Commander Farsight - Damocles Gulf: Situated coreward of the T'au Empire, the Damocles Gulf was a yawning stellar anomaly that had long spelled little more than confusion and death for the T'au. Unknown forces roiled within it like oceanic currents that could not be predicted or even monitored by conventional science. However, the Earth Caste's invention of the ZFR Horizon Accelerator Engine allowed the T'au to circumvent the worst of the Gulf's malevolent attentions. Within years of the ZFR engine's invention, the T'au had successfully crossed the Damocles Gulf and begun to explore the cluster of worlds on the other side. Instead of conquering them with a costly series of wars, Ethereal Aun'Va masterminded a long and subtle campaign of integration. Though it took decades, the T'au inveigled themselves into the human civilisations that dwelt there. With trade, diplomacy and, above all, patience as their weapons, they effectively converted the human worlds into extensions of the T'au Empire without firing a single shot.The interstellar behemoth that is the Imperium of Man is cumbersome indeed, but it is also mighty and vengeful beyond reason. Word eventually filtered back to the High Lords of Terra that the worlds they had controlled in the Timbra Sub-sector, on the Eastern Fringe, were no longer paying tithes and -- worse still -- that their Planetary Governors were in thrall to a xenos race. This they would not allow to go unpunished, and so the Imperium responded with slow but unstoppable force. The promising Damocles expansion ended in a series of harrowing wars that saw the T'au driven back from their newly acquired planets to the Sept worlds of the First Sphere. Even worse, the Imperial fleets had not been content merely to let the T'au flee. The cathedral-ships of the human military crossed the Damocles Gulf using some arcane science that defied description, opening portals in the fabric of space, and soon the warriors they carried were falling upon the heartlands of the alien civilisation that had dared encroach on their sovereign empire.The first planetary target that the Imperium had identified was Dal'yth Sept, a prosperous and highly cultured system with its origins in the First Sphere Expansion. The defences of the outlying colony worlds of Hydass, Sy'l'kell and Viss'el collapsed, one after another. The Imperium's ram-beaked starships blasted their way across Sept space, the battleships of the Space Marines at their fore. The sudden appearance of the Imperial fleet caught the T'au completely unprepared. Even though the T'au Navy scrambled what ships it could from Dal'yth, Pray'en and Dal'yr, the throng of floating colossi in their midst outweighed them massively. A strange battle commenced as each fleet's admirals took the measure of their foes and were left confounded. Against the sheer power of the largest Imperial battleships, even Manta missile destroyers, Custodian-class Battleships and Startide-class Interceptors were outclassed. In turn, the unparalleled mobility of the T'au craft allowed them to evade every Imperial gun and boarding torpedo that was pointed in their direction. Until the T'au armada could respond in force by scrambling battle-cruiser fleets from the Kor'vattra navy docks on the system's edge, Dal'yth Sept was on its own.A period of unprecedented mayhem and confusion erupted as the Imperial fleet fought its way through the orbital defences of Pra'yen and barged straight on to Dal'yth Sept, intending to make planetfall upon the T'au homeworlds no matter the cost. Commander Farsight was briefed on the situation and told that his forces would join those of his old training rival O'Shaserra in repelling the Imperium from Dal'yth. O'Shovah swore he would either cleanse the planet of human scum or die in magnificence. There would be no retreat this time -- only victory, or death.