Flux

Flux, the Time-Shattered Forge
Segmentum: Tempestus
Recruiting Hive Death World (Time) +4
Chronologically Unstable- Increased chance of time storms, need to build more complexly so more expensive -2
Warptouched -5
Dangerous region - there are Orks (-4), pirates (-1), Chaos (-3) in the sector
x2 Ties with the eldar +4
Very Heavily Fortified +4
Military Specialisation (Elites, x2 Chronomancers) +6
Courtly -Boost to diplomacy and less civil disorder

*History*

The ancient Forge World of Flux was founded in Segmentum Tempestus during the Age of Strife, carrying with it a significant amount of temporal technology, which it would continue to develop past the end of Old Night. During the Great Crusade, they used the wealth of their technological secrets as leverage to keep themselves relatively independent from Mars, which lusted after the bounty of archaeotech on the planet. During the Horus Heresy, the masters of Flux had secretly considered siding with the traitors for the greater freedom to experiment they offered, but were ultimately driven to side with the loyalists after a Dark Mechanicum Magos invaded to try and secure the planet as his own personal fiefdom. In the end, the timely arrival of the Imperial Army saved Flux from Chaos domination, and by backing the victorious side of the war the planet managed to maintain a sizeable degree of autonomy and independence following the Heresy's conclusion.

Unfortunately, Flux's excess freedom, as well as hubris, would prove to be its downfall. One of its experiments would backfire catastrophically, tearing warp rifts across the planet and birthing chrono-tempests of epic proportions, plunging the world into chaos. While the initial scale of the disaster would subside, the damage unleashed was apocalyptic, destroying all civilisation on the planet and permanently searing the Immaterium's presence on the surface of the world. When the Inquisition arrived and saw the state of the planet, they declared the place a Quarantine World, abandoning the few human survivors of Flux to the Emperor's mercy.

Flux had been transformed by the mistakes of its masters. The landscape was a mix of post-apocalyptic industrial debris, radioactive dead-zones from overloaded reactors, and regions where time past, present, and future collided in a maelstrom of temporal energy. Warp predators slipped through the cracks in reality to hunt, cannibalistic mutant packs and rogue murder-machines prowled the wastes, and rampant time storms threw all they passed through forward and backward in time. It was into this hellscape that the utterly uncomprehending menial class of Flux would have to endure with nought but their strength, wits, and the Omnissiah's blessings.

Indeed, the Omnissiah must have been with them, for while the survivors did inevitably fall into techno-barbarism, they had managed to survive. The challenges the new tribes faced were legion, but humans have survived worse with less. Through teamwork, adaptation to the new environment, and scavenged tech-arcana, the human inhabitants of Flux managed to prevail over their world and hold on to life.

The tech tribes' situation stabilised and their numbers swelled, but their trials were far from over. They had no ability to repair the damage the tech-priests had done to their world, and over the millennia, the cracks in time spread and grew larger. The weather worsened, and tribes started to become isolated from one another across not space, but time, several existing between seconds and decades apart from each other.

Keeping mankind united was a new breed of psykers that had risen amongst the tribes - the kronothurges. The kronothurges were chronomancers who fought off predators, protected against freak temporal phenomena, peered through the past and future for information, and navigated the tribes through the temporal passages that twisted throughout the world. Over the ages they had honed their craft, expanding their understanding of their powers and constructing several psi-focusing tools to aid them in their work. Just as the astropaths of the Imperium kept humanity united across expanses of space, the kronothurges of Flux kept humanity united across expanses of time. That's not to say they had a dominating role amongst humanity, far from it. Humanity's survival required much more than the very specialised skills and duties of the kronothurges, and ultimately they were just one more vital cog in the machine of a renewed civilisation.

Through the workings of the kronothurges and the aid of recovered technological relics from Flux's ancient past, humanity had managed to stabilise the temporal conditions in several regions, but the overall situation on the planet was deteriorating. Too much of the planet was too dangerous for humanity to purchase a significant foothold, and there were several areas where it was outright impossible for humans to traverse through. In these wild lands, the warp leaked freer and time fractured ever more, blowing more storms the way of civilisation and unleashing more horrors for humanity to fight off. Humanity advanced in knowledge and might to withstand and reverse the damage, and in time they may have even succeeded in saving their world, but then the Emperor died. The damage that the ensuing psychic shockwaves inflicted on the world was dreadful, and while human civilisation on Flux was robust enough to survive it without too much issue, the event had damned the world; from then on, the rate of deterioration would outmatch the march of progress.

