This is a copy of the stories created by our Eldar player, James. While a little long, the stories are AWESOME! Enjoy!
Exarch Naois' Warhost JournalWas the Farseer an imbecile? The thought gave Exarch Naois no pleasure as he perched atop the wreckage and the twisted remains of the downed spacecraft. First the Farseer demanded deception and double dealing with the foul orks upon arrival at this planet, and then the discovery that there is another group of orks seemingly working at odds against the first group. How did the Farseer not know of this? The thought of his Temple’s weapon in the hands of those filthy animals…
The Exarch’s blood pounded in his viens. A hot wind blew across the plain and whistled through the ruined buildings. Some of the ship’s wreckage creaked and moaned under its caress. The Eldar force didn’t make a sound as they searched for more of the valuable objects his most trusted warriors were already carrying.
The Exodites had performed well, Naois thought, they almost made up for the Farseer’s second mistake. The Exarch had been instructed to form his perimeter around the human orbital defense towards the side where the second moon shown low on the horizon. The Farseer had been specific! The fury of Khaine pounded in the Naois’s heart at the thought. Sometimes when dealing with that Ancient being it felt as is he wasn’t even there. The Seer would sometimes look right through those he advised seemingly unaware of them as he spoke of inconsequential subjects, and then other times he could see the exquisite pain that drove Naois’s soul and speak directly to it.
Maybe the rumors were true, maybe it was time for the seer to join the crystal forest and pass his mantle on. Some called him senile, but none yet moved openly against him. Naois wasn’t sure just how he felt yet. His temple surely hadn’t flourished under the Farseer, but he was a young Exarch and those dark happenings had been so long ago. Now he was the Farseer’s pawn in this clandestine gamble, on this unknown world hardly worthy of the Craftworld’s notice.
He had been denied his bloodshed! The Orks crude teleporter had expelled the foul beasts in flash of green light on the opposite side of the weapon! How had the Farseer made this error? The thought darkened his mood, and his hand moved to the hilt of his sword in anticipation of the slaughter that had never come. The Orks had destroyed the weapon in seconds! The Exarch’s Warhost had moved to prevent it. Naois had even taken out a Greenskin attempting to conceal itself!
Naois chuckled to himself, as sneaky as an ork was an insult amongst the Scorpions towards the Aspirants; goading them to use their anger in order to focus. Only Moina, promising young Guradian that she was, had managed another kill; Having shot an Ork cleanly though the ears. Naois was surprised it had died, as there wasn’t much between those features that an Ork relied upon.
The resulting explosion had punched the Eldar force to the ground and in the smoke and haze the Orks, with their mission complete had moved off. The Exodites could have tracked them easily and the Eldar Warhost could’ve caught them, but the sharp eyes of Vruhar had noticed that somewhere, one of the primitive human orbital defence weapons had launched and in the resulting explosion high in the atmosphere a terminally damaged craft was rapidly descending.
Was this what the Farseer had forseen? Was this the objective? Coincidence is a forbidden word to the Eldar, and so Naois had made the only choice he could and moved off towards where the scouts had indicated the craft would come down. Having secured several of the items the Farseer was interested in within the wreckage, the Scorpion Exarch wondered
now if all he had been through was indeed part of the Farseer’s plan or if the Ancient advisor only babbled about disjointed visions as he neared the end of his illustrious path.
We are not alone Exarch, Mon’Keigh approach. The thought shot through his considerations, and brought his focus back to wreckage of the ship and the ruined human shrine it had landed amongst. His Warhost sensing his sharpening tension melted silently into the long shadows formed by the columns of the wasted church. The though had come from Vruhar, formerly an Exodite, now returned to the path of Guardian for reasons of his own. Once again along side some of his Exodite brethren his razor sharp skills for scouting had returned to the forefront.
The two Exodites looked at one another, then at Vruhar, and bowed their heads at once in both respect and
envy.
Locate them. Naois directed his thought at the Exodites allowing them a chance to redeem themselves. One split off into the remains of the whistling church, disappearing into its ruined arches, the other climbed up a sun bleached column and peered carefully over the top.
