Colonize the Exodite World

## Crunch and Rules

**Forces**

2k of CW Eldar, defending the Exodite world from the invading

1k Technoliches of FW Sheol securing a site and building a spaceport for,

1k Scydriel and the Jungle King as mechanized infantry support and Imperium Heroes

plus a small narrative detachment for each side:

200 pts of Exodite Guardian Militia, with adapted keywords and little extra wargear

200 pts of Cultist Farmers with, adapted keywords and little extra wargear

.

Each side gets two 4-perk special characters, two relics, and two warlord traits.

Each side starts with 12 CP (split evenly between the imperium players), and each side gains 2 CP in their command phase (again, split for imperium).

**Play "Retrieval Mission" from GT2021 Strike set,**

Both sides must take the "Minimise Losses" scenario-specific secondary objective, and the "Assassinate" and "Strangehold" regular secondaries, to place an emphasis on progressively holding more of the battlefield objectives (the important 'best farming areas') and keeping our characters alive: named and special characters who are killed need not suffer true death, but their going down is still a big deal for the long-term conflict.

**Deployment Zones and First Turn**

Rather than alternating unit deployment, each side rolls off for which side goes first. Whichever side wins the rolloff becomes the "attacker", the defender side then chooses deployment zones, then the attacker deploys all, then the defender deploys all, and then the attacker takes first turn, no seize attempt allowed. For speed and simplicity and balance.

**Terrain and Table Setup**

There should be a big open-ish area in the middle of the table representing the fields, and buildings, ruins, or forest around all the edges of the table, with one short side (which the defender can choose as their deployment zone) having better and more terrain than the opposite short side.

## FW Sheol Narrative Prologue - Doomed Machinations

Engineseer Osric was escorted by several black robed Skitarii Rangers to the entrance of the data-crypt that served as the Tech-priest domicile. It was a colossal lead lined door ornamented with servo skulls and mecha tendrils. They activated as Osric approached, the skulls scanning him for an ill intent. The tendrils reached out and implanted a slikwood class radiation scrubber to his artifice armor. The rad shield light shown green. Another tendril implanted a data-tether to his servo harness. Considered rude at best to data tether a tech priest from a different FW without granted access but he accepted it. What choice did he have? Forgeworld Sheol were holding all the keys. If Osric wanted to secure a way off this Ark for the King’s Guard, he had to overlook such protocol.

Immediately a hollow whispering voice spoke through his audiolink.

“ Once the datacrypt opensss you will follow the path ssset before you. To deviate from it would jeopardize your sssafty”.

Osric replied, “ Understood, for the the Omni”-

The voice cut him off. “ No need for ssscripture”.

Osric finished the prayer to himself. “For the Omnissiah lights my darkest path”.

The twin doors sung open and an intense blast of heat and radiation hit to engineseer, causing his rad scrubber to blink yellow. Without it he would be overwhelmed by wormwood sickness. Osric stepped through into a large hallway. A servoskull hovering with a blue chemlight illuminated his path. Many passageways crisscrossed through the main corridor he traversed. Something stirred within the engineseer as he walked the hall, a gut feeling. Engineseer Osric had a bad feeling about this.

The sounds of industry echoed throughout the halls. Rather than a choir of assembly, this was the howls of dismantling... They passed various chambers that contained areas both of scrapped war machines and ossuaries of the dead. Servitor cyber ghouls shifted through the detritus. Osric deployed his servo skull into recon sub code, and it hovered away down a passage, recording as it went. The intense radiation soon severed his connection to it. He blessed it's passing. The actions of Sheol spoke of loyalty to Imperium but these sights cast serious doubt. No blessings or benedictions had been processed. Even the datatether was less a communion and more a leash. This all felt empty though all still functioned. Soulless. He felt no Machine Spirits. The Chemlight stopped at the foot of enormous stairs that ascended to no where. The stairs began to collapse into themselves, the walls of the chamber shifted and rearranged as a puzzle interlocking.. The staircase became a dais where stood the 3 Lich-Techs and their retinue. Upon viewing their visage, Osric wept. For he knew what these things were before him: an Abominable Intelligence.