It was during this doomed age of struggle that the eldar took notice of the world. Their divination perceived it as a growing tangle in the threads of fate, highly difficult to divine and potentially ruinous to their plans if ignored. After venturing to the world and seeing what they found, they determined that it was too risky to simply let things progress and decided to intervene. They contacted the humans of the world and worked together with them to heal Flux once and for all.

Human and eldar strike teams deployed across the globe, eliminating scores of the planet's monsters and creating bubbles of stability in key places. At the same time, the highest of the kronothurges combined their mastery of time with the technology, warplore, and expertise of the aeldari to construct a monumental, psychically-attuned clock known as the Alterdir Anchor. Once complete, the device let out a grand 'TICK', then an equally grand 'TOCK', and so it repeated itself. And little by little, with every repetition of its sounds, it did its work. Across the world, spikes of temporal wave energies flattened out and stabilised, fractured timelines coalesced and became one, eternal vortexes of tempo-aetheric energy shrunk and eventually faded out of existence. The Alterdir Anchor had succeeded in keeping and stabilising time on Flux. Much of Flux was still very dangerous, with monsters, warp-flooded sites, technological death zones, and more to be found across the planet, and time-charged storms would still occasionally occur so long as the planet was capable of weather, but the worst was over, and now, with effort, the people of Flux could fully reclaim their world.

As could be expected, the people of Flux were immeasurably grateful to the eldar for helping to save their world and promised them eternal friendship and aid, which the eldar graciously accepted. However, in Flux the eldar saw great opportunity. Here was a people who had experienced millennia of war on a hellish world; who had resisted Chaos and insanity on a warp-touched world for thousands of years, even after the death of their Emperor; who now bore the eldar great favour and owed them a debt that could never repaid. Beyond accepting Flux's friendship, they presented their own offer: should Flux promise to forever provide the eldar with the forces to help them save the galaxy as they had saved Flux, the eldar would provide them with technology and guidance to ensure their prosperity and continued survival in this new age of strife.

The outcome was never in any doubt: Flux agreed, and both races would prosper as a result. Flux gained not only the technology that was common in the wider galaxy, but also the now-obsolete technology of the drukhari, most of which was firmly and fully based on material scientific principles. Under the eldar's guidance, they would gain the ability to produce the technology on their own, learn more of the principles behind the Warp and how to better protect against its terrors, and transfer smoothly into an evolved society. In return, the eldar gained not only a large and growing amount of highly loyal, warp-resistant, relatively elite soldiers bearing powerful weaponry, but also a warp-touched planet's worth of psykers whose specialty was both immensely useful and didn't overlap with their own psykers' abilities.

\*\*\*
*World of Flux*

In the present day, the planet Flux is a heavily-populated, semi-paradisaical world with a powerful military and an enormous industrial output.

Flux's culture has been heavily determined by the millennia of their perpetual war for survival on their death world. On Flux, each and every human life was precious, another light in the dark and a pair of hands to work for the good of all, no matter how individually great or small. Other tribes might compete for resources, but only through cooperation could the greatest of enemies be eliminated, and the slaying of one's fellow man was known to draw the attention of dark entities. Humans from the future would provide warning of dire events to come, while those from the past would offer vital, otherwise lost and forgotten knowledge. In the eyes of the people of Flux, only by embracing the Omnissiah's sacred directive of unity had they survived and reconquered their world, and how they might yet save the galaxy from destruction.

Over the centuries, Flux has become one of the most technologically advanced human planets in the galaxy. Not only did the people of Flux inherit much from their Mechanicus ancestors and receive more from the Empire of Ashes, but over the centuries, their aeldari mentors taught them science and the fundamental principles behind the Drukhari technology they received. This has not only allowed Flux to invent new devices, but also to essentially reinvent the Dark Eldar's machines, creating equivalents to what the aliens had but free of the darkness of their designers and makers. (The designs too inherently foul to ever be redeemed were never given by the eldar in the first place.) Flux's Drukhari-derived machines are pure, their machine spirits untainted by millennia of evil. This has allowed the Fluxians to use the technology and still remain in favour with the Omnissiah, which in turn has allowed them to meld it with Imperial technology.

Between the reclaimed and rebuilt forges of Flux, the Drukhari's technology, and the eldar's guidance, Flux has over the centuries transformed from a backwater techno-barbaric state into an industrial powerhouse. Hundreds of billions of hands work to produce some of the most advanced technology in the galaxy, producing an abundance of material goods of all kinds. The sheer amount of war materiel they produce is enough to outfit their galaxy-striding war parties with incredible firepower as a matter of course, bringing massive destruction to the orks and Chaos.

Though they haven't been mandatory since the days of the ruling Mechanicus, augmetics are highly popular on Flux and always have been. Nearly everyone has at least one cybernetic augmentation, and many have more.

