Battle of Port Demesnus - The Hidden Path: From long-hidden valleys and subterranean arbours emerged warhosts from Craftworlds Saim-Hann and Ulthwé. They burst from ancient Webway gates, the tunnels of the labyrinthine dimension allowing them to bypass the cordons that made the planet of Port Demesnus an Imperial Navy stronghold.As the Craftworld Aeldari forces fell upon the population, the cacophony of Port Demesnus' giant industrial complexes was drowned out by the screams of the terrified and the dying.The entire planet was on high alert within solar hours. Ancient vox protocols were triggered that saw the Empyrean echo with the mind-wails of the port's astropaths. In the cold depths of space, the scattered assets of the Imperium mobilised.But they were too slow, and too far away, to shield the planet's heartland. After the first night, a dozen of Port Demesnus' critical defence sites had been overrun by Aeldari, some clad in jet black, others in bloody crimson.Outraged, the sector's High Command responded to the attack in a predictably thuggish fashion. The Imperium's nose had been bloodied on their watch, and they reacted with an indignant show of strength, just as the Aeldari had known they would. Bulk landers emerged from the fog of war to land with earth-shaking booms in the midst of the fighting. Battalions of soldiers marched from their cavernous holds and regiments of rugged tanks churned the ground to mud.At first, the show of force was all but impotent, for the reinforcements were so slow to mobilise that they found the Aeldari had vanished from whichever theatre of war they hunted them in. As the war effort unfolded, and the endless stream of Imperial reinforcements began to cover the planet's surface, the Aeldari had no refuges left to them. Before long, three of the planet's four continents were burning with the fires of all-out war as the Imperial forces closed in.For all the doom and destruction meted out upon Port Demesnus, the truth behind the war was worse still. The invasion was only a ruse engineered by the most far-seeing of Aeldari strategists, and the true strike was falling elsewhere. The prize they sought was so vital, so pivotal in the wider destiny of their race, that they had sent tens of thousands of irreplaceable Aeldari lives into a full military campaign that was ultimately little more than a decoy.The war for Port Demesnus was immense. It had all the hallmarks of a critical engagement that would decide the fate of a capital world and the star system beyond; fire rained from the skies, sprawling cities burned to ash and rivers of blood ran in the streets. Yet to Eldrad Ulthran and the players of the Troupe of the Midnight Sorrow, it was a necessary evil, a sideshow to distract from the main event: the fate of Coheria, Port Demesnus' moon.Where the population of Port Demesnus numbered in the dozens of billions, the glittering white orb of Coheria was entirely abandoned by Mankind, thought cursed for many long generations. Those who had attempted to settle it in the past had all been driven to distraction by the constant, low susurration of whispers that haunted the cusp of hearing day and night.The white sands of the moon, glinting like snowdrifts in the stellar light, were formed of a mildly psychoactive crystal, shards of precious stone ground to powder by the erosion of the aeons. Though none alive knew it, Coheria had been on the edge of the ancient Aeldari Empire at the time of Slaanesh's birth, and was saturated in psychic residue.Though individually tiny, when held together, the numberless grains of crystal that rendered the moon's surface white had absorbed immense psychic potential. Though Coheria had long been lost to the collective consciousness of the Aeldari race, at the close of the 41st Millennium, it was rediscovered by Illic Nightspear and the star-stalking outcasts of Craftworld Alaitoc. The discovery, when revealed to the Seer Councils of the other Asuryani craftworlds, set in motion this series of galaxy-changing events.When Eldrad Ulthran of Craftworld Ulthwé learned of Coheria's strange sands, the seed of an idea germinated in his fathomless mind. He cast it mentally into a sea of potential and followed the path of its voyage to a skein of glittering futures. There was physical danger there, for the rune that represented the brutish Imperium of Man-- and worse still, their elite Space Marines -- orbited the crux of fate, splitting it into several possible futures.After consulting with Kysaduras the Anchorite, a visionary Farseer who had long ago locked himself in the wraithbone heart of Ulthwé, Eldrad resolved to investigate the moon in person, but he would need assistance and stealth. Hundreds of Terran years previously, Eldrad had found common cause with a Death Jester known as Inriam's Spectre, and the Farseer reached out with his psyche to contact his morbid ally.Though his masque had needed him to defend the Black Library against the sorcerer Ahriman, Inriam's Spectre answered the summons. Before the year was out, Eldrad was escorted through the Webway to Coheria by a maverick troupe of the Midnight Sorrow.The Death Jester had listened to Eldrad's plan, and since that day, the potential of it had burned like the rune of new hope within his mind. It was a ploy of such vaunting ambition, so redolent with the star-forging grandeur of the ancient Aeldari race, that the warrior-dancer and his kinsmen found its lure irresistible.Eldrad had long believed in the possibility of rousing a new Aeldari deity: Ynnead, the god of the dead. Many a doom-laden Seer believed Ynnead would awaken to destroy Slaanesh, that diabolical Chaos God who sought to devour every Aeldari soul, but legend had it that this would only after every Aeldari in the galaxy had already left the mortal coil.Eldrad dared to hope that he could awaken Ynnead before then, and in doing so save a fraction of the Aeldari race -- enough to slowly regrow their population without the leering hunger of Slaanesh forcing them into lives of asceticism or endless torment.