The 3 Lich-Techs seemed comprised of nothing more than ornate servo skulls attached to writhing nests of mechadendrites concealed within tattered cloaks and faded robes. Cables and wires tangled with human and animal bones. Grotesque marionettes animated in a mockery of a Forgeworld guided entirely by a Silica Animus. When they spoke, they finished each other’s sentences. Their voices a hydraulic piston.

“Be not afraid for you witnesss the Mordri-3”.

“The exhumed and recycled”.

“The ssself-aware and the auto-blesssed”.

Dozens of various limbs and mech tendrils slithered beneath their robes. A baleful blue witch light shone in their empty eye sockets. One of them extended a clawed tentacle.

“ You have the ssSTC”.

Osric produced the cube without his willing it so, the data tether they implanted controlled his movements. The rat mechs it was taken from had ingeniously entrapped it with a code. The wrong sequence would destroy the stc within. The Lich-Tech, Ix the Reteculator snatched it from him, circumventing the trap by quickly dismantling the housing leaving only the prize inside. A hologram of the stc emerged: it was a Hekaton siege claw with twin rad cleanser. A Titan weapon. The Engineseer had slain loyal servants of the Omnissiah only to deliver this to a soulless abomination. The irony and horror of what he had done began to overwhelm him. Meanwhile the Mordri-3 fawned over their new possession. Lich-Tech Liezeram the Calibrated, began,

“Well done thou good and faithful ssservant”.

“We ssshall honor our agreement..”

“A sssuitable world hasss been dissscovered for you.”

“Imperial recordsss indicate a nominal Eldar presssence”. We ssshall aid you in itsss colonization”.

“Mussster your forcesss for departure”.

The dais began to raise, the wall behind Osric opened back into the hall he had entered from.

The chemlamp servo skull shone once more and he followed it out. Osric soon detected his own servo skull. It’s signal approaching quickly, faster than its normal hover. He saw why, it was attached to a mastiff-size creation of machine and bone. It loped forward with an unsteady gait on mismatched limbs. The front paws were a mass of blades. It’s infra-eye fixed on its former master and the dead hound leaped with blades bared. The Engineseer fired his pistol, blasting most of the skull away but doing nothing to slow it's charge. It leaped on him knocking him down. Osric held it at bay with his ax, it’s claws scratched at his artifice armor.. Mech tendrils emerged from its ruined lower jaw, ending in lobotomizing instruments that slithered toward his face. His servo arm grabbed the thing, crushing it in two! Osric unloaded his pistol into it until nothing on it moved. Unfortunately the attack brought the attention of cyber ghoul servitors who began emerging from the catacombs. He raced to the door pounding on it as the machine dead crept closer, their various mechanical vivisection tools whirring to life. The doors opened and the Engineseer stumbled through. The rangers closed it and helped him to his feet. He ripped the data tether off his harness and grabbed the closest ranger. Osric screamed,

“You know what they are”!!

“Yes.” The ranger answered calmly.

“They are the Cybernetic wrath that shall cleanse away 20,000 years of inequities from the galaxy. All will be punished for their sins. For the cities will be your tombs, cemeteries shall be our cathedrals”.

Osric beheaded the ranger with his ax. The others made no move towards him as he rushed back to the King’s HQ to delivery this ill news.

## Imperium Narrative Setup

The voidship expeditionary force of FW Sheol, including their lead strike cruiser, several escort cruisers, the lead assault transport, the Main Spacehulk agglomeration and most of the surviving naval and civilian vessels of the Human Exodus Fleet, comes out of the warp through a giant tear-back-in-our-reality portal, a safe distance away from the Exodite World, which should have both Imperium and Aeldari names but I'm not ready to pick the Imperium name yet.

No non-Imperium voidships detected in system, so one of the mordri-3 (the ultimate decider leading the Expeditionary Voidship Group, who Scott should name), seeing nothing but some scattered old debris in orbit around the Exodite World, moves aggressively into orbits to occupy the large beautiful Exodite world. The Exodite world is blessed with a delightful marginally-high-O2 Nitrogen-Oxygen atmosphere, settled long ago by post-fall Asuryani refugees, and with 0.8 gravity, comfortable for Eldar because they adjusted it to that, but almost more delightful even to the humans than the heady extra-oxygen. The world's gravity didn't pull so hard and was literally easier to live and fight on, and it allowed Wudan-style fighting to those trained to take advantage, while the slightly higher than normal oxygen made it easier to run or fight faster or for longer.

