Battle of Biel-Tan - Fall of Ursulia: Ursulia, named after a famously beautiful Eldar maiden of myth, was a small but verdant world, famous in Eldar society for its majestic thornwoods and towering arbor cities. It had been fashioned as a true paradise by the Aeldari, but it had now been twisted beyond recognition.To descend through the silver cloud banks of Ursulia's skies was to feel a great sadness of the soul. Roiling Warp Storms had lashed its surface in the last few Terran months, appearing from nowhere like a seismic eruption upon an unseen fault line. Ursulia's glorious waterfalls had been turned to swathes of crimson glass, and its rolling dales reduced to skull-strewn wastelands.Amongst the planet's valleys was a moss-strewn henge known as the Obsidian Gate. This former Webway route was permanently closed many thousands of Terran years ago as a precautionary measure against invasion, for it led straight to Biel-Tan.The decision to seal it had since been vindicated a dozen times over, for gentle Ursulia had known many wars over the millennia. Yet it was theoretically possible that the route could be re-opened by arcane force. It was a possibility the Biel-Tani would do anything to avoid.For the warriors of Biel-Tan, to make planetfall upon Ursulia was much like looking upon the face of a once-beautiful dilettante badly burned by some horrific twist of fate. The craftworlders did not take the loss well.Expressions had hardened to stony scowls under the hoods of those Rangers searching the twisted forests for Exodite survivors. They had found only death. In the space of time it had taken for Biel-Tan's outriders to arrive at Ursulia, the planet had already suffered beyond comprehension.Under detailed instructions from Autarch Meliniel, the warriors of the Swordwind were en route to aerial ambush points in their Falcon and Wave Serpent skimmers. Underneath their helms, the faces of the Aspect Warriors remained cold and impassive.They had donned their war masks before leaving the craftworld, embodying the aspects of the War God Khaine's inhumanly focussed killers. Only once the battle was over would they assume their fully emotive personas once more, allowing themselves to grieve.Rain hammered down as the Swordwind's transports shot through the skies. The convoy of vehicles was all but invisible in their cloudstrike formation; this was common practice amongst the Biel-Tani, for they believe the blade unseen strikes truest of all.Around the grav-tanks, a tempest was brewing, the disturbing keening of the wind hinting at some unnatural energy beneath it. The tang of ozone hung heavy in the air, a sense of doom gathering like the closeness before a thunderstorm.The Swordwind of Biel-Tan had sent a thousand fighters to Ursulia, yet in the heart of every Eldar warrior there was a sense they had already lost. They had watched over this hidden world for millennia, and in doing so had repelled Ork invasions, Hrud infestations, Imperial conquests and Drukhari raids.Against the raw power and sudden onset of a Chaos tempest, however, there was little they could do. Warp Storm Balamet had ﬂared into baleful existence so swiftly that even the Eldar could not counter it. What was intended as a mission of rescue had become one of vengeance -- and of preventing the same fate befalling Biel-Tan, should the unthinkable happen.The Masque of Slaanesh was poised to achieve just that. Though it had cost her much to attain it, she had masterminded a full-scale daemonic invasion of Ursulia. Her intent was not to conquer the planet, but to use it as a staging post. Should she muster force enough to break through the Obsidian Gate, she would reach Biel-Tan before Yvraine, not only claiming a rich bounty of Eldar souls but also capturing or devouring the single greatest threat to Slaanesh's continued existence.The daemon herald had taken great pains to arrange the conquest to come, and ensure that it had a semblance of focus -- no mean feat, considering the rival forces involved. The Masque had marshalled not only her own great promenade of excess -- a gathering of Daemonettes, Seekers, Seeker charioteers and half-mortal Hellﬂayers -- but also seduced a grand battalion of Khornate daemons into fighting for the same cause.The rivalries between the Chaos Gods had raged across reality and the Warp for time immemorial. Though the brothers in darkness were each locked in their Great Game, and though they sought the same destructive ends more often than not, they were such bitter rivals that they held an open contempt for each other.This ire often boiled over into outright war. Slaanesh, the Master of Excess, was considered a self-indulgent, preening impostor by the Blood God Khorne. Conversely, Slaanesh saw the Blood God as an unimaginative boor with all the grace of a starving hound. Their daemon minions harboured much the same attitudes, for in essence a daemon is but a fragment of its Chaos God patron's psyche made manifest.The Masque of Slaanesh was nothing if not persuasive, however, and her repertoire went far beyond the pleasures of the ﬂesh. She knew well how to exploit the compulsions of others, for she was obsession given form.The strongest souls were often the easiest to fool -- hubris and overconfidence was the downfall of champions and wise men alike. The daemon lords of Khorne were prideful indeed. It was that ﬂaw that the Masque sought to play upon, thereby binding them to her cause.With the powers of Chaos ascendant in the galaxy and Warp tempests raging across the breadth of Mankind's realm as the 13th Black Crusade began, daemons found moving from the Empyrean to the Warp Storm-wracked domains of realspace easier than ever -- especially for one as adroit as the Masque.Still, there was no way she had