They come across the plain Exarch, they must be unaware of our presence. The scout’s thought made available to the entire Warhost. Kahine’s promise thundered in the Exarch’s ears, his soul craved the destruction about to commence. Was this the moment? Naois thought to himself. Commissar Dabank, apparently some kind of Mon’Keigh officer, had the Ork known Naois had heard that name before? How could he? Was this the time, were these Dabanks’s humans?
The Farseer had told him this name, that his and the Mon’Keigh Dabank’s fates were inexorably entwined. That neither could live nor die together, that all they could do is collide together. The thought finally gave the Exarch some pleasure; that somewhere on the forsaken rock there was an enemy worthy of his attention.
Enemy mine, thought Naois, is now the time?
The bunch of humans closed in on the crash site so loudly they’d have woken a sleeping Grox. The scouts looked disgusted at the poor display of stealth, by comparison the Orks had been good. They were even speaking in the blunt barking tongue, humans called speech. To Naois it sounded more as if they expelled gasses, than anything intelligible.
Corrupted scavengers.
The thought implied the condescension the scout felt. An image of the ragtag band of human was passed to each of the Eldar from the Exodite’s position on the bone colored spire. One of them even had obvious mutations. These creatures were blight upon the universe that they could even allow such to walk amongst their own!
Nothing more than wasteland scum coming after the prizes the Eldar had already seized. Not Dabank, not like the images he’d been shown by the Farseer. Yet to come then, the Exarch thought. These humans will pay in blood for his impatience to find this Dabank.
The Humans came out of the sun and began to cling to what little cover the wrecked craft provided. The wind screamed even louder as they approached, roaring through the spindly remains of the buildings and shrieking through the pointed windows.
Dry relentless heat was all the wind brought, the promise of violence was in the air; it was as if the wind knew it and craved it. Perhaps that is just my soul, thought Naois, and not the wind.
Even the howling wind wasn’t enough to cover the noise of their approach. The main body of the human force shifted into the cover of some high rock walls as they got close. A few of worst equipped covered themselves in the wreckage of the spacecraft’s cockpit well away from the human leader and his guard. Their error was plain in his mind, those humans were exposed. Though they were hiding it would take little to tempt them to reveal themselves, and then they would die.
Move forward, make yourselves known to them, but keep to the cover. As one the Eldar Warhost darted from spire to spire in the ruins at the Exarch’s psychic command, only the Exodites remained still sighting their rifles to where the human rabble lay.
The humans took the bait, as the Exarch had known they would. The Rabble raised a short snub weapon and aimed it at Moina, who had made it closer to them than any other. The primitive gun belched forth a blunt slug that hit young Guardian with such force that it knocked her out of cover and the humans took the chance to fire again.
Naois wouldn’t have been the least surprised if they had begun to throw rocks as primitive as the weapons they used were. The wound was superficial, and at the last second Moina turned her fall into an elegant roll; the human bullets flying over her as she sprung back into cover. The Dire Avenger flanked out behind the second Exodite, as sharp buzz issued from his Laser rifle. One of the humans pitched back as his skull erupted in a red plume, a white line flashed between the scout’s rifle and the bloody ruin.
Yes, bring them the message of Kahine! A web of finger width beams of light issued forth from the Warhost’s position. The flanking Dire Avenger opened up with his Shuriken catapult, sending a hail of razor sharp projectiles through the wind into the humans. Realizing their peril, the humans charged forwards out of cover in a last desperate attempt to do some damage to their attackers and make their escape.
Brave but futile, short lived and in such a rush to die; the Exarch Naois thought that he would never understand the Mon’Keigh. The last of the exposed humans were cut down: one by the elegant dual Laser pistols of the Aspirant Avenger Lhir, the other by the well placed shots of Vruhar. Without firing another shot, the corrupted Mon’Keigh leader and his personal guard left the crash site. Falling back in a covered formation, now showing they wouldn’t be so easily taken a second time.
Shall we pursue, Exarch? No, we need to get these items back to the Webgate, we’re expected. At least Naois hoped he was, that the Seer’s vision was so accurate.