-1-

-++== THE CRISIS AT NU ==++-

With the opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum, countless forces of the myriad factions waging war across the galaxy found themselves stranded by the Great Rift, cut off from one half of the galaxy by a yawning, impassable canyon of dark energy.

All of these forces had commanders, and all of those commanders had missions. Some carried crucial data that could turn the tide of war. Some ferried supplies to desperate worlds whose inhabitants would perish (or worse) without the relief they would offer. Some carried dark secrets, others forbidden or lost technology, others political prisoners whose hostaging could decide the fate of trillions.

These forces represented the broad patchwork of the galaxy: brave soldiers of the Imperium of Man, ancient ghosts borne on Craftworld-manufactured husks, slavering Tyranids, cold metal Necrons, and more.

Once the Great Rift cracked open, all these missions changed. What good the political prisoner if she could not be leveraged on the correct planet at the correct time? What good the data if the war it would save was across the rift? No, once the Rift was opened, and once the Chaos it spawned had calmed, all of the commanders of all of these forces suddenly shared a single mission - cross the Great Rift, at whatever cost.

As the months stretched on and the Rift yawned slowly but inexorably wider, rumors began to propagate along the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy. Muffled psyker mind-sendings, chatters through a painfully splintered hive mind, screams from the throats of captured Imperial agents; all whispered the same thing: Nu. There is a portal at Nu.

Most commanders had not heard of Nu. Named for the Greek letter, it was listed variously in Imperial planetary catalogues as a dead world, a forbidden world, unexplored, or simply, as [REDACTED]. No great battles were fought there, no historians chronicled its past or mentioned the Rogue Trader who had discovered it. If a commander had ever heard anything about Nu, it was that it was a place that swallowed ships, like the great beasts of Holy Terra's mythic past, a place best avoided.

But now, the rumormongers whispered, one might brave that great beast's mouth, and if one did, one might end up on the other side of the galaxy, across the Cicatrix Maledictum...

And so the commanders, one by one, set course for Nu.

What they found when their ships breached warpspace was not a sedate, dead planet surrounded by empty space, but a crackling warp storm, creaking in the void around the planet.

The legends were true. This was a place that devoured ships, and to a man, every commander that came to the planet lost control. Their ships careened through the warp storm, then plummeted towards the planet's surface.

Many pilots could and had weathered a warp storm, and had regained control of their vessel once in the embrace of a planet's atmosphere, but Nu is uncharted, almost a legend. What the pilots couldn't know is that the middle layer of Nu's atmosphere is made of dentimite shards, whipped to a froth by howling winds.

Those shards finished what the warp storm above began, tearing and eating at the walls of any ship that passed through them. Some died in the warp storm above. Many more were shredded by the uncaring dentimite winds. Only a few managed to crawl from the wreckage of their craft onto the mists of the planet's surface.

You are one of those commanders. Your ship has crashed. You don't know how many of your forces remain alive, or what life, hope, or other occupants this planet holds. All you know is your mission is crucial. You must survive. You must find a way off this planet. All who stand in your way must be crushed.

Today, you've sent out an expeditionary force to scout the planet, and the first thing you've run into is a rival force. In the 41st millennium, unlike today, the default option in such occurrences is almost never diplomacy. Alas, these tales take place in the grim darkness of the far future.

And in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

-2-

-++== DAWN OF THE SECOND DAY ==++-

The howling dentimite winds have calmed, and in the skies above Nu, the myriad stranded forces on the planet's surface can see that the extra-atomspheric warp storm has dissipated. It helps them not, with no ships to breach the atmosphere, but the respite does give the commanders time to lick their wounds, delight in their successes, and regroup.

Initial explorations have made obvious that this is not some barren dead world. It is habitable, with alpine glaciers melting into crisply rushing rivers flowing through thick forests, verdant fields, and down into once-bustling urban centers. Ruined buildings create a crazed patchwork with the scattered detritus of crashed voidships and bits of eldritch technologies from an earlier age. Sorting which relics come from the original inhabitants and which from more recent victims of warp storms would be the lifetime work of an entire brigade of Imperial archeotech scribestorians, and none now here have the time nor inclination.

What is known is that this planet was important, once. The inhabitants were masters of technology currently unknown to the galaxy at large. The very atmosphere crackles with queer energies, and the psystones, made of the same dentimite that flies like razors upon the winds react to those energies.

Chaos now controls important hoards of psystone, with a brutal contingent of the World Eaters led by Kharn himself snarling at a pustulating patrol of the Death Guard. Both forces of the Ruinous Powers managed to wrench valuable caches from the servants of the false emperor or from weak-bodied xenos scum.

The only glimmer of hope for the squabbling servants of the God-Emperor, each so sure their mission is more important than the mission of their Imperium could-be allies, is the small, secretive cadre of the Adeptus Sororitas, inspired to victory by the presence of Holy Celestine. Like the warriors of Chaos, the Sisters of Battle also managed to secure a cache of the psystone, and rely on their God's blessings to reveal to them its workings.

Most worrisome for all those trapped on the planet, and for the galaxy at large, is the success of one of the splintered Tyranid hive-fleets. The unknowable xenos intelligence also seized psystone, and even now work awful biopsyonic ingestitive changes upon it, coating it splattering sheens of ichor, each with their own odd flavours.