On a societal level, the people of Flux have easily withstood the revolutionary new technologies, world conditions, and population growth thanks to their unifying culture and the eldar's guidance. Flux is a planet without major civil strife, with technology so advanced it borders on magic and in some cases steps into it, and its people through millennia of exposure and anti-mutant practices have become resistant to Warp contamination. It's a good place to live, but it is very far from perfect, because there is *NO* peace amongst the stars.

The Alterdir Anchor stabilised time on the planet, but only by establishing a normality, not by achieving perfection; storms of time are as common and varied on Flux as storms are in general on ordinary worlds. Even with the advanced meteorological workings of the kronothurges, society has had to adapt to weather the at-times turbulent atmosphere. Buildings and infrastructure are built with temporal grounding devices, long- and mid-term planning is always undertaken even when otherwise unnecessary, and the planet's militia must combat enemies that emerge from past and future to wreak havoc.

Perhaps the greatest threat, however, is what the Alterdir Anchor was never designed to fix: the warp-touched nature of the planet. It repaired the shattered time of the planet, but only that; it did nothing about the other Warp anomalies on the planet. In the short term it meant that countless horrors long kept contained by broken time were unleashed, and in the long term meant the Fluxians would forever have to struggle with the power of the Empyrean. Rogue psykers rampage across the planet, slaughtering millions in their insanity; localised warp storms rage, leaving madness and mutation in their wake when evacuation attempts fail; and daemons slip through into realspace when the veil is thin.

Flux is spared from full scale daemonic incursions, but only because of the unnumbered hordes of monstrous warp entities that have evolved over the millennia in the warp shadow of the time-twisted quarantine world. Their temporal nature is utterly alien to the atemporal, neverborn creatures of Chaos, making daemons prey in the face of the many powerful warp entities that inhabit Flux's warpspace. They have fought for aeons against daemons and in that time have evolved a resistance to mutation, so remain unchanged by the Alterdir Anchor. They remain the same hungry terrors they've always been, and so periodically invade realspace to consume, destroy, breed, and enslave. Psychic abilities and firepower see them off, but more will always come so long as time itself exists.

Flux is a world where there is only war.

\*\*\*
*Military*

Flux's ground forces are divided into three major groups: the militia, the Foederati, and the Hearth Guard.

The militia is comprised of Flux's civilian population, who receive a level of training and equipment similar to the militias fielded by many Imperial successor polities. With the planet under constant attack from hostile warp entities and enemies from both the planet's past and future, everyone has to learn to fight to survive. In addition to planetary defence, the institution of the militia also serves to improve the quality of the planet's other forces.

The Foederati are the warriors Flux sends out to kill orks, Chaos, and everything else trying to burn down the galaxy. They are elite forces, universally trained to the level of Imperial stormtroopers, and are recipients of high quality wargear, both human and Drukhari-derived. The bulk of the Foederati's forces are gene-fortified, cyber-augmented humans, granting them great strength and fortitude in battle, but closer to the level of Skitarii and Catachans than true supersoldiers.

The Foederati are organised into largely autonomous armies known as Warbands, with each one varying in size and composition. Some may number a bare hundred fighters or less, while the largest number in the millions. The defining feature of the Warband is its leader, known as a Battlelord - a supersoldier commander whose wealth of tactical and combat experience allows them to lead their warband with exemplary courage and skill. Each warband has its own preferred methods of waging war, from aerial assault to combined arms warfare and more, providing the eldar with an auxiliary force that's as flexible as it is strong.

The Hearth Guard is essentially Flux's planetary defence force. They're professional warriors, who kill and drill as a full time job, but are defensive in nature, their duty being the defence of Flux itself. Given the dangers that assault Flux on a regular basis, their training and equipment are driven to be just as good. Some Foederati warbands are actually composed of members of the Hearth Guard, who bring the unique skills honed battling Flux's horrors unto the rest of the galaxy. Of particular value are the Shades.

Shades are supersoldier anti-psyker assassins, who either hunt down rogues as part of the Hearth Guard or go out in Foederati warbands to destroy enemy psykers. Every Shade is armed with a needler weapon known as the Psilencer Sniper Rifle, which fires darts filled with psych-shatter neurotoxin that can break down the mind of its target. If the target is a psyker, the poison induces an empyric meltdown that turns the psyker's own power against it. In addition to their signature weapon, Shades are also equipped with ghostplate armour for protection, an impaler pistol, a combat knife, and advanced cameleoline cloaks that hide them from multi-spectral light, and even from witch sight.

