Battle of Biel-Tan - Bridge to Ulthwé: The cataclysm that Yvraine had brought unto Biel-Tan was not a sudden shattering, like that of broken crystal, but rather an eruption followed by a rippling spread, like that of a boulder dropped in a lake. By harnessing the death of the craftworld's Infinity Circuit, the newcomers had brought into being the Yncarne, Avatar of Ynnead.In doing so, Yvraine had signalled the awakening of the Whispering God, and opened a new path for the entire Eldar race. With so many departed souls concentrated in one place in realspace, and his chosen followers gathered as one, Ynnead had many of the focal points he needed to manifest his power.Yvraine had brought to Biel-Tan the consciousness that Eldrad Ulthran had failed to summon upon Coheria -- though at a high cost. For light years in every direction from the dying craftworld the Warp seethed, buckled and raged, a hundred psychic vortexes whirling through the stars at once.The Yncarne's creation was a violent birth, and it had spread disaster near and far. The wraithbone skeleton of Biel-Tan was already rotting as a result of the daemonic invasion; rocked to its foundations by Yvraine's retrieval of the hidden Cronesword, it was shaken apart. Whole sections of the craftworld withered, split and fell away from the central mass like petals falling from a frozen ﬂower. The craftworld, originally built from ancient Eldar starships to be an ark of salvation, shed its constituent parts to reveal a living mega-structure shuddering in seismic upheaval.The slow but disastrous fragmentation was not confined to the physical realm. With the Infinity Circuit suddenly ﬂooded with the psychic energy of death, the daemons that had invaded it were banished utterly, repelled from its reaches by the sheer trauma of the Yncarne's manifestation. The ancestral Eldar souls who had once dwelt in that timeless limbo found themselves stranded on the brink of the abyss, with eternal darkness on one side and the seething soul-hunger of Slaanesh on the other.The upheaval was so profound that many Eldar cast about for revenge. The potent emotions of the warlike Biel-Tani had always run hot, and initial shock soon became open hostility. To some, the cause of the craftworld's demise was ascribed to a Commorrite invasion. To others, the spectre that had appeared in their midst was tainted by the energies of Chaos, perhaps even a daemon of Slaanesh in a cruel disguise.Were it not for the power and morbid beauty of the dread being that hovered above her, Yvraine would likely have been slain a dozen times over. Her Commorrite vanguard found itself fighting for its life more than once, but once Yvraine had entrusted the Visarch with the Sword of Silent Screams, none stood against them for long. Pockets of violence broke out wherever confusion outweighed solidarity.The spectre of kin-strife was kept from consuming the Biel-Tani only by urgent psychic messages from their Farseers. The Seers worked harder than ever to save their home, and the spirits of their ancestors that dwelt within it. All the while, the void above resounded to distant laughter. The craftworld was infected; now the Biel-Tani fought for survival.At Lathriel's command, every Eldar on the Path of the Seer took Waystones from the Spectral Gardens and pressed them to stretches of naked wraithbone, beckoning the lost spirits of the dead into the safety of the psychoactive gems. Once the transfer was complete, the Seers handed them reverently to Jetbike-mounted couriers that bore them swiftly to Biel-Tan's ghost halls.There, the Spiritseers incorporated them into Ghost Warrior constructs in order to save them, for the wraithbone shells of the unliving warriors were separate from the infected material of the Infinity Circuit. The Eldar of that proud world-ship viewed the creation of such wraith warriors as a kind of necromancy, but they had little choice if they wanted to preserve the legacy of their ancestors.The mass installation of stranded spirits into bipedal shells was an act of soulcraft on a grand scale. Even as the craftworld broke apart, the ghost halls were emptied until thousands of wraith constructs stood upon Biel-Tan's cracking landscapes.A strange phenomenon occurred wherever Yvraine and her allies passed through the wreckage and ruin. Following the lead of their mistress, Bloodbrides and Incubi darted, leapt and vaulted to those sections of the Infinity Circuit that could not be reached by the Seers. They pressed empty Waystones to those areas where the will o'the wisp revealed ancient souls clustered within broken wraithbone. Even though they had not the psychic mastery of the Spiritseer, the lambent lights of departed spirits seemed to ﬂow out of the Infinity Circuit and pass straight into those Waystones.Some of the Biel-Tani that witnessed this act saw it as soul-theft, and drew their weapons to lay low the Drukhari warriors they saw as parasites in their midst. In every instance, a Harlequin interposed his blade, shaking his head solemnly by way of warning. These were the Ynnari, they said, the Reborn faithful of Ynnead -- Eldar so in tune with death that long-dead ancestors would join them willingly.Through it all, the Bonesingers of Biel-Tan practiced their uncanny art. Some resculpted the wraithbone of the shrine-craft