Crusade: Pariah Nexus

-So complete and terrifying was the silence of the Nephilim Sector that it drew the attention of the Avenging Son from half a galaxy away. The zone of silence would later be dubbed by the Imperium as the Pariah Nexus. Despite his strategic and statistical genius, the Primarch Roboute Gulliman was unaware that the Pariah Nexus was one of many such Nexuses.

-Shortly after Battle Group Kallides entered the Pariah Nexus, Roboute led his own fleet into the Nexus. However, combined elements of the fickle whims of the Warp, the vastness of the Nexus, and the effects of the Pylons saw the Primarch's fleet enter the Nexus far away from Kallides' position. Unable to unite with their vanguard battle group, Roboute's forces fought their own campaign in the Nexus, striking deep in the Necron's territory. However, before the Primarch could have his forces consolidate their positions, he was forced to order them back. The Pale King and his Death Guard were attacking Ultramar. The Plague Wars were beginning. Roboute left some forces to continue the fight against the Necrons and departed the Nexus.

-The Stilling didn't just affect human life. Animal life was also decimated by the effects of the Pylons. On the verdant world of Kalliphor, guardsmen were disgusted to discover that the soft crunchy ground beneath their feet was the bodies of countless small animals in a catatonic state hidden by the undergrowth.

-Stern's victory on Cherist proved to be a vital turning point for the Imperium. The destruction of the Dolmen Gates robbed the Necrons of their overwhelming advantage in space mobility. This meant the flood of Necron reinforcements to the warzone systems lessened allowing the Imperials to evade being overrun and in some cases score victories. More importantly, it proved the effectiveness of faith in combating the Stilling. There were rumors of the Stilled troopers reviving back to sentience in the presence of warriors of great faith. And so the soldiers of the Battle Group clung with desperate zeal to their faith.

Chapter one:

The Imperials were unaware that the Pariah Nexus was nothing but a cog in a cosmic mechanism whose vastness and grandeur were beyond anything the Imperium could engineer. To bring such unparalleled work of cosmic engineering to reality the Silent King drew the greatest of the dynasties' crypteks and even some of the Tecchnomandrites to his side. Entire systems were transported and realigned to insane cosmic circuits. Planets were plucked from their systems and made to orbit artificial singularities. Planets that were of no use to the great work or hindered the flow of the galactic leylines were cast into deep space to drift as rogue planets. Each Astromantic hub was connected with corridors of nodal entanglements creating a web of anti-warp energy between the superstructures surrounding the star of the Xendu system and the nodal Pylons.

The Pariah Nexus was not unique. Others of its kind were constructed in the borders of the galaxy, encircling it like a noose. The Pariah Nexuses were the means by which the Silent King intended to banish the Warp forever from the galaxy. From the soulless husks that were once the galaxy's races the Silent King hopes to find a cure for the biotransference that would usher the Necrons to a new age of flesh.

The Pariah Nexuses needed protection if they ever to succeed so the Silent King sent a call to the dynasties. Countless dynastic lords and phaerons answered the call pledging their innumerable legions to his banner. The legions would ensure that no invaders threatened the Nexuses or that none trapped inside them ever escaped the choking silence. The Silent King himself took to the field to lead the Necrons in the Nephilim sector, all while keeping watch on the other Nexuses via the Dolmen gates.

Not all dynasties answered the call of the Silent King. Some rebuffed his offers and threats. None did so with greater vehemence than the Sautekh, the dynasty of Imotekh the Stormlord!

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The resurgence of faith saw Battle Group Kallidus score miraculous victories. However, it was not a second wind for the Imperials. The Battle Group's defeats far outnumbered their victories. The Imperials were bleeding manpower at an unsustainable rate forcing the battlegroup's leadership to shrink their warzones to focus and funnel their forces into systems that they could defend.

The Imperial commanders were unaware of the Silent King's existence, but they certainly felt his presence. Hard-won zones of stability were brought to the brink by the renewed Necron offensives.  Worse, the Necrons brought with them arcane weapons whose cosmic powers were insurmountable by the Imperial armies.

Just as it appeared that Kallidus was doomed to annihilation, contact was established with Battle Group Orphaeus of Fleet Primus. The joining of both Battle Groups had doubled the Imperial power within the sector. Yet the increasing intensity and numbers of Necron attacks and the losses to the Stilling meant that the Imperials might have exchanged a quick death for a prolonged horrific demise.

The effects of the Pariah Nexus meant that the communicative ability of the Imperials was in dire condition. The strongest of the Astropaths could only send the briefest of messages through the anti-empiric shroud of the Nexus. This forced the Imperials to rely on fleets of messenger ships to carry messages via short desperate warp jumps.

The battle groups navigators have all been afflicted by various degrees of madness under the pressure of the Nexus. The least insane among them reported that the Nexus’ borders are becoming harder to perceive. The Nexus was in fact growing and seemingly in every direction.

Imperial commanders suggested a withdrawal to less affected regions in order to contact the wider Imperium and request aid. A Stubborn man and hardline believer in the Imperial Creed, Groupmaster Marran shot down any suggestions of retreat. The very notion of retreat disgusted him. And so Epistolary Thengrest of the Imperial Fists suggested another means to contact the Imperium. His plan was to gather all potent psykers on the world of Cherist in the Lomorr system. Since Stern’s victory there, the world was believed to have been blessed and purified by the Emperor’s light. The gathering of so many of the Imperial faithful there saw the effects of the Pariah Nexus reduced. Moreover, with the destruction of the Dolmen Gates, the Necrons have no easy access to the system. They have to fight their way through Imperial lines to get there.