The Imperium forces scouted the Exodite World, and quickly chose some desirable sites on the surface for what would be eventually be the future spaceport, some future defensive strongpoints, and the nearby future farming and agricultural sites, in which those refugees with farming skills and experience would be settled, and the region would be crafted into a breadbasket, to feed and sustain first all survivors of the Exodus fleet, but eventually feed the whole multi-system expanding Imperium and Human presence in subsector Bardo.

.

Some Eldar didn't like how the humans were landing and relocating massive amounts of military and farming materiel from the exodus fleet, tearing out plants, blasting holes in awkward formations of stone and eldar ruins, and militarily-occupying their chosen points with portable container habitats torn from the space hulk agglomeration, and landing both numerous small civilian refugee voidcraft as well as the assault dropships of the mechanicus fleet, ferrying down the armored vehicles and heavy machinery of the Jungle King's army and of the Exodus Fleet

The Eldar forces retreat (perhaps retreating from a rough time at the hands of some orkz by some ruins?) back to the settlements of the Exodites near the human agricultural areas, and raise the Exodite local defense militia. And then lead an attack on the humans trying to occupy and colonize the best farming areas.

## Special Narrative Detachments for both sides

At the moment the Eldar launch there attack, there are numerous mechanical and agricultural refugees around the soon-to-be-farms, who roughly match the Exodite defense militia following the expert Craftworlder warriors.

The Exodite Militia are modeled as 200 pts worth of extra guardian units, in their own BF'd detachment containing any number of guardian units as troops and zero other units, lacking the <CW> keyword of the CW army leading them, instead having the "Exodite" keyword in place of their <CW>, and keeping their <Asuryani> keyword.

The Refugee Farmers are modeled as 200 pts worth of cultists with autoguns and assault weapons, in their own BF'd detachment containing any number of cultist units and zero other units, who lack the "Catachan" keyword, but whose "<Legion>", "<ChaosGod>", and "Heretic Astartes" keywords are replaced by "Astra Militarum" and "Refugees" for their <Regiment>/<Legion>.

No special weapons for the Cultist Farmers, no gun platforms or special equipment for the Exodite Militia, unless it's to round out the points after no more basic units can be afforded for either side.

## Asuryani Narrative

Emerging from the black soot and spores of the now Ork infested ruins that lay east of the Exodite settlements along the ancient laylines, Farseer Talhyn opened the throttle on his Skyrunner as wide as he could. Those surviving from the recon mission raced back with him, while the souls of those lost in battle lingered anxiously amongst the gemstones adorning their armor, now lost to the rubble of the city ruins. Talhyn was proud of the stability they had helped bring to the Exodites, and he feared that a band of Orks this strong would pose a great threat to their longterm viability. For a moment he felt in control, knowing that if they could get back with enough time they could fortify the Exodite land from the orks well enough to protect it. That sense of peacefulness was shattered as strange ships, resembling sketches Talhyn had seen of some of the creations of humankind, descended from the sky. Landing heavily, and embedding their thick feet in the fertile soil below. Talhyn watched as the Imperium ships poured down to the surface; whirring machinery spilled off of the ships as their automated sensors began sampling and searching the land around them.

A flash of foresight overcame Talhyn, causing him to veer dangerously into one of the nearby Shining Spears, the two of them being saved only by the unmatchable grace of the Shining Spear rider. Talhyn witnessed two visions, both seemingly at odds with one another: a vision in which the orks completed enveloped this world with their filth, ridding it of all other life forms and a vision where the Exodites and humans lived safely alongside one another. He had seen visions before, but never had his gift of foresight granted him two such clearly opposed outcomes. Talhyn felt the winds of fate behind him, sensing that it was his Path to walk and guide the fate of the Exodite people.

With the Ork force likely close behind, there was no time to waste on diplomacy. Upon arriving back at the Exodite settlement, Talhyn immediately raised the alarm for the militia to organize, gathering all of the Exodites capable of wielding a shuriken weapon to fight alongside the remaining Craftworld armory sent to protect the settlement. Talhyn knew that with the right display of force he would be able to fend off these invaders while not expending too many resources before the orks arrived, following their trail.