Flux fields power-armoured supersoldiers called Warsworn, who are physically on the same level - in size as as well as function - as Space Marines. Unlike the Astartes, Warsworn aren't recruited from the ranks of children, but from the most elite and excellent of the Foederati and Hearth Guard. Warsworn are named as such because to become one, a warrior has to swear an oath to give up peace until death or old age, dedicating themselves body and soul to the destruction of evil. Should a warrior accept an offer to become a Warsworn and swear the oath, they'll be taken to be transformed by the planet's tek-druids into a superhuman death-dealer and receive the best wargear Flux can make.

The foremost reason why only the most elite warriors are chosen to become Warsworn, as well as why they have to swear the oath, is because it is very expensive to produce warriors of such calibre. Flux only has the resources to produce so many, and they cannot be wasted on those who have not proven that they'll make good use of it, or who will squander their new physiques in peace.

Unlike Space Marines, the Warsworn aren't separated from their relatively unenhanced kin by operating in different organisations. They're fully integrated into the same organisations they've always been part of, fighting together with ordinary humans under the same banner.

There are two general types of Warsworn specialist: Shield Bearers and Champions.

Shield Bearers are veteran Warsworn charged with carrying the Warband's honour, acting as standard bearers and as the Battlelord's honour guard. They get their name for the storm shields they take into battle.

Champions are combat specialists, and are extremely rare. Champions are selected only from the very best fighters of the Foederati, whose skill in personal combat exceeds all others. These pinnacles of fighting aren't ordinary Warsworn; their cybernetic and biological augmentations are far superior, putting them on the level of one of Avernus' Last Hunters. They are monsters on the field of battle, able to take on the toughest opponents in the galaxy or scores of lesser warriors. The requirements to become a Champion and the cost of producing them do greatly limit their numbers, but even few as they are, their prowess has been felt across the stars. Their primary duty is destroying enemy champions in honourable one on one combat.

The role of kronothurges in battle varies. Sometimes they act purely in a supporting role, in the same manner as the sanctioned psykers of the Imperium of Man, but other times (particularly when especially powerful kronothurges take to the field) they form the linchpin of Flux's forces. All of them are excellent fighters however, with sword and pistol as well as psychic abilities, as amongst all other Flux humans, they are proportionally the most frequent targets of slavering warp predators.

While kronothurges can take most bionics just fine, their bodies seem to reject and reverse any biological augmentations done to them, and the same goes with major cybernetic augmetics. This curious quirk does seem to make them resistant to Warp mutation, but it also means they lack the strength of other Flux warriors, and they can never undergo the Warsworn procedure. And they can never become Ultramarines.

Five of Flux's Warbands are particularly renowned and have fought for centuries across the breadth of the galaxy. Some of these warbands were the very first of their kind, having been the armies the original tribes sent forth to fully reconquer Flux for humanity after the completion of the Alterdir Anchor.

*Dakhia*
With the fall of the Imperium and the birth of a new Chaos God, the Ruinous Powers rapidly spread their reach across the full breadth of the galaxy, their minions swelling in number and becoming flush with new resources. This in turn has given rise to greater numbers of Heretic Astartes, as well as legions of power-armoured Chaos Warriors. The warriors of the Dakhia Warband are experts in combating these armoured enemies, bringing forward experience and an excess of high calibre weaponry to bring them down. Their Warsworn are particularly noteworthy for their use of eviscerators and makeshift hot-shot volley guns.

*Mercoven*
Millennia of ceaseless disasters and strife have created numerous cracks in the walls of the webway, allowing countless invaders access into the aeldari's primary transportation vector. Patrolling sections of the webway is a necessary task, but one the Ynnari are hard-pressed to do with so much else demanding their attention. Indeed, the duty of carrying out this endless war of attrition is much better suited to the numberless throngs of humanity, and so it's in this role that the Mercoven Warband steps in. With their aid, numerous dysjunctions have been halted in their tracks and otherwise-doomed sections of webway have been preserved.

The Mercoven have had to adapt to the many daemons they fight. Noting daemonkind's proficiency at melee combat, the Mercoven Warband adopts advanced auto-targeting cybernetics to bring them down before they can close the distance. Additionally, they receive wargear from the eldar that they've given to no other Fluxians: daemon-traps - modified soul-traps that can imprison the essence of nearby daemons that have been brought to the verge of banishment.

*Seni*
The Seni Warband is composed entirely of soldiers who have some minor psychic ability, though not enough to wield consciously. Through loose-hook data-tethers the minds of these gifted individuals can be subtly, weakly linked. Through a synchronisation ritual devised thanks to the aeldari's tutelage, the powers of the Seni's warriors can be pooled, amplified, and shared. The end result is that while they still cannot manifest psychic powers, they do receive a definite edge on the field of battle. Kronothurges linked in such a way benefit as well, as the orderly ticking they hear from so many bright souls of familiar mind helps to drown out the whispers of the Warp, letting them make more casual use of minor powers.