The gathered psykers on Cherist needed time to finish their ritual. To buy them the time they needed, the Black Templar and Imperial Fists led a counterattack into the heart of the Necron offensive. The Black Templar charge,  reinforced by the more zealous elements of the Battlegroups, sallied forth and scattered the Necron legions before them. In their wake followed the Imperial Fists. The Imperial Fists led the efforts of consolidating and fortifying the ground won by the Black Templar. The worlds and systems taken by the Templars were transformed into mighty bastions prepared to test the Necrons. The Sons of Dorn succeeded in their initial mission. The ritual was finished resulting in a blaze of psychic energy shooting up from the world and piercing Nexus’ veil. The spear light, intermingled with psychic cries for aid, was hurled into the heartlands of Imperium Sanctus. Many psykers died to send this message, a terrible price indeed for the struggling Imperial forces. They had no way of knowing if their cry for aid would be answered.

The Black Templar maintained their momentum, blitzing the Necrons and securing many victories. This forced the Necrons to stage massive blocking actions seeking to slow down the Templars and grind them down with their overwhelming numbers and resilience. In several warfronts, this strategy was thwarted when Imperial Fist forces marching behind the Templar charge reached the front. The combined might of Sons of Dorn saw the Necrons crushed.

Space Marines were resistant to the effects of the Stilling. However, they were not immune. Its effects on them differed from that on the mortals. It appeared to erode their minds into its basic instinct removing any sophistication or nuance. Black Templars’ fanaticism edged toward madness. Imperial Fists were becoming like unmovable fortifications unwilling to cede ground.

The Space Marines' wrath and zeal were inexhaustible. Their arms and gear were not. Marines were running out of ammunition and resources. Whenever it was possible, they were forced to converse their ammo by meeting the Necrons with their armored fists. Marines punched out Necrons and ground them beneath their heels, relying on the strength of their power-armored transhuman bodies and their hatred of the alien. Supply fleets struggled to catch up with the marines. As they neared the center of the Nexus, some ships were left behind to drift in the void their Gellar and Warp engines extinguished by the effects of the Pylons. Without functioning Warp engines, it was impossible for these ships to reach the closet system without the ship’s crews dying old age and rotting away.

For all the heroism of the Space Marines and their supporting forces, they could not stop the situation from worsening for the two Battle Groups. The Imperials were blunting themselves against endless waves of Necrons. The worlds and systems retaken during the first stages of the counterattack found themselves on the brink of collapse as Necron fleets and armies flooded over them. The situation was not helped by the poor communication ability between the Imperial forces. There was no way the messenger fleets could keep up with the speed of the Necron assaults which made coordinating a defensive strategy or responding to Necron attacks in a timely manner extremely difficult.

Steadily, the Necrons pushed the Imperials back, forcing Imperial armies to cede ground or utterly obliterate them. The Necrons' efforts to exterminate the human resistance could have moved swifter and conducted with brutal finality had the fractious nature of the race not reared its head. Some Necron Overlords struck out on their own ignoring the Silent King's wider strategic plans to pursue their own glory and agendas. Among these troublemakers was Trazyn the Infinite. After alerting Imperials to a hidden Necron presence, Trazyn had gone on a spree of thefts of both Necron and alien holdings, leaving behind him six entire systems a buzz with confusion.

More alarming for the Silent King were reports of enemy Necron forces attacking his loyal servants and besieging nodal worlds in the east of the Nexus. He dispatched loyal servants to investigate the identity of these traitors. If they weren't commanded by a dynastic noble given to madness or greed perhaps the Technomandrites that rejected that Silent King finally found allies for their vendetta against him. The instability of the Necron offensive allowed Imperial pockets of resistance to survive amidst seas of Necrons.

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The message of Cherist reached the Imperium and after a painfully slow journey through the Imperial channels it was transmitted to Roboute. The Primarch in the middle of calculating the Imperial fight back across the breadth of the galaxy directed a fraction of his brilliant mind to the issue of the Pariah Nexus. The growing shroud of silence, and the vast and coordinated Necron armies, all of this required his personal intervention.  However, the Indomitus Crusade was stretched thin by its effort to restore stability to Imperium Sanctus. Roboute has to manage the logistics of the Imperium and its campaigns before he can take the fight to the Necrons himself. So Roboute sent Battle Group Hephaestus to the Pariah Nexus. The Battle Group was augmented with Admech armies under the command of Belisarius Cawl.  It was Cawl's mission to assess the technological threat, link up with the two Battle Groups already there and reinforce them, and create a bridgehead for the eventual return of the Avenging Son to the Pariah Nexus.

For his part, Cawl was delighted to accept this mission. So many blackstone deposits to excavate, so many ancient technologies to secure for the glory of the Omnissiah.

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The Warden:

Before Roboute departed the Pariah Nexus, he appointed Captain Messinius as the Warden of the Nephilim sector. His mission was to command and reinforce the enclave of Imperial presence created by the Roboute's initial push into the Nexus, and also to restore Imperial rule over the whole sector. Though Messinius took his duties to heart and showed commendable dedication, the effects of the Pariah Nexus ate away at his troops. Worse, a sudden invasion of Orks flipped his offensive plans into a defensive one. Yet under his inspirational leadership, his troops continue to hold the line.

