Drukhari - The Rise of Asdrubael Vect: Over the millennia, Commorragh grew from its shrouded beginnings into a galactic nightmare, its expansion driven largely by the machinations of one being, Asdrubael Vect of the Kabal of the Black Heart, who rose from slavery to become the true supreme overlord of the Dark City.Four thousand standard years after the Fall of the Aeldari, in the time that Mankind calls the 35th Millennium, Commorragh underwent its greatest ordeal since its founding. The Dark City was to be subjected to a full-scale invasion by some of the Imperium's most elite warriors.This catastrophic battle saw the rule of the ancient Aeldari noble houses of the city brought crashing down. They would be replaced by a city of Kabals under the rule of Supreme Overlord Asdrubael Vect, the architect of this time of strife.Vect began his days as an Aeldari slave. Yet through pure guile and murderous ambition he eventually rose to become the leader of a militant organisation that he named the Kabal of the Black Heart. By the time Vect had established this powerbase, he had been recognised by the Drukhari's Trueborn aristocracy as a genuine threat.The Kabal of the Black Heart was opposed at all turns by the most influential of High Commorragh's noble houses -- Xelian, Kraillach and Yllithian. So it was that Vect -- ever the master of turning foe against foe to his own advantage -- concocted a plan to bring the fury of the Imperium of Mankind to bear against his many enemies.So audacious was this scheme that, to the eyes of most, it would have seemed like a horrific gamble. This could not have been further from the truth. Every angle had been carefully considered, every necessary loyalty bought beyond any danger of doubt.Asdrubael Vect's plan to achieve ascendency demonstrated that his mind was like some intricate and unstoppable clockwork machine -- by the time the plan had run its course, millions had been ground between its merciless gears. Vect, meanwhile, elevated himself to a position of total supremacy, borne to unimaginable heights upon an ever-growing mountain of cooling corpses.The seeds of the Imperial invasion were sown in the region of the galaxy called the Desaderian Gulf. This area of Wilderness Space was well-known among the Human starfarers of the Segmentum Tempestus for the number of spacecraft that had disappeared within its confines.General Imperial practice was to avoid it at all costs. Unknown to the Imperium, there existed a vast portal into a main arterial of the Webway within Desaderian space, shielded by holofields that made it appear to be nothing more than a shimmer in the starlight, perhaps a result of gravitational lensing. Behind this portal lurked the pirate fleets of Commorragh, waiting for unwary prey.The Drukhari's noble houses preyed upon Imperial shipping lanes only rarely in order to escape retribution; hence the missing ships were always considered acceptable losses or written off as bureaucratic errors of the Administratum. Vect's first move was to increase the frequency of these piratical raids tenfold.He made it his Kabal's priority to capture every Imperial Navy warship and invade every Human world within reach of the Desaderian portal. He tore apart the Astra Militarum regiments garrisoning the planets of the Desaderian System, devastated their fortifications and disappeared with his living bounty into the depths of the Dark City, leaving nothing but utter ruin in his wake.This campaign saw the Kabal of the Black Heart grow rich in plunder and souls, though Vect's detractors thought him a fool for antagonising the massive Imperial war machine.With its usual ponderous, bureaucratic slowness the Imperium eventually reacted to the disappearances in the Desaderian Gulf. A Strike Cruiser belonging to the Salamanders Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes was close enough to investigate. It was patrolling the edges of the Gulf in search of the sacred artefacts and relics of their Primarch Vulkan.Captain Phoecus of the Salamanders ordered his ship deeper into the Desaderian Gulf. After a short but violent exchange with Vect's Kabalite fleet, Phoecus' Strike Cruiser Forgehammer was crippled by Haywire bombs and transported through the Desaderian portal into the heart of the Dark City.The furore that resulted from this audacious capture set the spires of High Commorragh aflame with new intrigue. A Space Marine captain was a great prize indeed, for such an individual could withstand extreme and prolonged mental and physical torture before divulging his vital secrets about Imperial defence.Before long, Vect found his Kabal's fleet in the Desaderian Gulf dwarfed by the armada of the Archon Lord Xelian. The Forgehammer, still rendered impotent by Vect's Haywire field, was confiscated by Xelian, taken to High Commorragh and analysed by a long dissection process.In his arrogance, Lord Xelian had not reckoned with the resourcefulness of the Space Marines trapped within the stricken Strike Cruiser. The ship's vox communications network had been shorted out by the Haywire field, but unknown to Xelian there remained a more pervasive method of communication available to the Astartes.Captain Phoecus' close friend, the gifted Librarian Hestion, had sent a psychic request for aid as soon as the starship's systems had been disabled. Hestion acted as a living beacon to the rest of the Salamanders Chapter, a beacon now trapped within the spires of Xelian's realm in the Dark City.When Lord Xelian sent the elite of his warrior court to bring the Space Marines to his torture chambers, they were met with far sterner resistance than anticipated. The Drukhari found it easy to carve through the hull of the strike cruiser and gain entrance to its dark corridors, but overpowering the Space Marines proved impossible.Lit only by the flashes of boltgun fire, a desperate battle took place within the hull of the Forgehammer until Astartes and Drukhari blood had mingled upon its hull plates. Xelian was quick to realise that he had underestimated his victims.He returned the salvage rights for the Astartes starship to the Kabal of the Black Heart, appearing generous but actually intending to seize the Space Marines once the Black Heart had suffered the losses in taking them captive.Vect readily agreed, forming small strike forces of all those warriors in his Kabal whom he suspected