*Suobaz*
The Suobaz Warband has its origins in a tribe of the same name who lived under the shadow of prowling, flesh-hungry daemon engines, always needing to sneak past them when scavenging for supplies lest they be slain and devoured. During the Reclamation Wars, the allied forces of man and eldar pushed against the Suobaz tribe's region, but stalled out as the various rival daemon factories declared truce and faced the invaders as one. The Suobaz, seeing hope for the first time in living memory, used their stealth skills and knowledge of hidden paths to cripple the daemons' mines, supply lines, and power plants, forcing the front lines to buckle and ultimately effecting the total purgation of the region. The modern Suobaz Warband continues to specialise in ambush and guerrilla warfare to carry out their attacks, striking down their enemies from the shadows and fading back to avoid retalaiation.

*Vernari*
The name of the Vernari Warband comes from one of the most important tribes in Flux's history, the now-extinct Vernari tribe, whose warriors had sacrificed themselves to the last cutting a path towards the Archangyl Qhandais for the last Knight Titan of Flux, ultimately saving the whole world from enslavement and eternal damnation. The warriors of the Vernari Warband uphold the ancient ideals of heroism and honour strongly, rarely retreating from battle while victory is yet possible.

All of Flux's commanders, from the squad leaders of the militia to the Battlelords of the planet's warbands, lead from the front, suffering through every one of the same hardships as the warriors they lead. This inspires a rock solid level of loyalty from their subordinates and forges them into immensely dangerous personal combatants. As per the eldar's advice, no permanent command rank exists above the rank of Battlelord, as the damage such a high-ranking individual could cause if they fell to Chaos is too great. The temporary command rank of War Chief does however exist, allowing multiple warbands to fight under a single will, though only for the span of a single war; it's functionally equivalent to the Space Marine title of Force Commander.

\*\*\*
*Chronomancy*

Chronomancy is a non-Prosperan psychic discipline governing the control and use of time. Power is important to chronomancy; the greater the magnitude of a power, the stronger the psyker needs to be to successfully manifest it. As with all psychic disciplines, chronomancy's powers cover a wide range in both difficulty and effect, from simply telling the time at the lowest end, to deleting split-second frames from history and beyond at the higher ends.

Chronomancy has a very good amount of utility, as one would expect from a discipline with power over time itself. In war, chronomancy can certainly be used to good effect in a direct, offensive manner if the psyker is powerful enough, it's not where the discipline's strength lies. Where the discipline really shines is in support and hindrance. A chronomancer can lock enemies in bubbles of frozen time and peer into the future to spy their next move, while for allies it can redouble the speed at which they launch attacks or create pockets of dilated time to accelerate the healing of wounds.

Over the millennia, Flux's psykers have developed the discipline of chronomancy to a very high degree to help their people survive their death world. They are very familiar with the strengths and limitations of the discipline and have learned the best ways of making use of it. Taking inspiration and lessons from the relics their people have dug up out of the ruins of their world, they've managed to invent a bevy of psychically-attuned technological devices that help to channel their powers.

*Remaker Forge*
A remaker forge is a station that can rewind the clock on broken objects, restoring them to a prior point where they still worked. Fixing things that were broken a few days prior is a simple matter, while repairing damage done years prior is possible but requires much greater expertise and more sophisticated equipment. No remaker forge on Flux is capable of undoing damage done centuries or more in the past. Furthermore, some types of damage simply cannot be repaired, even if it was recent.

*Skip jump generator*
A skip jump generator is a device incorporated in the back of a kronothurge's armour and is operated directly by its user's thoughts. In practice, the skip jump generator functions much akin to the Warp Spiders' warp jump generator, allowing the kronothurge to compress space-time to instantly appear some distance away, though there are some key differences. Firstly, because the user isn't travelling through the hellish realm of the Warp, it's relatively safe to use. However, each jump needs to be manually calculated by a chronomancer, limiting its use only to them. Furthermore, such calculations take up too much time and concentration for their operators to flickerjump through heavy fire in the manner of the Warp Spiders.

*Streamload plasma weapons*
Streamload plasma weapons are advanced plasma weapon that incorporate specialised psi-temporal weapon mods that allow their kronothurge operators to reload them by turning back time. The time between shots for infantry weapons is too little for streamloading to be useful in this regard, but in the case of the massive plasma obliterator, it doubles the weapon's sluggish reload speed. Streamload plasma weapons have an additional benefit in that it prevents heat from building up and causing the plasma to overload their containment fields. As a result, streamload plasma weapons - including infantry plasma weapons - are safer than ordinary plasma weapons. Streamload plasma weapons used to be intensely difficult to make when the chronomantic components were integral, as there was perhaps only one person alive at a time who had the prerequisite skill in both plasmatics and chronomancy to make them. While still difficult to make, the accessibility of streamload plasma weapons is now high enough for several senior kronothurges to wield them in battle.