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Orikan The Diviner:

The Diviner was ever aloof from the petty politics and agendas of the Necron nobility. His agenda in the Pariah Nexus was far more important than any quest for power or riches. Orikan had been alerted to a coming disaster when several of his prophecies suffered spectacular failures. The timelines he envisioned weren't slightly changed, they were horrifically altered. Through traveling back through his own timeline Orikan corrected his mistakes and hid his failures from his fellow Necrons, he also got an inkling of the source of this corruption. Some when there would be a release of fundamental energies. This release has cleaved through his prophecies. The exact when of this release is obscured by temporal storms of incredible potency.  Following the fragments of his failed timelines, Orikan made his way to the Pariah Nexus.

There was no love or loyalty remaining in Orikan's core flux for the Silent King. However, he respected the Silent King's determination to expunge the threat of the Warp. Whatever threat that was going to materialize in this region was going endanger the great work of the Silent King. Orikan set himself against it and searched for more clues to better identify it.

Chapter 2:

Though the forces of Battlegroup Hephaestus featured space marines strike forces, Battle sisters, lances of Imperial Knights, and large gatherings of Imperial Guard regimens, the majority of the Battlegroup was comprised of Admech forces hailing from Mars and Metallica. The Admech presence was further increased by armies from other Forgeworlds. The vast numbers of Admech in the battlegroup meant that a great number of the battlegroup' high commanders were Tech Priests, and all of them answered to Cawl.

Unlike the previous battlegroups that damaged their Warp engines in their efforts to push into the Nexus, the Tech-Magi of Hephaestus bent their technological and scientific knowledge to mitigate the effects of the Pariah Nexus. A few radical tech priests conducted borderline heretical experimental modifications to their Warp engines, hiding their activities with claims of faith in the Machine God. Some Tech priest used ancient technologies from their forgeworlds' deepest vaults. Some used sigil-inscribed cages to channel psychic energy to their ships' capacitors. Others used lobotomized tech choirs wired into forge shrines that broadcasted and amplified their binaric prayers.

None of these measures proved to be totally successful. Only a few ships entered the Nexus without suffering extensive Warp Engine damage and have their navigators and astropaths relatively sane. The drawbacks and mixed effectiveness of the measures resulted in the Battle Group losing cohesion. Though Cawl attempted to maintain unity he did fret over the fracturing of the battle group, for it too had its advantages. It meant there would be less inner conflict over technological dogma and progress won't be hindered by overinflated egos. Also, the spreading of the battle group meant an increased probability of locating the other two battle groups.

Cawl issued the Noctilith Decree.  His instruction was for the battle group to split into Aegis fleets and Accretion fleets. The Aegis fleets' mission was to reinforce surviving Imperial armies in the Nexus and retake and fortify any fallen world. Accretion fleets' mission was to search for Blackstone deposits and process them on a scale unseen in the Imperium.

Cawl planned to have the gathered Blackstone fashioned into massive toroid objects he called liminal abraisers. These objects would be grav-towed by the Admech ships and fed with positive Warp energy from their Warp engines. Cawl believed that under the right modulation, the energy projected by the liminal abraisers would act as grindstones on the negative fields projected by the Pylons gradually eroding them. Cawl hoped that with enough experimentation and tinkering the liminal abraisers would be able to push back the effects of the Pariah Nexus from worlds and entire systems.

Since no physical liminal abraiser existed yet, the tech priests were suspicious of Cawl. Cawl dismissed any requests to share where he discovered the design of these objects. Instead, Cawl shared only fragmented data with his fellow tech-priests and also shared with them a fraction of his knowledge of the Blackstone. The knowledge was beyond their current understanding but the awe it invoked in them overrode their misgivings.

Information from the Cherist message suggested that the Pylons are not impervious to all damage. They could be brought down from within and harvested. This means the source of the problem could be turned into part of the solution. Cawl could turn the Necrons' own works against them.

Cawl knew that the non-Admech forces in the battlegroup would object to the harvesting of Blackstone, seeing it as a delay in achieving military gains. At worst, they might stand in the way of his plans. Especially after he authorized his Admech commanders to ignore distress calls from Imperial forces stranded in the Nexus in favor of acquiring as much Blackstone as possible, prioritising Cawl's project over rescuing Imperial forces whose battle effectiveness was compromised by prolonged exposure to the Stilling. So Cawl assigned the majority of the non-Admech forces to the Aegis fleets and tasked them with linking up with survivors from the Orphaeus and Kallidus. This would maximize their use and lower the chances of their flaws of flesh hindering the Admech progress with any illogical nonsense. However, the non-Admech forces were still under the nominal control of Admech commanders ensuring pragmatic logic was still adhered to.

The Aegis fleet began consolidating and enforcing the worlds in their entry point into the Nexus in the northwest. They ran into scattered elements of the Imperial Fists' and Templars' counterattack and rescued them from their Necron besiegers. On worlds fallen to the Stilling or Necron onslaughts, the Aegis fleets used armies of mindless servitors and servo-skulls to fortify them and reignite the fires of industry. World after world, system after system, they were building the staging point for the Imperium's reconquest of the sector.

