Prefectia Campaign - Prefectia: Directly in the sights of Shadowsun's new offensive was the Dovar System. Around the star Dovaris orbited the Gilded Worlds, a star system impossibly rich in precious metals. Yet mountains of platinum and gold are as meaningless to the Greater Good as notions of individual wealth. The only resources precious to the Tau are those that can be turned to their empire's expansion -- such as energy sources that can drive the ever-evolving technology of their fleets.The planet Prefectia was not only an ideal staging post from which to engineer the collapse of the entire Dovar System, it was also an untapped reservoir of geomagnetic energy. The Imperium, in its typically myopic fashion, had fashioned the world into a planet-sized fortress, for it stood between the xenos-haunted reaches of the Eastern Fringe and the Gilded Worlds. In their ignorance, they had harnessed but a fraction of Prefectia's potential and exhausted the planet's garrison the better to wage war upon Agrellan and Voltoris. This was a fact that offended and appalled the Earth Caste scientists who studied it; properly terraformed, Prefectia would become a dynamo that would boost the Tau's conquest of the Segmentum into overdrive.So it was that Shadowsun's expeditionary force turned its attention to Prefectia, the united castes bringing ruin to the planet's bastion networks and munitions hives just as they had to Agrellan. The Imperial commanders, in many ways glad the Tau had pressed no further towards Dovaris, sent in their legions for a new phase of war.As with so many other conflicts over the millennia, the planet-consuming struggle for Prefectia started with a single mission. A complex aerial ambush launched by the Raven Guard proved more than a match for the aircraft of the Tau. Many xenos craft were sent plummeting in flames towards the planet's surface, amongst them the personal Orca of honoured Ethereal Aun'Do.As the Ethereal's transport veered through low atmosphere, Aun'Do was ejected safely, his life pod plummeting towards Prefectia's surface. Though the Air Caste pilots had been found wanting, they were not without ploys of their own. Many drone decoy pods were deployed alongside Aun'Do's life pod, each identical to the Ethereal's craft. The hunt was on -- either the Tau would recover their lost Ethereal in good time, and hence secure a vital boost to morale, or the Raven Guard would strike them a mortal blow.Chapter Master Corvin Severax himself had issued orders to the strike force that sought Aun'Do; they were not only to locate the downed Tau leader, but capture rather than kill him. Over the course of the wars on either side of the Damocles Gulf, the Imperium had divined that the Tau's Ethereal Caste was of spiritual as well as political importance to their society. The interrogation and dissection of such a highly placed being could yield the secrets needed to scour the Tau from the galaxy forever.It had been Shadow Captain Solaq of the 5th Company whose Thunderhawk had sent Aun'Do planetside, and it was Solaq who was entrusted with his capture. Anticipating the trajectories of the scattering life pods as best he could, Solaq launched a series of interlocking strikes against the Tau who were scrambling to retrieve their downed leader. Despite leading many of these actions personally, Solaq found his rapier-swift attacks blunted by the stealth tactics of the Burning Dawn Infiltration Cadre. Though it pained the Shadow Captain to admit it, the Tau force's own leader, Shas'ui Starshroud, was every bit as adept at guerilla warfare as he. Through battle-scarred cities and ember-lit storm fronts, the two forces clashed again and again, each trying every stratagem, ambush and feint they could devise to outguess and outmanoeuvre the other.The ash-strewn wilderness was streaked with the blood of Space Marine and Fire Caste warrior alike when Solaq finally ran his prey to ground. Yet the Tau had one last defence. As a volley of mass-reactive bolts streaked out towards the last of Aun'Do's bodyguard, a shimmering dome of force crackled into being around the Ethereal and detonated the missiles at a safe distance. Aun'Do and the Burning Dawn Infiltration Cadre fell back to a waiting Orca transport, leaving Captain Solaq seething with fury.