Commander Farsight - Warbrethren: As Commander Farsight was bringing his emergency conclave to a consensus of all-out attack, an athletic T'au female swept into the room. Her self-possession and cold beauty demanded attention as she strode to the command bridge with her head high. She moved in front of Farsight, blocking him from view as she calmly outlined her plan. The Fire Caste reserve would join her Hunter Cadres in a series of stealth attacks using the darkness and drawing the enemy to overextend themselves in pursuit. Only then would the true counter-attacks be launched. She issued specific orders to those commanders not belonging to Farsight's Contingent, and one by one, they bowed their heads. When Commander Shadowsun strode back out, without a word to Farsight, a full half of the emergency conclave went with her. Farsight's grip on his sword hilt tightened, but he held his peace. He recalled the words of Master Puretide, reminding himself that though he and his fellow commander were very different, they strove for the same goals.Scant hours later, there came reports of a series of devastating attacks that had been made under cover of darkness. The tactics employed were O'Shaserra's, no doubt; Commander Farsight would recognise them anywhere. The Imperium's immense phalanxes were flailing blindly, lashing out in all directions as their outlying vehicles were destroyed one after another by point blank fusion fire. As soon as their primitive vision-sensors had been opened wide to scry the Dal'ythan night, O'Shaserra had released bursts of multi-spectral light that blinded her prey even more effectively than the pitch darkness of the plains. Confusion reigned around the perimeter of each Imperial column as carefully-placed tank killers hemmed in the great mass of each vehicle company. Spearheads of trundling battle tanks and super-heavy ordnance split off from the main mass wherever they could, blasting a path through the Magnorail tunnels that blocked them in order to pursue the signal ghosts of this new threat; in which they failed.The war that unfolded over the next few months saw the differing styles of Puretide's students writ large. Their strategies were painted in blood upon the canvas of Dal'yth's battlefields. Wherever O'Shaserra's infiltration and misdirection tactics blinded the military behemoth of the Imperial Guard, Space Marine strike forces raced to intercept, their rugged technology and genetically engineered strength overmatching the Stealth Teams and forcing them to withdraw. As soon as the Space Marines had committed themselves, O'Shovah and his Battlesuit spearheads would fall upon them from above, crippling their transports with XV88 Broadside Battlesuit fire and meeting the stranded survivors in a series of deadly close-quarter battles.In the sky war above, Kor'O'Li'Mau'Teng's Air Caste pilots took a heavy toll -- even the Admiral himself joined the fight in his personalised Barracuda, hunting Space Marine gunships like a great golden raptor harrying a pack of corvids. A young progeny of the original Commander Brightsword excelled himself in a series of close quarter Battlesuit actions at the Battle of Var'isar Gate, even managing to stamp a skull masked warrior-leader into a broken mass of ceramite and pulped flesh in one assault. Farsight commissioned his ingenious Earth Caste ally O'Vesa to devise new weapons capable of dealing with the thickly-armoured tanks of the Imperium's armies, and the scientist's teams worked night and day, distributing them as and when they could via the messenger-warriors of the Air Caste. However, the Space Marines struck back hard, eventually assailing Gel'bryn city with an insertion pod assault so ferocious that it shattered the hexodome roof and blew out the atmosphere inside. Even Farsight had to pull back when the Imperials teleported their own warsuited warriors into the central plaza. T'au blood flowed through the streets, as armoured companies ringed the city, cutting off any escape from the Space Marines ravaging through the outer districts. It was a story repeated in five more cities before the war was over, for a company of Space Marines was committed to each conquest -- every one a force that even the finest of Farsight's Fire Caste cadres was hard-pressed to match.