The fractious nature of the Admech forces reared its head just as Cawl expected it would. A portion of the Admech forces pursued their own agendas over everything else. it. Under the smokescreen of poor communication conditions, some Tech-magi conducted their own experiments.  Some Admech were so disgusted by the Necrons, seeing them as abhorrence to the Machine God, that they refused to work with the same material the Necrons used for their works. Others believed that Cawl's devices were too risky to manufacture and use, in using them to break the Stilling effects they might draw the menace of the Warp into reality. Even some Tech-Magi loyal to Cawl wavered beneath the influence of greed and the sanity-sapping effects of the Stilling. In some cases, they folded Imperial armies into their quests for personal power rather than aiding the Battle Group's goals.

Contact was first established with Kallidus and Orphaeus in the Paradyce system where a large presence of both battle groups fought on. The Aegis fleets drove away Necron warships from the system, managing to board and destroy one warship before it could escape.  The Imperial of Hephaestus witnessed the ruination of the system's worlds and the dire condition of the Imperial defenders. These scenes were consistent sights the more the Battle Group pushed into the Nexus. Day and night, the Imperial defenders had survived a ceaseless deluge of Necron attacks all while enduring the Stilling effects as it eroded their morale and sanity over an extended and painful period of time. Only the Space Marines showed little signs of physical exhaustion. However, their extensive armor damage spoke of the grueling battles they had endured. The Imperial defenders had suffered greatly at the hands of the unliving legions but they were not broken.

The Aegis fleets suffered massive casualties as they sought to break the Necron sieges. A Few fleets were utterly obliterated. Some withdrew from worlds they were assigned to reinforce, prioritizing the safeguarding of their combat effectiveness for another try elsewhere. Most, however,  dug their heels and poured their armies into the attempt to stem the Necron onslaught.

Accretion fleets came under attack by the Necrons. The attacks were characterized by the single-minded aggressiveness far exceeding what was normal for the Necrons. The Necrons it seemed wanted to utterly annihilate the humans mining the Blackstone deposits.  Just as the Imperial armies were on the verge of collapse, the Necron legions vanished. On the planet of Tharia, a Magos was about to rig her Ordinatus Engine to self-destruct rather than have it fall into the hands of the Crypteks when suddenly the Necrons were recalled back to their ships, and the ships in turn speed out of the system. Similar scenes were repeated across the Nexus with minor variations. The Imperial forces couldn't pool their information to discover the cause behind the Necron retreats. Not so for Cawl. going over the scraps of data that reached him, the Archmagos developed a hypothesis and sought to prove it.

Cawl took his personal armies to Vertigus II and engaged the Necrons there. The Necron legions emerged from cracks in the planet's surface or marched out of shimmering portals. The numbers of the Necrons were so great that they threatened to overrun Cawl's forces. But just as the Imperial lines were about to crumble a second force of Necrons struck. These newcomers ignored the Imperials and attacked the Necron defenders. Cawl watching from aboard his ship enacted stage two of his plan. With the Necrons formations in disarray by the infighting, Cawl ordered the Imperials to press the attack and committed fresh forces to the battle. Admech warships surged forth and blasted battling Necron vessels with arcane batteries. Imperial titans and tank formations led the counterattack that shattered the out-of-position Necrons. The Szarekhan Necrons quit the field still pursued by their Necron rivals. As Cawl watched and studied the actions of the xenos, confirming the identities of the infighting Necrons, he concluded the Necrons were in the middle civil war. This was something he could exploit...

Reports reached Cawl that Group Master Marran had fallen. During a desperate defensive action over Cherist. He was struck by lightning summoned by a being of living metal and fractal light then vanished without a trace. He was named by the faithful as a Saint of Cherist.

Though the evidence of their heroism endures in the worlds they liberated and fortified, the leaders of the Black Templars and the Imperial Fists, Marshal Arnulf and Lieutenant Stornvor disappeared into the heart of the Nexus after breaking through the Necrons' blocking actions. Cawl suspected that the Marines' zeal had seen them surrounded and overwhelmed. He kept that to himself for the sake of morale.

Exploiting the Necron infighting, Cawl revived some elements of the Imperial Fists' strategy and constructed a solid Imperial foothold in the Pariah Nexus. But not all was going well for the Imperials. The effects of the Stilling began to take their toll on Cawl's Battle Group slowing their efforts. Initial testing of the Liminal abraisers proved of little success. The project was threatened to be derailed by a renewed Necron offensive and by Admrech factions breaking off to pursue their agendas. Despite the successes, the Imperial momentum was weakening.

An answer to Cawl's frustrations materialized aboard his ship. Inquisitor Draxus met with Cawl and explained that her successes in the Tredica system made her an enemy of Szeras. She had to lay low to evade his assassins. She has with her the secret knowledge the Imperials need to destroy the Pylons from within. More than that, she knows the perfect time and place to make use of this knowledge. She did not explain how she got this knowledge but Cawl saw it was how the Imperium could turn the war.

The Silent looked upon Imotekh's transgressions with cold fury.  He pulled back his forces to fend off Imotekh's invasion of the Pariah Nexus. He also sent summons for Orikan the Diviner his former chief astrologer. Though a long-standing bitterness existed between them, the Silent King required Orikan's foresight to counter Imotekh's hyperlogical strategic mind. Orikan ignored the Silent King's summons. He saw pursuing the coming esoteric threat as more important than engaging in the petty dynastic struggles for power.