*Tempoflicker blades*
Tempoflicker blades are swords with blades that can quickly phase in and out of time, and in so doing can bypass armour, energy fields, and psychic defences with ease.

*Timeshriek annihilator*
A timeshriek annihilator is a macro weapon that appears to shoot blue beams of light, but actually fires concentrated rays of pure time. It draws its temporal energy from a captive eternity storm held within its heart and focuses it along the barrel, projecting the volatile energy across vast distances. Whatever is hit by a timeshriek annihilator is destroyed in a cataclysmic detonation of shattered space-time. One notable advantage of the timeshriek annihilator is that while chronomancers are needed to build one (an unfortunate result of having been designed by chronomancers, and something that Flux's tek-druids are attempting to get around), the actual methods of its operation and function allow it to be used by non-psykers. Easily the weapon's greatest weakness is its volatility; while eldar technology makes it completely safe to use in normal operation, the results of its containment chamber being breached by enemy fire are consistently calamitous. On such an occasion, stasis bomb failsafes will attempt to freeze the chaotic tempest before it can do any damage, but the storm's very nature makes this safety feature only somewhat reliable. Furthermore, the cost of the weapons themselves and their failsafes greatly limits the number of timeshriek annihilators that can be built.

*Transience weapons*
The signature weapons of Flux's kronothurges are transience weapons. Transience weapons follow a millennia-old design that uses entropic energy to reduce their wielder's enemies to dust, either by sheathing the edges of blades with it or by concentrating and unleashing it at the moment of impact in the case of hammers. Transience weapons come in multiple forms, though the most common transience weapon is the transience sword, traditionally fashioned in the form of a clock hand. Functionally, transience weapons are equivalent to force weapons, save that the only psykers who can use them are those practised in channelling temporal energy.

*Valis portals*
Valis portals are devices developed through the study of natural phenomena found on Flux before the building of the Alterdir Anchor. Occasionally, the confluence of temporal forces would create wormholes that could instantaneously take people across time and space. Some were only small enough to permit a few people at once, while others were wide enough to let entire armies through. Valis portals do the same, though as the forces that create them are less than planetary in nature, they're all rather small, only large enough to move small groups and light equipment. They're also expensive to build and maintain, preventing them from being used on a mass scale.

*Heroes*

*Armin Caras*
Armin Caras is the current Battlelord of the Suobaz Warband. He gained great acclaim for the near destruction of three Orders of Ophelian Sisters of Battle sent from the sector Iumia in an ambush on the forest world of Thalda, as well as tens of thousands of other crusaders. Their destruction immediately blunted a major Chaos incursion into Callamus' territory, which on its own would have been the highlight of any Battlelord's career, but Armin went a step further. With the aid of a Ynnari haemonculus as well as one of their seers, the Pontifex in command was captured mid-battle and quickly operated on before being wind-wiped and knocked unconscious.

When a follow-up group was sent by Iumia to Thalda to recover what they could, they found the still-living Pontifex amidst the wreckage. The Pontifex was taken back to Iumia where he would face trial for his defeat, something numerous worthies of the Chaos realm would attend for the event's importance. However, judging him was not his superior, the Lord Sector, but the Prioress of the Convent Sanctorum herself, beyond furious at the loss of a full three of her Orders to his failure. Upon the Prioress' pronunciation of his guilt, the vox-receptive stasis bomb implanted within the Pontifex activated, freezing everyone in the room eternally in time. In one fell swoop, Armin's ploy had eliminated much of an entire sector's highest leaders as well as the supreme leader of Ophelia's Sisters of Battle and her immediate retinue, and because they were frozen rather than killed, they were denied a true martyrdom and so could not be resurrected.

*Velicases Caloati*
Velicases Caloati was once a shield bearer of the Vernari, but was dishonoured on the field of battle when he was laid low by the Chaos Lord Urkrarok Goulgrim, who then went on to kill his fellow shield bearers as well as their charge, the warband's Battlelord. Velicases miraculously managed to survive, and afterwards swore an oath that he would seek revenge against Goulgrim or die trying, for nothing else could erase the shame of his failure.

His desire for vengeance was not untempered with reason, however. He remembered the sheer strength of the Chaos Space Marine, as well as the consummate skill it fought with and realised he could never defeat Goulgrim in honourable single combat. There was only one way Velicases could kill him.

