Commander Farsight - Crisis/Countercrisis: As the war effort looked about to unravel, Kroot mercenaries were dispatched by the thousand through the Magnorail networks, rushed to wherever the Imperium forced a breach in the network of tunnels crisscrossing Dal'yth and spilling out like blood from an opened artery to fall upon the Imperial troops nearby. Zipping through the sky above them would come hundred-strong networks of Gun Drones, their Pulse Carbine fire taking a butcher's toll as they hovered out of reach of shell and blade. In this way, the Imperial forces were pinned in place long enough for Farsight or O'Shaserra's cadres to scramble to the breach and avenge the Kroot that had given their lives in the Empire's defence.Farsight took this tactic one step further at the Siege of Rala'tas, a dome city famous for its sculptures of living light. With the T'au's most capable commanders engaged on the other side of the planet, an Imperial drop ship landed only a few miles from the city gates. Within hours, Rala'tas was surrounded by Imperial tanks, including several super-heavy squadrons powerful enough to blast breaches in the city walls. With the exception of the Kroot kindreds that made their homes in the dome's sprawling arboreal districts, the city had only a small garrison of Fire Warriors to defend it -- certainly nothing that could deal with over a thousand battle tanks. Shas'gra, a Cadre Fireblade in charge of the garrison, patched through an urgent message to Farsight, requesting help. O'Shovah could give him none, but said he would think on it. Less than a minute later, a reply reached Shas'gra and he spread the word to the Earth Caste artisans abroad in the city. Just as the Imperials breached the walls and began to barge their way into Rala'tas' perimeter, the city went completely dark.Suddenly, a massive electromagnetic pulse boomed outward as every one of the city's light sculptures, fusion arrays and code generators hurled their potential energy in a devastating wave. The EMP tidal wave scrambled the cogitators of every Imperial tank and walker within a mile of the city walls, stopping them in their tracks. It was then that massed Kroot Carnivore squads poured out of every breach, bounding and leaping towards the foe. Kroot Hounds ran down those who tried to flee whilst Krootoxen ripped open the hatches and doors of the silenced tanks, allowing their ferocious kin to climb inside. The grisly feast that followed has never been broadcast on open T'au channels, though it is said that O'Shovah watched it several times.Though the Imperium had taken a great toll, and half of Dal'yth had been abandoned or reduced to smoking rubble, their attacks were slowly losing momentum. The T'au used everything they had learnt in the war thus far to great effect, using the EMP tactics that saved Rala'tas to divide the Imperial armies into disparate chunks and then take them apart piece by piece. In the process, they had bought enough time for the other Sept worlds to contribute reinforcements. A steady stream of Fire Caste cadres made planetfall with every new day, and the Imperial Navy was forced to retreat in the face of overwhelming numbers. As for the Space Marines, their dogmatic adherence to certain set-piece strategies and tactics eventually became their undoing.In conjunction with O'Shaserra, Commander Farsight masterminded several large-scale assaults that saw his fellow commander draw the Space Marines into the open, only for O'Shovah to fall upon them with all the speed and fury he had become famous for. As the weeks ground on, the masters of the Imperial crusade were forced to admit that they had spread their forces too thin. Now that their supply lines had been established, the T'au had an almost limitless supply of war materiel, and astropathic messages transmitted across the Damocles Gulf spoke of a new alien threat assailing the Imperium. Regiment by regiment, company by company, the Imperial presence upon Dal'yth began to withdraw.