Imotekh conquered and fully consolidated his hold on three systems in the northeast of the Nexus. While allowing the vassals of the Silent King to bleed themselves dry on his defenses, he used a Dolmen Gate to personally lead an attack on the distant Myrtika system. Within the system, the world of Vergoyz Alphic cradled a titanic Nodal Pylon. So far the Imperial invaders failed to even scratch the Pylon. The Silent King, however, knew that Imotekh possessed weapons capable of toppling the Pylon. Such a victory would cause the vassal dynasties of little faith in him to defect to Imotekh's side. He could not be allowed to happen.

The servants of the Silent King struck at Stormlord's forces with viciousness and zeal. Caught between the warring Necron legions, the Imperial invaders were defeated in short order and forced to retreat. Before the Imperials could fully leave the Necrons to their internecine conflict, Inquisitor Draxus warfleet appeared. Invested with the authority of Cawl and the holy inquisition, Draxus ordered the Magos commander to conduct divisionary attacks around the Pylon while her elite force made from Deathwatch marines and Admech terror troops struck at Pylon itself. The Magos had no choice but to submit and order his forces back to the world.

Seeing the Pylon threatened, the Silent King's servants disengaged from Imotekh's forces and threw themselves at the Imperials. Imotekh did not pursue them. Instead, he withdrew his forces into the world's Dolmen Gate and collapsed it behind him, departing the world.

During the battle, the Magos picked up alarming increasing energy readings from the Pylon. The surface of the world began to convulse. Whatever mission the Inquisitor conducted inside the Pylon, she seemed to have succeeded. The Imperials evacuated to the world post-haste. They watched as the Pylon collapsed into a singularity that blew up with enough force to displace the planet's atmosphere. The world was cracking down to its core. The Imperials escaped with heavy losses. As for the servants of the Silent Kings, there was no escape. With the world's Dolmen Gate destroyed by Imotekh's hand, they were trapped on the dying world. All but a few met their destruction there.

The clipped thanks sent by the Inquisitor to the Magos confirmed her survival. It was unknown how the Inquisitor toppled the Pylons but it seemed that the Imperium scored a decisive blow against the Undying Legions. What it truly was, was the start of a terrible new phase for Warzone Nephilim.

In the aftermath, Imperial commanders started asking questions about Draxus and her actions. What pacts did she strike for the knowledge of the Pylons? Where was she hiding during the time of her evasion of Szeras assassins? Why did her attacks against the Silent King forces happen to coordinate perfectly with Imotekh's assaults?



Imotekh the Stormlord:

Imotekh is a war commander second to none among the Necrons. He possesses perfect recall and a hyperlogical mind able to process information and predict through the web of possibilities to fashion the future he desires.

By his military might and ability, he rose to command one of the most powerful dynasties in the galaxy. So he disdains the weaklings that bent the knee to the Silent King out of tradition and fealty. He is also against the return to flesh. He views the strength and longevity of the Necron form as the perfect means of seizing their birthright of galactic conquest. So it was without question that Imotekh would raise his sword against the Silent King and seek to topple the Pariah Nexuses. For political and strategic reasons, the Silent King project must fail so that the Sautekh's star remains ascendant.

The Weak deserve nothing:

The Nydosh system hosted long-standing Kin holds of the Greater Thurian League. The Kin maintained economic ties with the neighboring Imperial systems and prospered thanks to them. When the Necrons began to shroud the sector with the Pylon's effects, things changed. Besieged by Necrons and revolted by the weakness of the humans for succumbing so easily to the Stilling, the Kin began to remorseless raiding human worlds. They reasoned that imperial resources would be better employed in safeguarding their holds than linger in the hands of weakling humans.

Chapter 3:

The destruction of the Vergoyz Alphic Pylon sent a shockwave that rocked the Pylons of the Nexus causing explosions and unleashing waves of malfunctions and insanity among the Necrons that drove many to embrace the Destroyer Cults. The oppression of the Stilling lifted from the Myrtika system and beyond.

Complex emotions raced through Szeras. Indignation and outrage over this crime. Admiration and fascination for the resourcefulness and determination of humanity. The Primitives managed to wound the Pariah Nexus against all odds. He wondered if the humans understood the cost of their actions.

The Pylons were both an ancient and cutting-edge form of technology for the Necrons. They were never used to this extent before. Szeras, for all his supreme intellect, did not fathom the amount of cosmic energies being channeled into the Pylons and what would happen if control over them was cut. An elastic effect might happen. The suppressed Warp would rage and surge forth to smash its way into reality. Or perhaps the clash of Anti-Warp and Warp energies would result in other forms of cataclysmic disasters.

Until now, the Silent King treated humans with honor and respect befitting worthy foes.  He was contented to test himself against their admirable tenacity as long as they posed no threat to the Pylons, the future of his people. No longer. No longer would humanity be seen as worthy of respect. The Silent King issued a decree to all Necrons under his banner that humans committed a dishonorable act of sabotage. All honor protocols are rescinded. There would be no restrictions. All weapons, no matter how terrifying or apocalyptic, were authorized. This is no longer a war. This is an extermination.

Szeras and the technomandrites serving the Silent King did not hide their delight at this. Nor did the Overlords and Crypteks whose destructive urges have long been shackled in the name of fairness and honour. The upstart humans will know the full wrath of the ancients and despair!

