Third Sphere Expansion - Prefectia Campaign: Directly in the sights of Shadowsun's new offensive was the Dovar System. Around the star Dovaris orbited the four Gilded Worlds, a 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 T'au are those that can be turned to their empire's expansion -- such as energy sources that can drive the ever-evolving technology of their growing fleets.The Fortress World of Prefectia near the Dovar System 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 way, 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 T'au's conquest of the entire Segmentum Ultima 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 T'au had pressed no further towards Dovaris, sent in their legions for a new phase of war.It was a battle that would ultimately go the T'au's way, and the Prefectia Campaign of 999.M41 represented yet another defeat in the face of the growing power of the technologically-advanced xenos.The T'au overcame what remained of the Imperium's defences, and had just begun to set up their own installations when the Imperium struck again. Elements of several Space Marine Chapters, foremost amongst them the Raven Guard and White Scars, executed a series of simultaneous planetstrikes, initiating a seek-and-destroy mission to swiftly eliminate the T'au forces' leadership. Kor'sarro Khan, Captain of the White Scars 3rd Company, personally vowed to decapitate Commander Shadowsun, for she had first outmatched him on Agrellan and then escaped his blade again on Voltoris.Using herself as bait, Commander Shadowsun took advantage of the Imperium's fixation on slaying her in order to spring a masterful trap. Many casualties were inflicted upon the Space Marines, including the Raven Guard Chapter Master, Corvin Severax, who was slain by Shadowsun herself, to be replaced by his subordinate Shadow Captain Kayvaan Shrike. Not even a large contingent of Imperial Knights from House Terryn of Voltoris could turn aside the devastating T'au counterattacks.Only through heroic actions were any Imperial forces able to retreat off-planet. Their foe defeated, the T'au believed their expansion into the Dovar System and beyond could now continue unopposed while the Imperium nursed their wounds. In this prediction, the T'au ultimately proved to be profoundly mistaken.On Prefectia it was the deployment of the KV128 Stormsurge Ballistic Suit, the first in a new generation of T'au super-heavy war assets that served as mobile artillery, that proved to be the turning point.Besting the forces of both the Raven Guard and White Scars Astartes as well as the Imperial Knights of House Terryn, Commander Shadowsun had claimed what the T'au believed to be their greatest victory yet.With the fighting withdrawal of the Space Marines and the evacuation of House Terryn's assets, the remainder of the Imperial forces upon Prefectia soon followed suit. Shadowsun, her forces already enveloping the last centres of resistance, had secured her dominance beyond doubt.The expansion of the Third Sphere would continue apace. The deployment of the Stormsurge KV128 Ballistic Suit was by no means limited to the battle on the edge of Goliath's Eye. In every T'au theatre of war, the looming artillery walkers emerged.Some of their number, in a practice pioneered by Commander Sternshield, were used as the centrepieces of a variant Kauyon where the lure was not only the bait to draw in the enemy army, but the tidal wave that broke it against the unyielding cliff of the wider T'au force. Others formed roving gun emplacements that added daunting firepower to the Tidewall Rampart gun clusters.They strengthened the T'au's stranglehold upon Prefectia day by day, blasting apart the remnants of Imperial occupation, pulverising the gun-gargoyles encrusting each dormant hive and toppling the statues of the planet's former owners from every plinth.In a matter of Terran months, the Fortress World had fallen completely to its Fire caste conquerors, just like Agrellan before it. To great celebration, Prefectia entered the T'au Empire as the T'au Sept of Vas'talos, which means "boundless scope" in the T'au Lexicon.Soon enough, plans were being made for the next stage of the Third Sphere Expansion. Many of the shas'ar'tol believed the consolidation of their gains to be the next step, the better to build the foundation from which they would strike further into Imperial space.Aun'Va overruled the Fire Caste council in person, the wisdom of his speech so obvious his commanders felt foolish they had not reached the same conclusion themselves.The T'au expeditionary force would divide its strength, one half pushing further into the Dovar System whilst the other returned to ensure the supply route to Mu'gulath Bay remained intact.Across every Sept World, colony and orbital station, Prefectia was already being portrayed as the T'au's greatest victory yet. Already plaudits were being given and speeches being made, the Water Caste extolling far and wide this latest glorious manifestation of the T'au's destiny. Much mention was made of Commander Shadowsun, her image broadcast across unnumbered holoscreens on a daily basis.The grand Kauyon she had staged upon Prefectia was hailed as a work of genius. She had slowly escalated the engagements against the Imperium's shock troops, many true believers in the Tau'va giving their lives in battle to goad the enemy further and further