal’temn sept became increasingly brazen and reckless with their battle plans, sometimes leaving their gun lines to engage in bloody hand to hand combat along with their Kroot mercenaries.
Their leader, Shas’O Dal’temn Fyrouk Lur’Tae’Mont’yr, or known simply as Commander Darkstrike, was the one responsible for their descent into depravity. It was he who ordered the Fire Warriors under his command to cleanse the world of humans rather than convert them to the Greater Good. He was also the one to order scorching the remaining resistance from the earth against the advice of his attendant Ethereal Caste advisor. And finally, set his warriors upon the stars, staining them with blood and death.
The Dal’temn sept garnered a dark reputation that ostracized from other Fire Warriors and Tau leaders. In return, Commander Darkstrike isolated his forces from other armies within the empire, leading missions and campaigns without the consent or approval of his guiding Ethereal. The unheeded advisor saw the lengths to which the Dal’temn had fallen, despite his remarkable persuasion. He slipped away aboard a transport towards T’au one fateful day. On the home world and grant heart of the Tau Empire, he consulted with the other Ethereals of the council. He spoke of the shadows he saw gripping the heart of the Fire Warriors. He cautioned of the death and destruction Commander Darkstrike had wrought. He pleaded for them to find a way to bring the Dal’temn back within the empire before they were too far gone.
Obstinately, they agreed to recall Commander Darkstrike, reasoning he was the one behind the fall of the Dal’temn.
What they didn’t know was that it was not simply the leader of the sept that was corrupted. The entire world of Tau Fire Warriors was within the grip of the One Upon the Skull Throne, He Who Demands Blood, the Chaos God Khorne. So when the Water Caste messenger was sent back to Dal’temn, a whole cadre of warriors and crisis suits glared balefully at him as he made his way to the barracks in which Commander Darkstrike held court. Reading the commands of the Ethereals, the Water Caste envoy nervously glanced back and forth between his enscribed messages and the looming warriors who flanked their gory leader.
As he ended the command of the Ethereal s for Commander Darkstrike to return back to T’au, the Fire Warriors and the messenger turned to the one man that held the fate of an entire world upon his next carefully worded response. Darkstrike glowered between the chasm of space from him and the Water Caste envoy. Seconds ticked by as the air grew thick with tension. To the herald, the room was turning bloody red and… warping, as if to match the murderous intent of the room’s occupants.
Finally, an audible snap broke the silence. Mere seconds later, Commander Darkstrike strode from his throne room, Tau marching in line to follow him. Behind him, the murderous screams of a man being torn asunder by reality invading Khornite daemons with blood-caked spikes and talons emanated from the departing room. The Ethereal had their answer.
The truth was finally bared open- Darkstrike had turned to Chaos. With his sept world behind him and the loyalty of the Clasquak Kroot leader Nauklik, Darkstrike launched a civil war within the Tau Empire that would span a decade. Striking first, the Ethereals and their loyal septs were caught unprepared for the truth that a Tau Commander, one of the highest positions within their society, could succumb to the darkness of Chaos.
The Khorne inspired Fire Warriors and ravenous Kroot butchered a macabre path through the empire. No Tau or auxiliary alien troop was spared the wrath of Commander Darkstrike’s minions. A dozen worlds burned in his wake before the weight of numbers against his single rebellious sept overwhelmed his taxed warriors, despite the ferocity and ingenuity of the Dal’temn.
Splintering before the might of three full septs worth of Tau descending upon their world, the Dal’temn unleashed a horde of daemons upon the ranks of their enemies. In the confusion, Commander Darkstrike evacuated what remained of his forces and fled the empire before pursuit began. Upon the greater galaxy had the Dal’temn stepped, and with a broken army and a rag-tag fleet, the Dal’temn needed a new world upon which to recuperate and strengthen again…
In a dark corner of the galaxy, where a star died and a scarred people huddled in the rubble of a blasted world, the survivors finally felled the last Imperial army invading their world. With the Sisters of Battle and the Imperial Guard regiments utterly annihilated, the planet of Hellstorm was freed. The abhumans of the planet, mutated by vile science and scorned for dangerous mutation, now inherited a doomed planet skittering with dangerous monsters, a poisoned atmosphere, and insane, desperate people skulking the ruins of hive cities, had very little to inherit. Their only military formation, the Hellstorm 171st was a wreck. Most of their men were dead and their arsenal of heavy weapons depleted. It would be a miracle for the planet as a whole to salvage what was left and leave before the Helstor sun burnt away its last cosmic warmth.
They were not so fortunate, for the Dal’temn found them.
The Tau, novices in Warp travel thanks to their limited psyker potential, had jumped their entire fleet to the Helstor system. Unable to travel further because of the scant resources remaining to the sept after a hellacious exodus from their home world, they had no choice but to descend below to the only inhabitable world within the system to reforge their broken ranks and do what they could to move on from the dying star system.
What they found was the dark, brooding survivors of a grim world ready to repel them from their blasted wreck of a civilization. Readily, the Dal’temn obliged.
With the might of Chaos infused strength, the cunning of the Clasquak Kroot, and the leadership of Commander Darkstrike, the Tau clashed with the Hellstorm 171st humans. Using their technologically superior weaponry that was the result of a decade’s long war with other Tau septs, the Dal’temn pushed back the desperate abhumans from their entrenched positions. Sweeping over the planet, Commander Darkstrike had infiltrated every corner of the planet with his forces. Yet he had not conquered the people who dwelled amongst broken rubble. While they bent before his forces, they had not broken.
Indeed, the Hellstorm abhumans had known great adversity. The reason they would not fall was their resolve. Broken, they would mend. Beaten, they would heal. The Chaos inspired fury of the fallen Tau did not bother these people. They had not flinched in the face of Armageddon; they would not cower before these Xenos scum.
And thus the second battle of Hellstorm raged…
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1000 pts