Though most Admech commanders believed in Cawl's vision and were grateful to him for sharing his bounty of knowledge, they lost hope in the liminal abraisers bringing a swift end to the conflict. This extended to even the most loyal of Cawl's followers. So they felt vindicated that they brought with them doomsday weapons from the deepest and most hidden vaults of their forges. They did so in secret, each Magos covertly bringing with him caches of such weapons. Weapons from humanity's dark past capable of wreaking sanity rending forms of destruction or manipulating the very fabric of reality. Between the various Magos, Hephaestus featured more superweapons than any battlegroup in the entire crusade. All these weapons ranged from forbidden to heretical. They were spirited from their vaults with acts of espionage or violence. The Magos who took them swore to themselves that they did so in good faith and never examined their motivations closely or what influences played on them.  The first deployment of the terrifying gifts of the Machine Gods would be in the Lomorr system.

A Necron fleet, one of the largest ever set against the humans, came to the Lomorr system. It was led by the infamously cruel Phaeron of the Thokt dynasty, Nektarrik. He was joined by a vile trio of Technomandrites named the Eyes of the Void. They augmented the Phaeron's already horrifying arsenal with an assortment of nightmarish cosmic weapons that they eagerly waited to see unleashed on the humans.

The Phaeron avoided Cherist and its formidable orbital defenses. Choosing instead to target the world of Torantis. It contained the largest Imperial Guard concentration in the system. Its destruction would show the humans on Cherist what awaited them. The Phaeron let loose the Technomandrites from the start allowing them to unleash their cosmic weapons on the helpless Imperial Guard tearing them into scattered atoms or reducing them to screaming clouds that blew away with the wind. Even a mighty warlord titan met its end as it was torn apart by three Tesseract Vaults.

Two Aegis fleets answered the world's call for aid. The fleets had enough numbers to contest the Necrons in both the void and the world's surface. However, they primed their superweapons to be used.

The Metallica Magos Oradi was the first to use his superweapon. A device called the Ark of Oblivion. the Ark steaked toward the Necron fleet and activated. It unleashed an anti-molecular shockwave that liquified three huge tomb ships. Though the superweapon activation turned the tides of the void war in the favour of the Imperials, the lack of warning caused many of the other Aegis fleet's drop forces to be caught in the weapon's destructive range.

The Technomandrites were outraged that the humans dared to use a weapon that was supposed to be beyond their meager primitive faculties. So they responded by unleashing their own unpredictably destructive superweapon. Through the process known only to the Technomandrites, the insane cosmic engineers had fragmented a shard of the Lash'Uddra into tiny fragments and implanted them into swarms of Cenoptek scarabs. The ravenous scarabs phased in and out of reality as they were loosed on the Imperial Guard and Admech forces. The Scarabs spread the madness of the Endless Swarm among the humans, fracturing their minds into fragments. The humans did not know if they were seeing with their own eyes or through the eyes of the Necron machines. Succumbing to madness the humans turned on each other even as the scarab swarm washed over them.

Not wanting to suffer the same fate as her men, the Admech leader of the second Aegis fleet undid the Warp shackles of an unknown superweapon. The energy of the weapon reacted unforeseeably to the power of the C'tan. What manifested was an expanding silent orb of black energy. Within the orb, there were glimpsed insectoid creatures.

The orb consumed the magos and her armies and continued to expand devouring both Necron and human forces as they fought. The orb did not stop expanding until it consumed one-third of the world's mass, annihilating billions in the process. Then the orb popped like a bubble disappearing as if it wasn't there at all. As the devastated planet fell from its orbit, the traumatized armies escaped the world. for years to come, nightmares and strange visions would plague the Lomorr system.

What happened on Torantis repeated itself in the warzone as the glories of humanity's dark age of technology clashed against the Necrons' mastery of the power cosmic. An arms race of scientific atrocities raged across the battlefields of the Pariah Nexus. In their efforts to swiftly end the conflict, the Necrons and Admech escalated it to utter insanity.

On the world of Thalcifer, the Admech unleashed a weapon called Mohrgar Fex's Hyper Alembic. Both Imperial and Necron armies on the world's surface were reduced to bubbling slime. The world was quarantined to prevent the spread of the non-viral plague.

In the Zann system, a determined push by the Imperials threatened a voidborne Pylon resulting in a massive void battle. The Necrons responded to the Imperial aggression by unleashing a chained dwarf star at the Imperials. Within minutes, millions died. Thanks to the daring ramming action of a chalice-class cruiser one of the dwarf stars chains was broken. The resultant solar flares overloaded the Pylons quantum shields and resulted in grievous damage to the structure.

Having been driven to a self-imposed exile by the effects of the Stilling and his obsession with getting the Liminal Abraisers to work, Cawl was isolated from the strategic command. He was unaware of the unfolding insanity in the Pariah Nexus. It took a visit from a delegation of Space Marines and Sisters of Battle to break him out of his exile and reveal to him what transpired. Cawl issued a decree to all Admech forces that no superweapon to be unleashed unless with his direct authorization and understanding of its effects. However, due to communication difficulties within the Pariah Nexus, the decree was slow to spread. Some Magos used these difficulties as an excuse to ignore Cawl's decree when it reached them.