until they attacked in force, then trumping them with the true strength she had concealed all along.In this manner the Supreme Commander of the Fire Caste had personally slain what the T'au believed to be the grand monarch of the Space Marines, a grim-faced figure in black armour who had long directed the Imperial war effort, but had only now been lured into the open by Shadowsun's masterful Kauyon strategies. With the death of their greatest leader, the Water Caste excitedly reported, the armies of the Imperium would be cast into disarray, caught in a power vacuum which it would take them many of their years to escape.Featured prominently on every holoscreen from one end of the T'au Empire to the other were the Ghostkeel Battlesuits and Stormsurge Ballistic Suits that had given the Fire Caste the edge they needed to defeat the warmongering brutes of Humanity.At the end of every triumphant broadcast, serene images of the Ethereal Caste would dominate the screen, telling the T'au that every life lost in the furtherance of the Greater Good was a life well-spent, and that no true follower of the Tau'va could believe otherwise.These broadcasts were kept on loop for many Terran days, not purely for the sharing of information, the betterment of unity and the raising of morale, but also because the Ethereals knew well that conviction was amongst the T'au's strongest weapons. The battle for Prefectia was won, they said, but the war against the corrupt and bloated empire of Mankind was only now beginning. They had little idea how right they were.The sheer scale and ambition of the war for the Eastern Fringe was becoming one of the wonders of the T'au Empire, feted loud and clear by every one of its citizens. News of the morbid, brutish race they had outwitted and outfought spread far and wide. Every new clutch of T'au youngsters was told stories of greedy, rotten Humans that sought to smother the stars, suffocating all light and hope without ever knowing why.The news of the Great Victory was also broadcast to those civilisations that had allied themselves with the T'au Empire, and even many who had not. There were those amongst them who realised that under the triumphalist claims was buried a death toll that likely spiralled into the billions.Some of their number, those who had come to truly understand the Imperium of Man, realised that the grandiose war the Water Caste spoke of had every chance of drowning the T'au Empire in an unremitting tide of death.The news soon reached a chain of star systems coreward of the Damocles Gulf, long abandoned by the T'au Empire. There, a legendary leader, Commander Farsight, gathered his people and made ready for a war that would change the history of the T'au forever.Upon Prefectia, the T'au Empire had proven itself a force to be reckoned with. On a strategic level, their warsmithing was impressive, and their carefully prepared traps had lent them a tactical advantage time after time. The greater battle, however, was yet to be won -- not only for the worlds surrounding the Damocles Gulf, but for the T'au's place in the galaxy.The Imperium had lost Prefectia to Aun'Va's expeditionary force, expertly commanded by the military genius of O'Shaserra. Ultimately, though, the Imperium considered that world of little strategic value. There were more vital targets in the Eastern Fringe, targets to which warfleets had already been despatched via the fickle tides of the Warp.Countless regiments of Astra Militarum, orders of Adepta Sororitas, and macro-level war cohorts from the Adeptus Mechanicus were inbound, slowly but unstoppably, to the greater war zone. According to the assessments of Imperial strategos and war savants, there was no way the T'au could conquer the Gilded Worlds without either abandoning the surrounding star systems or leaving their own heartlands poorly defended. Both were courses of action they believed the T'au would never take.As for the battlegroup assigned to the reclamation of the worlds recently taken, they too had greater plans reaching fruition. With the focus of the Fire Caste High Command upon Prefectia, the Imperium turned its eyes once more towards Agrellan, renamed Mu'gulath Bay by its presumptuous T'au conquerors.Though the twelve great hive cities of that world had been brought low by Shadowsun's masterful offensive, and though the planet's rad storms and toxic atmosphere made it all but inimical to new life, the location of the planet made it valuable indeed. More than that, it had become a symbol for the T'au Empire -- a symbol of triumph over Humanity that the Imperium could not abide.The Imperium spans a million worlds, and with every cycle Holy Terra describes around Great Sol, dozens are lost and dozens more settled in the Emperor's name. Yet rarely does a Chapter Master of the Adeptus Astartes die in battle, and rarer still one of the First Founding, those whose predecessors fought at the side of the legendary Primarchs.Such fallen heroes are not to be forgotten, but to be avenged. Through the inky void the Space Marines and their allies headed for Agrellan once more, intent on striking the T'au defenders there whilst the pride of the Fire Caste was consolidating its gains in a different star system. The slight upon the honour of the Adeptus Astartes would be repaid a hundredfold.There was revenge to be wrought, and in such matters, the Imperium is expert indeed.