But all hope is not lost. Psystone is clearly important, but psystone alone will not be enough, Further investigation into the ruins of this planet are necessary to understand its history, and to hopefully find some way off this Emperor-forsaken rock.

The struggles must go on.

-3-

-++== FIND THE LIBRARIUM ==++-

Leaving Nu is still the goal of every force trapped on the planet. The world is ancient, and digging into its history has revealed some valuable relics. Each is a puzzle piece, and the whole is not yet visible, but what is clear is the importance of each individual piece.

And so the forces stranded on Nu roil in battle against each other. Like so much in the grim darkness of the far future, it seems this is a zero sum game.

Chaos seems to rule the day, with the Death Guard amassing valuable Spherical Aeonmap fragments.

The Necron forces on the surface seem intrigued, with two soulless metal warbands also capturing the priceless informational spheres.

And, as a continued shining light in the darkness, the Sisters of Battle, led by the holy Saint Celestine herself, have also managed to claw away the information from the hands of Xeno and Chaos alike, now holding both Psystone fragments and Spheric Aeonmaps.

And now a new rumor stirs on the surface. This once-dead place clearly was a civilized world at some point in its history, for the spies and hackers of the myriad battle legions on the surface have all come to the same conclusion: there was once an Imperial Librarium on this planet.

Finding that Librarium is now Priority Primus for all of the forces on the surface. Its contents could make or break the Crisis on Nu!

-4-

-++== THE Ossuary ==++--

The pieces are starting to come together. The Dentimite Psystone can be used as the foundation of a teleportation device, one that can be used to fling its operator through time and space, in a dimension beside but apart from the Warp.

The Spheric Aeonmaps are charts of the strange dimension used in these operations. Without them, any journey via the Psystone artifact would be doomed to death or worse.

None can yet say who built the Librarium, but the Hexaptych Primers, torn from its depths and subjected to ritual after ritual of decipherment, have given up their secrets. The describe the building and operation of the ancient device.

Those commanders lucky enough to have scoured the planet for its relics now find that only a few pieces remain. Unfortunately, competition for those pieces will be endless and fierce.

One question that has been asked, and now answered, is how the device would be powered. The answer lies in glowing fragments of xenos bones. An unknown race lived here long ago, and the marrow of their bones sparks and cracks with lambent energy.

The scryers and soothsayers have told the commanders that a Xenos boneyard lies nearby. The commanders marshall their forces to raid it, as the living voices of foes howl in an awful melody with the psychic screams of the riled ghosts.

The first target is a tomb, and the precious remains that lie within.

-5-

-++== Death comes swirling down ==++--

The lost librarium has been plundered. The xenos tombs have given up their secrets. The detritus of ancient civilizations scattered across the surface of Nu has been sifted, its ashes panned for archeotech.

Some commanders now have enough to cobble together a device to transport them off of the cursed planet ofNu, and it seems they just need one thing.

To operate the device, a commander must enter a series of numbers. None currently trapped on the planet know what this series of numbers might be, or how to find it. Unfortunately for all, there is an answer.

The rumors first come from those spies stationed within the camps of the scattered adherents of the gods of Chaos. The response from any Imperial commander is swift, and the messengers are put to death for Heresy most foul.

But times pass, and no other answers present themselves. Eventually, even the most rigid commander must bow to the unholy truth.

The psychically sensitive in each camp begin to dream. Sometimes they will awake from those dreams spitting, drolling, or screaming out a number. As the numbers are assembled, it’s clear the sequence will match the empty fields in the device.

But the dreams come slowly, sporadically. Clever commanders piece together a pattern they wish to deny, but cannot. The dreams come after death has been dealt on the fields of battle. Khorne himself sends the numbers. Blood must be spilled for the blood god. Skulls must be piled before the throne of skulls.

Then and only then will the psychics receive, in red-stained dreams, of crimson seas, and dying screams, where widows weep, in bile and spleen, the Ruinous Coordinates.

-6-

-++== the servoskull ==++--

The day has come. The blasted planet of Nu has given up its secrets.

Using instructions from the decoded Hexaptych Primers, the greatest technical minds have been able to fuse the lambent bone fragments from within the Xenos Ossuary together with the charged Dentimite Psystones. The resulting device, targeted with the Warp-charts of the Spheric Aeonmaps, and programmed with the blood-bought Ruinous Coordinates, now whirls and howls.

Inside it is a flickering portal, and those who peer through the spinning circles of glowing stone can glimpse a city of tall spires and strange mists. None know that place, but all know the only thing that matters: it isn’t here.

But the portal isn’t safe. It functions, but none can decipher how to send even a single man inside it without that man being cut to ribbons by the lenticularly twirling curves of dentimite. One more secret is needed. One last bit of information.

The planet has been searched once more, and now the armies stand on the brink of a forgotten, dust-filled crater.

Inside that crater, moving back and forth, endlessly repeating some preprogrammed, mindless cycle, is an ancient servoskull. As a stillness comes over the massed armies, the binharic chattering of the servoskull wafts on the grit-ridden wind.

It speaks of Angron, of the fallen War Hounds, and of their home planet, the planet Nuceria, lost since time immemorial.

The commander who seizes the servoskull will have the final piece of data needed to activate the strange warp contraption they have built and escape one and for all from Nu, now known to be shattered Nuceria, to that city of spires and mists.