The Silent King was troubled. Two Pylons were destroyed. A third suffered considerable damage. The notion of the invincibility of the Pariah Nexus was shattered. And Imotekh was making gains in the north and east of the Nexus. To the Silent King's revulsion, Imotekh was ignoring the humans and directing his full focus on civil war.

Disquiet and discontent were spreading in the Silent King's camp. The more honorable among the Silent King's allies and servants were displeased by the use of the forbidden and dishonorable weapons. The Tehncomandrites were fuming as Necrons suffered defeat after defeat by the inferior technologies of the humans. These and other issues threatened to tear apart the Silent King's support base. The Silent King needed a resounding victory against one of his enemies in the Nexus to silence the dissenting voices and restrengthen his political position. After a lengthy consideration, the Silent King chose the humans as his target. After the humans are crushed he would bring his full attention down on the Stormlord. The Silent King doubted that Imotekh's allies would stand alongside him long,  as the full might of the loyalist dynasties came crashing on him.

The Silent King threw the full might of his Necron legions against the Imperials. The orders were to use the hyperscience of Crypteks with no consideration for any collateral damage to planets, systems, or reality itself. Silent King demanded a quick and crushing victory over the humans. In one example that evidenced the recklessness of Necrons happened on Zeta IIX Hespus. The Necrons loosed no less than ten C'tan shards in a single warzone. Such a gathering of C'tan shards was shocking for to allow this number of god-echoes to gather this close to each other could prove disastrous.

Not all Overlords used the super weapons in the name of the Silent King. Some used them to carve territories of their own. Some used them to settle sixty million-year-old grudges. Other Necrons were so lost to madness that they unleashed their weapons at random and unpredictably. While this was happening, Imotekh had withdrawn his legions and watched the unfolding conflict from afar.

Orikan knew he was running out of time. The threat was soon going to reveal itself, the first ripplings of the catastrophe that would emerge within the Nexus were about to occur. Horrified fascination gripped Orikan when glimpsed the work of the true enemy. It was a vast and terrible intellect that set countless aspects of reality in motion, like the cogs of a cosmic clockwork machine whose working was beyond Orikan's comprehension.  Following the trail of clues, Orikan arrived at the Skahren system where he realized that he was too late. Orikan knew he was no match for the terrible cosmic machine. To attempt to oppose it here and now would only see him crushed between its cogs. Orikan fled the system and pondered how he could exploit the worsening situation to his benefit.

The Silent King's grand attack commenced. The instant communication between the Necron fleets and legions allowed the Necrons to move as a slow albeit vast mass. They coordinated and timed their attacks to simultaneously fall on Imperial worlds and support each other. While his strategies were not as sophisticated and masterful as Stormlord's, the Silent King was no novice in grand strategy. The Imperials were now faced with the prospect of a total and crushing defeat. In desperation, many Magos cast aside Cawl's decree and sought to unleash their superweapons to avert defeat. However, exhaustion and the effects of the Stilling caused them to use their weapons recklessly. It also caused them to ignore omens and strange visions of a coming disaster, believing erroneously that they were further effects of the Stilling.

Things came to a head in the Skahren system. The system was contested between an Admech and Necron presence that couldn't dislodge each other. An accretion fleet settled in the system and mined the Blackstone deposits, fending off Necron raids that came at them. The system contained a monstrous Pylon that pierced a moon from pole to pole. The Pylon was heavily defended by the Necrons who swatted aside any Imperial attack on the Pylon.

Strange phenomena started manifesting in the system. Machine spirits became agitated. Servitors suffered hideous paroxysms and screamed insane equations that made no sense to their Magi masters. Most disturbingly the planets of the system were impossibly drifting from their orbits to take a trigonometral alignment. Unknown energy reading spiked in the system that did not match anything the Admech knew. Magos Gelf, the commander of the the fleet, succumbed to paranoid madness and uncovered and activated his trump card a DAoT weapon system called Shivarik's Constellation, before locking himself in his sanctum.

The activation of the weapon proved to be fortuitous when a large Necron fleet appeared in the system. It was so vast that it could crush the accretion fleet many times over. The Admech efforts to prepare for the Necron attack were hindered by technological failures and communication difficulties. So the strike cruisers of Silver Templars and the Hawk Lords courageously blazed toward the Necron fleet to buy time for the Admech to prepare their defenses. A number of Necron ships engaged quantum tunneler beams to leap past the Space Marine ships and materialize over Santis-Magna, the main Admech mining hub in the system. The Necron warships began a devastating orbital bombardment of the world. The Admech fired back with their apocalyptic arsenal of atomic and phosphor warheads. But for every Necron warship they destroyed another took its place in the world's orbit to deploy legions or punish the world with salvos of gravimetric and chronophagic bombardment.

The now-deranged Magos Gelf removed the safety regulators on Shivarik's Constellation. One by one the corrupt machine minds of the satellites that comprised the Constellation awakened and supercharged. The satellites aligned themselves in a thousands of miles long arcane alignment and fired. The first shot cleaved three Necron warships and destroyed four human ships. The satellites realigned and fired again. Both Necron and Imperial crews panicked as they struggled to understand how their ships' shields and defenses were being overcome with such ease. The satellites realigned and fired, realigned and fired carving energy glyphs into the void. The battle descended into pure chaos with ships from both sides attempting to flee the carnage. The more zealous and bloodthirsty meanwhile attempted to exploit the anarchy.

