Samech - The Fall: With the coming of the Jericho Reach's Age of Shadows, darkness was cast across the region and no world was spared. As with most Imperial sectors, the planets were heavily interdependent on each other and as passage became more perilous each world began to fall into disorder.Lessening contact with other worlds bred discontent and uncertainty. For Samech, a firm outpost of the Machine God, led by the most devout of Tech-priests, uncertainty was a cancerous seed as powerful as any direct assault from the dark powers. While other worlds fell through the long solar decades, Samech remained steadfast in its service to the Omnissiah and His Imperium, but slowly the Quorum of Magi began to question this course of action.Their system was under frequent attacks from raiders, both human and xenos, eager to pillage their works. And where was the Imperium to defend them? Their forges required raw materials even as their weak flesh still required organic nutrients. Where were the allied worlds they relied on for trade? It was logical to conclude that Samech could only survive through self-sufficiency.Synthetic vat-pastes were developed to sustain the Servitors and their masters. The planet itself was plundered for whatever materials it could provide. The forges were redirected into fabricating massive macro-battery emplacements and orbital defence stations to protect the planet, as well as voidcraft and mighty war machines to repel enemy vessels at a distance.All avenues for new weaponry were explored, no matter the progress of consecration level or lack of approval from far-distant Mars. No more would Samech be easy prey to a sector lost to barbarism.Attacks were ever increasing, and more and more the magi viewed any not of Samech to be against Samech. Ships entering the system were routinely fired upon. Those astropathic communications that still continued were ignored, as they could be attempts to lull the defences before an attack. Samech endured where other worlds fell, and whatever means it took to do so, there was justification enough in that fact.The Mechanicus Explorator Fleet that approached Samech on that fateful day in 325.M40 had no way of knowing this, only that they were grateful to have reached safe haven after the Warp Storms nearly tore their starships apart. Samech's defence network viewed them only as another in a series of raiders, albeit more clever than most in their duplication of ancient Mechanicus authorisation cant-codes.A trap was sprung, luring the damaged ships into what appeared to be repair stations. It was only as they approached too close to retreat that the docking tubes were revealed as linear mass driver barrels, glassine fixtures glowing not as viewports but as Defence Laser lenses.The fleet was eradicated, but not before it could hurl a desperate cry into the Warp telling of the treachery. It took many Terran years for word to filter back to the Imperium, but the result was as inexorable as gravity -- Samech was declared Apostate in Maxima.Samech itself knew only that a possible attack fleet had been destroyed. That it seemed to be of Martian origin was irrelevant; the Quorum by this time viewed Samech as independent of those who did not care enough to aid their own. If Mars and the Imperium had turned their back, then Samech would guide itself.With Jericho falling ever deeper into disorder, Samech forces began raiding other planets themselves, for in the midst of such anarchy, such had to be the way of things. The planet's security seemed to be growing until another event occurred that was to change Samech evermore, one that they could never have foreseen.For when the Hadex Anomaly erupted like a volcanic explosion of baleful Warp energies, Samech itself was cast into an abyssal space where the Empyrean spilled into reality unchecked.For the Tech-priests, it was hellish, often literally. To see irrefutable evidence of forces that could not be quantified or even controlled, only carefully bargained with in deals for states worse than simple death, was the final clack of a cogwheel turning Samech away from its original purpose.Now forever melded with the æther, it did what it had done best through the past centuries -- it adapted, and it survived. It was not without vigorous debate, culminating with a series of nearly devastating civil wars. However, no parties dared harm the carefully maintained forges dominating the surface and deep into the crust, and this kept Samech from falling into decay like so many other worlds in the sector.The outcome saw a new ruling system, led by the faction best able to prove itself superior to the others in technological command, and Samech overcame its insular paranoia. Vessels learned to navigate the unstable space now surrounding the planet, and conducted expeditions wherever there were new technologies to be had or markets where their own marvels could be traded for raw materials and new slaves to work the forges.Ever more frequently they searched for ancient archeotech or arcane lore to help their own factions establish dominance over rivals. No source was too extreme, and Samech agents established ties with xenos races across Jericho, many of which the Imperium still has not encountered.Their own star system was not neglected, as the entire area was embedded with defences unparalleled across the sector, with Warp-based mines strewn across the surrounding Empyrean shoals. Most importantly, pacts with dark gods granted the magi and their factions the power to control their new environment in exchange for supplying the Chaos warhosts with weaponry and engines of war.It was the beginning of Samech's new role in Jericho, and the Tech-priests are arrogantly proud that an Imperium that had forsaken them is now terrified of their existence.