What followed was a highly experimental and highly painful bio-transformative procedure, one which put him into clinical death multiple times. It was a horrible task for the druids to carry out, and one they only reluctantly undertook, but in the end the procedure was a success; they had turned Velicases into an eight metre tall giant, utterly dwarfing the villain that bested him.

Velicases' new indomitable might allowed him to easily overcome Goulgrim's defences, slaying him within moments of their duel's start and ultimately precipitating the total defeat of the heretic astartes' warband. With Velicases redeemed and proven to be a mighty slayer, the new Battlelord of the Vernari Warband officially pronounced him as a Champion of the Vernari.

*Basgundin Pehasalit*
Basgundin Pehasalit is a Shade of the Hearth Guard, though not an ordinary one. During a warp incursion by creatures known as antediluvians, he was unlucky enough to be spotted by one of them. Just as the antediluvian reached out with its mind to throw him into a quantum abyss, however, he shot it through the head with his rifle. The power went out of control, and as Basgundin blazed with warp energy as he saw each and every one of his potential futures, driving him insane. Basgundin survived, and a successful mind-scrubbing operation restored him to sanity, though he was forever changed, as since then, he's begun seeing glimpses of futures yet to come. While distractions at first, he has learned to focus his mind and glean useful, even life-saving information from them. However, as time goes on, especially as he makes purposeful use of his ability, Basgundin has been remembering more and more of the infinite paths that lay ahead of him, and he'll soon need to have his memory cut out once more if he hopes to retain his mind.

*Rescuturme Tiati*
One of the best warriors of the Dakhia Warband is a kronothurge by the name of Rescuturme Tiati. Out of some unknowable quirk of biology, she was found to have a unique affinity for the drug Splintermind, being nearly immune to its side-effects even despite being a psyker. Over the years, she had effectively gained mastery over it, becoming capable of multiple fully cognisant trains of thought at once.

Rescuturme's gift has allowed her to use multiple complex pieces of psychic wargear simultaneously, and more than that still manifest psychic powers. The extraordinary striking power and mobility her multitasking gives her has let her slay countless foes over the centuries. She has also found that by overdosing on the drug it ceases to only affect her conscious mind and begins to also her subconscious, granting her extraordinary reflexes. However, at that point even her own resistance to the drug's begins to break down, loosening her grip on her psychic abilities and threatening to drive her into a permanent catatonic state, or worse. It is very much a last resort that Rescuturme only falls back on in emergencies.

*Galanata the Clockmaker*
Of all the people born on the planet Flux, none have gained the same level of power or importance as Galanata the Clockmaker, the prime architect of the Alterdir Anchor and the greatest kronothurge to ever live.

The woman who would become the Clockmaker was once just a child named Galanata Cotulia, born a psyker a few years after the Emperor died. During that dark age, it's likely she would've fallen to Chaos or else have been killed or eaten, but fate would favour her, as she was one of those young kronothurges found by Veritix, the then-chief of the Vernari and the one who would later gain legendary acclaim as Veritix the Uniter. The fires of faith and hope he instilled in her would burn strong thereafter, giving her the strength to keep her powers under control until a few years later when a future version of herself appeared and began to tutor her in the ways of chronomancy. About a year after her future self completed her tutelage and returned to her own timeline, Galanata would be one of the kronothurges to accompany Veritix's army in the War Against the False Omnissiah.

Though her natural talent was in swordsmanship rather than chronomancy, Galanata's immense drive and diligence would continue to grow her psychic knowledge and power year over year. As a result, even as Flux's kronothurge population recovered from the Emperor's death and began producing true prodigies once more, Galanata not only remained relevant, she became regarded as the best kronothurges of her time. With her contributions and those of others, Flux's kronothurges had recovered all they had lost and then advanced even further. She had also slain countless foes with her sword and her highly potent psychic abilities, never stopping a major offensive on her own but always playing a pivotal role.

Throughout the centuries, her biggest goal had been to tackle the worsening conditions on Flux, studying them and finding new ways to adapt to them. However, after seeing no signs that the conditions would ever cease getting worse, she committed herself wholly to the ongoing effort to stop the changes, though only managing to slow them down and create pockets of stability. When the eldar came, her knowledge and inventions would form much of the basis of what would be the Alterdir Anchor. Other highly knowledgeable kronothurges would provide vital contributions to its design and construction, but Galanata would be the leading figure in the project, absorbing the aeldari's knowledge and fusing it with the sum total of Flux's chronomantic knowledge into a single magnificent whole. With the completion of the giant psychic clock, Flux gained itself a new future, and Galanata Cotulia was hailed as its saviour, Galanata the Clockmaker.