Then it happened. Reality convulsed. Between the crisscrossing glyphs reality distorted and stretched. Machine spirits were driven instantly to madness by the immense energy output of the anomaly. Crypteks witnessed the event in bewilderment, their instruments flooded with contradictory data.

Shivarik's Constellation satellites exploded one by one. The feedback of their destruction blew apart Gelf's brain matter from his skull. The flames and energies released by their destruction swirled toward the expanding distortion, feeding it. The distortion then became a hideous rupture in reality that vomited forth the stuff of unreality. From the rift emerged a titanic blazing object. The colossal daemon world of Vashtorr the Arkifane, Wyrmwood. Its sudden emergence in the system quaked every single world within the system.

The unclean energies flowing from the rift flooded across the system's worlds mutating machines. Most disturbingly they washed over the Necron Pylon corrupting it and reversing its polarity.


Epilogue:

-Vashtorr watched the devastation of the Skahren system. The closet world was being undone by Wyrmwood's Warped gravity. Its oceans boiled, its surface decayed and cracked, its mountains crumbled upward. Billions tumbled into the cold void.

-Vashtorr watched the surviving Necron and human ships escape. Humanity and Necrons.  They are among Vashtorr's favorite species. They are so easy to manipulate, and they are so inventive. Unfortunately, thought Vaashtorr, the plan required their elimination here. The purpose of the machines here is against his designs.

-Vashtorr turned his gaze to the now corrupted Pylon. The Pylon was created in the ancient style that he was very familiar with. Vashtorr mused how he and the Pylon are a bit alike. Both he and the Pylon are unchained by the limits of time and space. They were here now in this moment as they had been in the first of days.

-Vashtorr will take the Pariah Nexus from the Necron's "little king" for his own purposes. Moreover, Vashtorr will seek to drive the little king into further acts of desperation.

-Vashtorr is still not used to linear time. The fact that in Real Space concepts like was and wasn't exist. Had been and hadn't yet been. He will get used to it in time.

-In Vashtorr's estimation, Wyrmwood was imperious to the assaults of conventional armies. The corrupted Webway tunneling device allowed Vashtorr to bypass the Pariah Nexus effects, and Vaashtorr's own powers allowed him to corrupt the Pylon in this system preventing it from harming himself or his daemon world.

-Vashtorr was empowered by the "acts of worship" in the sector. The deployment and reckless use of many scientific atrocities of destruction. Through his influence or their own drives, the brilliant minds on both sides opened the way for Vashtorr.

-Despite his victory here, Vashtorr has brought himself to a region that's hostile to his kind. One misstep could see his plans thrown into ruin. He must be quite careful for the search for the Lock has only just begun.

-From Wyrmwood emerged fleets of Chaos Space Marines and the Darkmech to hound the retreating Imperials and Necrons. They were accompanied by shoals of daemon ships that sailed through the void by tides of fear and pain. Some of these forces were opportunistic sorts that followed in Wyrmwood's wake. Others were devoted worshippers of Vashtorr who were led to Wyrmwood by visions or desires to receive the blessing of the "God of Forges". They sacrificed and prayed to Vashtorr as if he was already a full-fledged Chaos God. This he found to be very pleasing. Whatever their motivations, these twisted warriors and heretics would spread death and destruction in his name.

-Vashtorr watched the bright machine mind of the Necrons' leader fill with amazement and bewilderment at what he witnessed. He sensed the Space Marines fighting their way to report what happened. Let the small beings flee and alert their fellows. They were of little consideration to him. Once he completes his great work here, he will have time for fun...

-Cawl was struggling with his frustrations. The Pariah Nexus region was so colossal that it defied human comprehension which made waging an organized war here a near-impossible task, especially given the region's hostile conditions. Cawl's frustrations were intensified by the fact that his Admech allies and followers continued to use superweapons against his orders. He wondered what Roboute's reaction would be to this or the damage they wreaked on the worlds they were meant to save.

-Cawl's Liminal Abraiser project has yet to bear fruit. The prototypes were showing promise but Cawl fears that he is running out of time.

-Readings emerging from the Skahren showed Cawl that some sort of disruption of cosmic forces took place. The Imperial tarot indicates the rise of Chaos on all fronts of the Nexus. Whatever happened in that doomed system Cawl only knows that it will bode ill for the Imperium.

-There was one bright note to comfort Cawl. The Primarch Roboute Guilliman sailed toward the Pariah Nexus with a mighty armada made up of the best of the best of Fleet Primus. Cawl and his battle group only need to hold a short while longer to witness the wrath of the Avenging Son descend on Xenos and heretics alike.

-The Silent King was suffering his own sets of troubles. His grand offensive meant to regain momentum in the Nexus and win him back political support was disastrously derailed. The Silent King and Szeras did not know how such a massive Warp outbreak could take place right in front of a Pylon. The Silent King was forced in shame to divert some of his forces to guard against this new threat. This changed the strategic situation in the Nexus. Though the humans did not know it, if they managed to hold on a little longer then the Silent King would be forced to admit defeat and withdraw into a defensive posture

-The Silent King was fuming. Most of his rage was directed at Imotekh who has resumed his attacks on the loyalist Necrons. Worse still, it was reported that Orikan had sided with the Stormlord. The Silent King did not know why would the Diviner throw his lot with Imotekh but it only meant more trouble for him.