and dome-ships that had split away from the craftworld. Others raised healing chansons and plainsongs that saw the ash-black skeleton of Biel-Tan slowly reform, a cadaverous shadow of its former incarnation, but a mighty world-ship nonetheless.It would take Terran decades, if not centuries, for the world-ship to be rebuilt. The craftworld's solar sails were eaten away, and at its rear, the Webway gate ﬂickered and pulsed as if in pain. Warp Storms raged in a vast corona around the craftworld as the psychic shock wave of the Yncarne's birth bled out into the wider universe.Yvraine felt uncertainty settle upon her for the first time in solar months, her absolute faith wavering. With the fabric of the material realm torn to shreds around the Ynnari, there would be no escape from the ailing craftworld, be it through realspace or the Labyrinthine Dimension.It was no agent of Biel-Tan that saved them from the doldrums of stasis, nor even that of Ynnead -- but those of Ulthwé, Craftworld of the Damned.The ripples of Ynnead's awakening spread through the cosmos. For those with the gift of the psychic witch sight, it was a discolouration of the sky that was impossible to ignore. Even the humblest soothsayers saw deathly omens. Across the galaxy, scattered bones fell in the shape of Ynnead's crosspiece-and-crucible rune, eyes glowed with white fire in prophetic dreams, and jagged crone's claws shimmered in bloody scrying bowls.For the expert psykers of the Eldar race, the effect was far starker. Many were seized with waking nightmares, crying out in fear and clutching their hearts as visions of a deathly revenant burned in their mind's eye. The Infinity Circuit of every craftworld besides Biel-Tan glowed white hot with ﬂaring anticipation, each world-ship lit brightly and given a burst of acceleration by this spiritual renaissance.The Eldar people looked to their Seers for explanation. Those who had mastered the psychic wave of fear and hope led their people in meditation on the nature of this twist in the skein of fate.Everywhere the Seers cast their minds, the tapestries of fate were unravelling and taking new shape. Every strand of causality led ultimately to the darkness of the Rhana Dandra, just as they had since the birth of the Great Enemy. But that darkness, it seemed, was far more distant than before.The members of the Seer Council of Craftworld Ulthwé were the most skilled of all their kind. They saw clearly the revelation that Yvraine had engineered upon Biel-Tan. The most senior of their number, Eldrad Ulthran, demanded that Yvraine and her Reborn kin be brought to Ulthwé as swiftly as possible. In public, the rest of the Seer Council agreed his reasoning was sound. In private, when the High Farseer was deep in his meditations, they made subtle inferences that Eldrad had overstepped his bounds, and their agendas were no longer the same.The elders of Ulthwé conducted a great runic ritual at Eldrad's behest, using the spiritual link between the crystal Seers that populated the great dome and those of Biel-Tan's recently devastated equivalent. The ritual was a gamble, despite the fact the hyperspatial link through the Warp was strong between the two craftworlds.Though the Warp Storms that raged near Ulthwé and Biel-Tan could theoretically be psychically channelled into a tunnel leading through the Warp from one craftworld to the other, the process might well consume the souls of the travellers that walked it -- and those that had conducted the ritual too.To use the crystal Seers as conduits for psychic energy instead of revering them as honoured ancestors was a gross breach of craftworld culture. It was considered even worse than taking a spirit into a Waystone and transferring it to a wraith construct.The Farseers that had undergone their kind's peculiar transformation into psychocrystal, before later joining with their craftworld's Infinity Circuit, had earned their long rest a dozen times over.To break the departed Seers from that connection, and to use them as mere tools for sorcery, was a heinous crime indeed -- but one Eldrad Ulthran had already committed, through his Harlequin proxies, on every craftworld across the galaxy. Such was the urgency of the hour that the Farseer showed no compunction in doing so again.The Seers gambled much, if the ritual went awry -- in theory, a single lapse of concentration could see the portal open a tunnel into the Empyrean itself, allowing a daemonic incursion to spill into Ulthwé just as it had into Biel-Tan. If the Seers of Ulthwé had not been confdent in their psychic supremacy, and had the mental might to back that confidence up, they may well have capsized the entire world-ship into the Warp. As it was, their skills proved equal to the task.The Seer Council had gathered in Ulthwé's fabled dome, answering Eldrad's summons. Their rune-emblazoned robes waved gently in the same warm zephyrs that caressed the branches of wraithbone trees in the distance. One of the undisputed wonders of the craftworlds, the Dome of Crystal Seers was dotted with staircases of spiralling wraithbone that stretched up to nowhere.All bar the highest steps harboured the fossilised remnants of an ancient Seer. Atop these staircases stood the luminaries of the craftworld, their voices joined in the Song of Ulthanash.Abruptly, the