Her work was not yet done though. Flux still had a bevy of dangers that needed seeing to in some form, and among them were those regions that the planet's temporal madness had blocked off but were now accessible. One of those regions was worst of all, the Chaos energies emanating from the gargantuan stronghold at its centre were stronger than anywhere else on the planet, the seers of the eldar detected a sizeable amount of life there as well. An army of man and eldar marched upon the stronghold, Galanata with them. What they found there was a city of Chaos cultists, amongst whom were a sizeable number of psykers. They didn't bring unto bear the sorceries of the Ruinous Powers as was normally the case, however, but were purely users of chronomancy. Against the combined might of the allied forces they put up a good fight, but were methodically and steadily pushed back.

As the Chaos cultists lost ground, the seers from the Empire of Ashes sensed a warp surge from within the depths of the city-fortress - the signs of a ritual underway. Abandoning caution for speed, the forces of order pushed as hard and fast as they could despite mounting casualties, desperate to halt the ritual before its completion. Eventually the army pushed far enough in that a super-elite detachment broke off from the main force to push through the final stretch. Together, the best of the two sides' fighters and psykers bullrushed through the enemy's defences, losing some on the way but making it to the ritual site, a gigantic cavern within the very bowels of city, but too late. As the last of the cultists slew themselves in a final sacrifice, their cult's plan, millennia in the making, was at last complete. Torn from its shell shell before it was ready, screaming, skinless, and in agonising pain, was a newly born Chaos God of Time.

Galanata killed it.

Around a century after slaying the daemon-god, amidst completing missions for the Empire of Ashes, Galanata would finish gaining full comprehension of the temporal phenomena unleashed in the battle as well as the improvised powers she utilised, refining them to their utmost. She had at last reached the peak of her power. From there, she would pass down as much of her knowledge and skill as she could, writing down what her students could not yet comprehend for a time when they could. She would also invent the tempoflicker blade and gift her god-slaying sword to the Mercoven Warband, who could make the most use of it. To replace it, she crafted herself a new sword, pouring all her knowledge and skill in chronomancy into its construction: the Pendulum Sword, a weapon that combines the properties of tempoflicker blades and transience swords to cut through nearly anything and grievously injure anything it hits. For added convenience, it can also be moved wholly outside of time and then back into it, letting Galanata summon it when she needs it and make it disappear when she doesn't.

For the next few centuries, Galanata had essentially been in a soft retirement. She continued to teach, fight back warp predators, do things for the eldar across the galaxy, and work on new inventions, but hadn't pursued any major projects since the completion of her sword. Everything that Veritix and the Omnissiah could have expected her to do, she did and more. She knew full well that the fires of her determination would need to be stoked back to full strength some day, but until that day came, she decided to bask in her accomplishments in (relative) peace and happiness. Of course, that day did inevitably come.

Tearing through the veil of the warp came the largest incursion of ethereal entities in history, amongst them a full host of antediluvians and also the being known as the Primeval Antediluvian. Its power was on the level of a deity, and its psychic prowess was far superior to the mindless flailing of the infant Chaos God Galanata slew. It made a beeline for Galanata, and proved itself beyond her. Alone, she would've certainly lost - her future vision told her nothing else - but she was not alone. Every one of her major accomplishments - either on the battlefield or off it - was done with the help of others, the old sayings of the people of Flux proving themselves right to her for nearly a thousand years. In the brief time that she had fought the Primeval Antediluvian, she managed to stall it, buying the minutes that warriors and other psykers needed to move in. Its power was beyond them as well, but the technology, fighting skills, and psychic abilities of Flux's people were enough to distract it long enough for Galanata to do what she needed to do. With power unfettered, she concentrated her will into one, final gambit, and travelled twenty minutes back in time, before the Primeval Antediluvian had come.

From there, it was a simple matter of pointing a few of Flux's defence weapons at where the Primeval Antediluvian would arrive and shooting it before it could get its defences up. After that, its core was placed inside the Mercoven's strongest daemon-trap and the rest of the invading warp entities were beaten back. Finally, the aeldari would take the daemon-trap and dispose of the entity within in as permanent a fashion as they could.

Currently, Galanata's major long-term project is to create an artefact that can take her to the same level as the Primeval Antediluvian; the fight proved to her that she was not as strong as she needed to be, but having hit her natural limit, the only way for her to progress is through artificial means. The Green Awakening, as well as the many battles Galanata has had to fight with orks of ever increasing might, would only serve to validate her pursuit for greater power. While this artefact has proven to be far more difficult to create than the Alterdir Anchor, the sheer explosion in the population of Flux's kronothurges over the centuries has produced a concomitant increase in chronomantic geniuses, which has helped Galanata's efforts immensely.