the strength to break open the psychic Runes of Warding that sealed the portal to Biel-Tan. She knew of but one daemon strong enough to break the arcane defences -- Skarbrand the Exiled One, the most terrible Bloodthirster of them all. Even then his power might not suffice.Skarbrand was a daemon whose arrogance was so immense that he sought to slay his own parent deity in single combat. He was hurled across reality as a result, broken in body and mind. All that was left of Skarbrand was rage, raw and all-consuming.Seeing in the infamous daemon an instrument of pure brute force, the Masque had sought the Bloodthirster out, dancing her way through the Realm of Chaos to speak to him face to disfigured face.At first, Skarbrand sought to cut the Masque to pieces with his twin axes, Slaughter and Carnage. However, the Daemonette swayed and dodged from the Bloodthirster's blows with such sublime passivity that Skarbrand stopped viewing her as a martial opponent and instead saw her as more of an inconvenience, just as a rampaging stallion might see a gadﬂy upon its ﬂank.When he had all but lost interest, the Masque told her foe of her own exile, for she had been banished by her god just as Skarbrand had been banished by his. This won the raging daemon's ear, for a time.She spoke to him of a great wager, a contest between the daemon hosts of Slaanesh and those of Khorne. The competition would be held upon the Maiden World of Ursulia -- whosoever claimed the most Eldar lives in the name of their patron before nightfall would be proved the most powerful in the service of their respective gods.The daemon herald's words were expertly delivered. Her beguilements were clever enough to stoke Skarbrand's eternal rage, but not to trigger a killing spree -- not yet, at least. The Greater Daemon spat, snarled and roared with contempt, for the disciples of Khorne do not idly ignore a challenge to their strength.With her greater plans set in motion, the Masque smiled from ear to ear, waltzing away to amass her followers even as the mighty Bloodthirster stomped off on his own warpath.Within a Terran week of that incongruous pact, the daemon hosts of the Masque and Skarbrand trod the peaty loam of Ursulia's twisted forests. Their Warp-born followers numbered in the hundreds of thousands, for word of the wager had brought a great many daemonic champions together, each determined to outclass their god's rivals with impressive acts of slaughter.As the daemons burst from within the eye of Ursulia's fiercest psychic storm, the invasion had begun in earnest. The Exodites defending their world had used every weapon, trick and trap at their disposal, unleashing hordes of roaring megasaurs and mounting mass cavalry charges that saw whole households of Dragon Knights charge into echelons of daemonic foot soldiers.Theirs was a noble act of defiance, but ultimately it was doomed. The invading daemonic host outnumbered them twice over, and with the Masque and Skarbrand at the fore, the Exodite defenders were overwhelmed in a matter of Terran days.When the Swordwind of Biel-Tan arrived, the Exodites had been all but eradicated. Daemons already cavorted and guzzled hot blood amongst the twisted ruins, many counting the dead or arguing amongst themselves as to which of their number was the deadliest.The Masque was still on the hunt, coordinating her plans with a choreographer's artistry. Her Seeker parties had located the Obsidian Gate on a ridge overlooking the Greenlush Valley not a moment too soon. She knew the Eldar well, and suspected that not only would the Exodites' craftworld cousins attack soon, but that in their haste to defend the portal, they would give her the chance she needed to break through it.It has long been said by the gossips of the Slaaneshi courts that Skarbrand's bitterness and frustration at his fall from grace lent him strength.When the Biel-Tani sought to bring him down, his mounting anger -- bolstered by the eldritch power of the Warp Storm that still lashed Ursulia -- should give him might enough to break through any barrier.This evil contest of daemons was about to escalate massively, for the slaughter was by no means at an end. By the time the storm abated, the death toll on both sides would have reached truly shocking heights."Why did you not foresee this sister?" hissed Meliniel, jabbing a slender finger at the ghostly apparition in his Wave Serpent. "Did the runes not show it?""They show a great many futures," replied the Seer, Lathriel, over the psychic link. "Sometimes the futures change so fast even we Farseers cannot read them all.""I know your fallibility well. In our youth, it never carried quite so high a cost.""None of us saw this, brother. A psychic event of galactic magnitude has taken place. It bears down on us even now. The skein of fate is unravelling and reknitting so fast that none of us can predict it, not even the High Farseer of Ulthwé.""You speak of the Whispering God, sister, as do our uninvited guests. Salvation perhaps, but it comes too late. Too late for the people of Ursulia, and too late for us.""Though it withers my heart to admit it, yes. Biel-Tan may yet pay in blood too."The Wave Serpent shot over a vast jade lake. On the far-gazing hologram at the front of the passenger bay, Meliniel saw that the edges of the lake were tinged with red. "Now," he said, his voice distant, "we will punish those who dare to risk our wrath."The Autarch's tone was as clipped as an Exarch's battle stanzas. "The time is here. Engines of Vaul to the northwest of the portal, eight leagues close. Windriders mirror northeast. Falcons form the tip of the pyramid. Aspect Warriors form the coils of the serpent. Enact.""We must turn Chaos upon itself, Meliniel," said Lathriel. "We cannot win this alone."