Warzone: Borhelia - a mini-campaign on the planet Boreliah in the Esenie system!
The whispers and dreams had tormented her for weeks now and she was in a bad mood. No sleep, just this strange... conditions... where voices sang to her, screamed at her. Fa’Xhaa had never, ever, been afraid before. But now... And her people had noticed that something was wrong with her. And that, in turn, had awoken the unease in her pack. And her pack was the only pack left, as far as she knew. Stories about whole villages wiped out. Death and death and death again... She shed a tear when she thought about the aliens turning up in these fertile lands, clad in strange suits and making boom-fire with short sticks that killed and killed and killed.
Her people... The Ka’haani... were dying...
Perhaps she should listen to the voices and the dreams? Was that the answer? She felt some kind of connection, in contrast to the fear, towards who... what caused them. Maybe she should listen... Maybe it was lost gods who offered help. Maybe they were angered that she hadn’t listened to them and acted upon whatever they wanted. She decided to let the voices speak to her the next time they came. Maybe it was salvation for her people?
***
The Gate was ancient. Fa’Xhaa had never seen it before, which was strange considering that her pack lived her and had always been living here. But the voices had guided her to this place and she assumed that something... the gods, perhaps, had revealed the way to her people’s survival. Something was supposed to come through the gate, she realized that, the voices had told her what to do to free themselves from the invaders and destroyers of their home. The voices knew. The voices were the gods helping them. She positioned herself in front of the gate with her pack creating a ring around her and the gate. Mere minutes after she started to sing the words the gods had taught her, a greyish mist poured out of the gate. The mist enveloped her and her pack and she felt strong, determined... with a grand purpose. The saviours would come and they would cast the aliens and intruders into their own deaths. She closed her eyes and sang louder and she heard her pack joining her. It was a wonderful feeling. A voice in her head started laughing and jeering and she felt a tension so intense that she felt she had to stop singing. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t stop singing. A panic erupted inside her, but the voice reassured her that thigs were as they should. Then she heard the sound of machines and alien, but somehow familiar, shouts in the distance. But, something was wrong... The sounds came from behind her, not the gate. She managed to turn her head back, while still singing, and saw flying machines and silhouettes of slender figures jumping and, almost dancing, their way towards them. Intruders! Aliens! She managed to stop her song and yell to her pack to defend the gate at all costs, lest their friends wouldn’t come to aid them. The pack reacted at an instant and turned towards the attackers.
The Gwa’Haar greeted the attackers with a blueish fire that hit a flying machine, hurting it a bit. But the intruders didn’t slow and sped forward, while firing their guns towards the Ka’haani. The greish mist absorbed most of the alien fire, but the Gwa’haar succumbed to several energy beams! Fa’Xhaa let out a whistle, calling for the Lee’ghaa, who had hid around the vegetation at a small river. She had been wise, she thought, to expect something turning up to attack her ritual. Now the intruders would pay for attacking the Ka’haani! The Lee’ghaa flexed their claws and charged one of the dancing units that moved behind the flying machines. It was a short and brutal fight, as the aliens were swiftly cut to pieces! But another alien infantry unit retaliated instantly and managed to stop the Lee’ghaa and then kill them all!
The gate started to shimmer with a purple light, as Fa’Xhaa sang. She felt her trusted Lee’ghaa die and tears started rolling on her cheeks. She also felt that her pack around her fell and that it was a matter of seconds before she herself fell. Then the gate shuddered and something entered her world...
Fa’Xhaa saw some kind of ridig animals with strange,pale, figures on them bursting through the gate and heading for the nearest enemies. They screamed and laughed as the charged. Just then Fa’Xhaa helt her back explode and when she looked down there was agaping, smoking hole in her abdomen. “This is the end”, she thought as life left her. “What would become of the Ka’haani now?”
When Fa’Xhaa fell, her pack wavered. They saw the newly arrived reinforcements fall to enemy fire and they started to fall back. Another pack of strange creatures moved out of the gate and immediately attacked the nearest enemy unit – a group of sleek soldiers mounted on flying “horses”. The flying aliens were hacked to pieces by the newly arrived creatures and panic spread among the Ka’haani. Were they on their side? Who were they? And when a mighty roar came from the gate, the Ka’haani started to fall back. But there was nowhere to fall back and many of them were butchered by enemy fire. The few who were alive saw a large flying machine ramming the gate, which cracked and fell apart. The roaring thing that was coming out of it disappeared with a displeased roar. The few Ka’haani left alive fled. All was lost...
***
Faelor inspected the remnants of the fallen warpgate and smiled. He had stopped an incursion of the Slaaneshi and at the same time wiped out the natives, who, to his surprise, worshipped She Who Thirsts. He looked at the dead leader of the natives and was stunned by the strange resemblance to his kin. There was something Eldari about them. Small things... but still... there was a resemblance. But these savages were cannibals, it seemed, disgusting Slaaneshi worshippers. If there had been any Eldar in in them, it had vanished ages ago. He told a group of his men to burn the lot of these chaos-worshipping cannibals. Nothing could be left. Every trace of this despicable off-spring, if that was what it was, had to be erased. For good!