Xantriss Insurrection

By the time of the Five Ruins, the Dune Serpents had built a nigh-on insurmountable wall of secrecy around their Legion. Few Remembrancers remained with them, finding the lack of Army personnel leeched common humanity from the fleets, and the Dune Serpents’ way of making war offered few opportunities to bear witness. To be sure, not all tasks could be done by servitors, but the Legion’s serfs formed their own insular community, and were almost as unwelcoming as their masters. So only a few persisted in their studies of the XIVth, and we can surmise they proved easy to monitor.

It is perhaps for this reason that the Xantriss Insurrection lingers in memory as one of the few recorded battles offering a vague warning of things to come. The actual Insurrection was a relatively straightforward affair. In the last months of 0XX.M31, Colonel Curze and his regiment, the Megaran 54th Phalanx, had abruptly ended all contact with the Imperium a few weeks after securing Compliance on Xantriss.

Xantriss was a feral death world, covered in tropical rainforests that was dominated by an inordinate amount of predator species. The human population had been reduced to a primitive state by Old Night and lacked the technology to maintain control of the surface. Therefore, the Xantriss people had endured by burrowing into the soil, creating elaborate underground cities throughout the millennia. It was from these hidden abodes the natives would hunt and retreat, eking out a miserable existence until the Imperium's arrival.

Although possessing no means to hold off Imperium forces indefinitely, the strategos attached to the War Hounds estimated Compliance would only be achieved after an extended anti-guerilla campaign. Colonel Curze, having no desire to engage in a long and bloody campaign, decided that a show of force was in order. Locating the largest settlement on Xantriss, the Megaran 54th deployed en masse, specifically targeting local predators and the natives' preferred prey. From there, the carcasses were given to the natives for food and trophies. Awed by the 'sky-people's' might and generosity, the humans of Xantriss devoted themselves to the strangers, raising Curze as a god-king as Curze repeated similar incidents around the planet.

At first, it seemed Curze had succeeded in a brilliant strategy completing Compliance in weeks instead of years. Had the story ended there, there is little doubt a promotion would've occurred and a rising status among the Imperial war machine. Unfortunately, Curze abandoned the Imperium at this critical juncture. From the few records recovered in the aftermath, it is now clear to history that instead of stopping the natives' ill-placed worship, Curze embraced it and grew arrogant. Curze forsook his duty and claimed Xantriss, becoming the god-king the natives called him.

The Imperium would not let this stand. For this gross betrayal, ending the Xantriss Insurrection fell to Tashfimali Shifrat and the Eastern Horde of the Dune Serpents. Of the battles to come, the void war was the most well-recorded aspect as the remembrancers encountered few restrictions as they did their work. It was after the Dune Serpents had swept away Curze's small fleet that the first of the mysteries would begin. In line with their brutal practicality, the Dune Serpents would unleash a six-hour bombardment of the surface, targeting the largest concentrations of the native population and the few surface bases of the Megaran 54th. Yet, the supposed location of the rogue Colonel, who was based in Xantriss' largest subterranean metropolis, was completely spared.

Instead, the Dune Serpents launched one of their largest orbital drops from the flagship of the Eastern Horde, the *Abyssal Boa*. Since no remembrancer was allowed to bunk on the ship, no one outside of the Legion witnessed this undertaking except from a distance. Fighting would last two days as the Dune Serpents scoured the tunnel networks of the Megaran 54th and their native allies. Forbidden from the surface, the remembrancers did their best to piece together events from overhearing casualty reports, watching for equipment requests, and monitoring additional deployments to Xantriss. From this hazy web of information, it was known that the natives' knowledge of terrain and skill at ambush tactics proved a lethal combination with the Megarans' modern equipment even against legionaries.

Expecting nothing less than annihilation from the Dune Serpents, the Curze's devoted followers fought with the desperation of a cornered rat. Natives would lure local predators to attack and distract the Dune Serpents before sniping at them from the foliage. Below, the Megarans would fight costly withdrawals before collapsing entire tunnels to bury their adversaries. In turn, the Dune Serpents gave no quarter. Flamers and promethiums became the Dune Serpents' most used weapon as they burned away the forests and filled tunnels with asphyxiating smoke they were immune to. The final blow would arrive when Tashfimali finally took to the surface to personally enact Curze's execution, smashing through the last of the Megaran's defences.

A day after the climactic conclusion to the battle, the remembrancers were given leave to see the battlefield themselves. What they found on the surface was a hellish landscape. Promethium strikes still burned and everything seemed to be charred and ash for miles around the landing zones. The Dune Serpents did little to guide the remembrancers as they reaped tallies from the natives to replace casualties. With little apparent oversight, the remembrancers continued their work and would discover more mysteries around the Xantriss Insurrection.

The first of them would be found in one of the capillary tunnels where one remembrancer discovered the remains of an earlier skirmish. The Dune Serpents' infamous practicality often dictates combat style, most enemies are dispatched with only a few blows as the Dune Serpents advanced. Yet, in this site, native soldiers and members of the 54th were found torn apart and slain with what appeared to be mindless rage. When questioned, a Dune Serpents sergeant explained that a wild predator had managed to slip in and was responsible before forbidding all remembrancers from returning to the site. The explanation, although technically possible, seemed suspect given the Dune Serpents' defensive perimeter.

Another mystery came to be when several remembrancers investigating the former battlefield were struck by a pocket of strong emotions and a sense of 'wrongness'. These incidents only occurred to those who had a natural sensitivity to the Warp and its effects, though did not possess the strength to be outright psykers. Furthermore, these 'pockets' were geographically rooted only to specific areas of the battlefield. Unlike the earlier discovered skirmish site, these areas had already been cleaned of bodies, unusual in of itself given the Dune Serpents' disdain for the chore.

Finally, a remembrancer found a strange vial of an unknown substance outside of Curze's final stand, half-buried in the cave wall. Unwilling to share their discovery with the Dune Serpents, the remembrancer hid the vial and only had it analysed after rotating to a different Legion. Only then was an apothecary able to explain that the vial contained narcotics designed to induce a kind of battle frenzy with the strength to affect an Astartes.