song ended. "Here we stand," spoke Eldrad from his position atop the tallest staircase, "ready to usher in a new age for Ulthwé and the Aeldari race.""Aeldari?" said Yemshon Il'foire. "That name has no place this side of the Fall.""Until now," said Eldrad. "Our guests-to-be resurrect it with good reason." Several of the Seers raised eyebrows by a fraction of an inch, but did not speak out. "We summon the bridge of stars," continued Eldrad, his fabled staff describing the Rune of the Infinite Stride. "This night we have need of it, no matter the cost.""As you say," said Aralie Coppermane, a strange edge to her voice, "we have no choice."The Farseers and Warlocks assembled atop the dome's stairways chanted once more, casting runes of star-striding and storm-walking into the air. The psychic runes rose, glowing, to describe a wide circle in the casters' midst. Glittering motes of light span around the symbols, faster and faster, as the dome's gentle breeze became a gale, then a hurricane.The periphery of the Warp Storm raging outside the craftworld curdled into the funnel of a tornado in space-time, the tip both remaining still and stretching untold light years into the aether.By the time the ritual was complete, three of Ulthwé's finest Farseers had turned to psychoreactive crystal from head to toe. In their midst, a portal shone -- within it, destiny made ﬂesh.With Eldrad Ulthran leading the runic rite, an unstable Warp portal opened up under Ulthwé's Dome of Crystal Seers. Uncounted light years away, Yvraine walked as if in a daze to the shattered equivalent upon Biel-Tan.What she found in that dome was all but invisible to the naked eye, but the Yncarne was drawn towards it as driftwood is drawn to a whirlpool. The Reborn -- the Ynnari -- for that was the name Yvraine's followers had adopted for themselves, passed through the Warp portal and vanished from Biel-Tan altogether.The howling, screaming vortex through which the Reborn passed was the embodiment of utter Chaos. So fierce and baleful was this passageway it would have robbed the sanity of a lesser being in a matter of moments. Yet the Reborn found themselves ﬂoating through a tunnel cut in the Warp unhindered, as if borne by an underwater current.At their fore was the Yncarne, a revenant creature so inimical to Chaos that the psychic stuff of the Empyrean could not slow it. Even the Gods of Chaos did not look upon the creature directly; the incarnation of Ynnead's essence was so anathema to them they could not truly perceive it, even had they known where to look.The ripples of the Avatar's passage ﬂowed outward nonetheless. Causing a great ruction in the Warp, the bow wave of its translocation cast Imperial voidships aside hundreds of light years away, ripping open Gellar Fields and distorting the light of the Astronomican.Thousands of human lives were lost with every solar second of the Reborn's passage. It was a price the Eldar would gladly pay a million times over if it gave them even the slightest chance of turning the tables upon their nemesis, Slaanesh.With Yvraine came her Commorrite allies, but also a detachment of warriors from Biel-Tan. Even as the craftworld fell apart around her, there had been those that had believed her claims of rejuvenation and salvation. Across every stratum of Craftworld Aeldari society there were those who had thrown in their lot with Ynnead's disciples, declaring themselves Reborn.Foremost amongst those converted to Yvraine’s cause were Dire Avengers from the Silvered Blade, the Aspect Shrine in which the Visarch, in his former life, had taught Yvraine the Path of the Warrior. Near three-score of the tall-crested warriors had forsaken their traditional colours and, with a few simple minutes of concentration, altered the psychically-attuned metafabrics of their Aspect Armour until it bore the same colouration as Yvraine's regal panoply and the deep scarlet plate of the Visarch at her side.The Dire Avengers were far from alone. Biel-Tan was once a highly populated craftworld, and the appearance of the god of the dead's Avatar had been a compelling sign that Yvraine spoke the truth about a new order coming into existence for the Eldar. With the Dire Avengers came warriors from every Aspect, Guardian citizens in the garb of the craftworld's militia, whole squadrons of grav-tank pilots and rank upon rank of silent Ghost Warriors.These wraithlike converts had been given a chance to truly live again, for their transfer from Biel-Tan's shattered Infinity Circuit had been more complete than any Spiritseer or Waystone could ever achieve.Yvraine did not disappoint her new followers. All those who had joined the Ynnari cause had heard her speak about the hope she brought to their race, and many inﬂuential Biel-Tani were soon devoted to it, body and soul.For too long the Aeldari -- be they Asuryani, Exodite, Harlequin, Outcast or Commorrite -- had skulked in the darkness, afraid to burn too brightly lest they catch the attention of She Who Thirsts.To have a force amongst them that could take the fight back to Slaanesh, even one as disturbing as the Yncarne, was freeing, a call to action that no Aeldari had felt for ten thousand Terran years.The Reborn had come to Ulthwé, and they were ready to begin the next step in their quest to save the Aeldari people.