of disloyalty and sent them to face the strike cruiser's defenders piecemeal. Vect's Kabalite Warriors, triumphant on dozens of worlds, marched into the Forgehammer without fear, but the battle lasted for solar days.Xelian was happy to let Vect drive his so-called Kabal to destruction, believing the Kabal's dracon to be a fool for not attacking with all the force at his disposal in a single, massive assault. Vect played a waiting game, feeding the disloyal elements of his Kabal to the guns of the Space Marines to buy time and even employing Commorrite mercenaries with well-known ties to Xelian's court, all of whom were soon swallowed by the violence within the Human strike cruiser.On the sixteenth solar day of the siege, the skies above High Commorragh suddenly broke open. The Salamanders Chapter had received the coordinates that had led them to their beleaguered battle-brothers from the Librarian Hestion's psychic broadcasts. The Desaderian portal had mysteriously been left fully operational, its guards slain and its controls locked so that it could not be closed.The full fury of the Imperium of Man thundered from the crackling jade-coloured Webway portal directly above Archon Xelian's personal spire. Through it came starships bearing the heraldry of not only the Salamanders but also the badges of the Howling Griffons and the Silver Skulls Chapters of Space Marines.Two dozen strike cruisers, each appearing like a chunk of Gothic architecture reshaped for war, hammered though the wide-open portal into the shadowy skies of the Dark City. At their heart was the great Battle Barge Vulkan's Wrath, an immense spacecraft with broadside batteries that could flatten whole cities.Its prow was a vast jutting ram that ploughed straight into the spire where Xelian stood, crushing it like a hammer driven into a priceless sculpture.The Drukhari overcame their surprise quickly. From nearby Port Shard came hundreds of exotic craft, each a needle-like splinter next to the slab-like Imperial vessels, but no less deadly for that. Voidraven bombers and Razorwing jetfighters careened out of their towering hangars like bats from a cave, descending in swarms to attack each Astartes strike cruiser.Though many were destroyed by the Imperial cruisers' broadsides, others systematically targeted the larger ships' guns with focused Void Lance fire and sustained hits from their Disintegrator Cannons. The Vulkan's Wrath was struck by thick blasts of electromagnetic force produced by Port Shard's salvage spars, rendering the majority of its weapons systems useless.One by one, the Imperial ships' guns were silenced. But these were Space Marines, and they were nothing if not resourceful. Ejecting from each strike cruiser came Drop Pods, fired with such force that they were projectile weapons in their own right.The Drop Pods hurtled down, smashing through Drukhari fighter craft and Commorrite starscrapers alike, each containing a squad of Space Marines who deployed upon impact with their weapons blazing. They left pure ruin in their wake as priceless Aeldari statues shattered and the spires of the Dark City fell.The Astartes' counterattack robbed the Drukhari of the initiative. Within only moments of the Drop Pod assault, the Space Marines had established a perimeter in the obsidian-paved streets of the Kraillach Quarter. Though they took constant fire from Kabalite Warriors and Scourges that flew through the dark skies above, Astartes power armour proved to be an effective barrier to the Drukhari's splinter weaponry.Yet it was not long before more of the Dark City's denizens joined the fight, drawn to violence and death like sharks to blood. Massed swarms of skyboard-mounted Hellions and Reaver jetbikers swooped down to rake and tear at the Space Marines, who returned fire, literally, with their Promethium-fueled Flamers.The half-daemon Mandrakes and Raider transports loaded with Drukhari warriors assaulted the Space Marines with claws, knives and Splinter Pistols. Battle was joined from one side of High Commorragh to the other and the streets seethed with violence.Entire sections of High Commorragh burned as the invading Space Marines cut down or incinerated each new breed of horror that assaulted them. Word spread quickly through the Dark City of the Human invasion and high up in the arenas, the gladiators of the Wych Cults mobilised for war.The Space Marines within the city were 500 strong, almost half the size of a full Chapter, and they maintained a defensive perimeter throughout the Kraillach Quarter. High Archon Kraillach himself led a massed charge against the Astartes, intending to crush the invaders that were destroying his personal fiefdom. Yet Kraillach's rampage was ultimately halted by a "stray" blast from a Dark Lance that vapourised him where he stood.As the Forgehammer lay shackled by electromagnetic force high in the spires, the battle in the skies of the Dark City intensified. Xelian's last command had been to destroy the captive Human ship no matter the cost, for if mere Humans recovered his prize, the archon's authority and that of his fellow noble-born peers would be shattered forever.Flights of winged Scourges armed with Haywire Blasters and Heat Lances began to systematically destroy the captive ship while a fleet of Ravager gunships forced the Space Marines who sought to rescue the vessel's battle-brothers back into cover. Then, in a storm of light generated by their teleportation technology, Terminators from the Salamanders' 1st Company teleported directly onto the hull of the Forgehammer and returned fire.The Scourges were driven back and Captain Phoecus seized his chance. His warriors emerged from cover as a single force, sending a Krak Missile soaring into each of the nine towering spars that held his craft captive with their beams of electromagnetic force. Miraculously, each missile triggered a chain reaction of explosions, and the burning spars crashed down into the streets below.The Librarian Hestion summoned a psychic storm of his own, a raging inferno in the shape of a flaming drake that tore the Ravager gunships out of the sky one by one. The Forgehammer had been ravaged by the Drukhari assaults, but it was free at last from the Dark City's clutches. With a roar, the strike cruiser began to ascend into the sky and freedom.Far below, the Space Marines fighting in the Xelian Quarter were completely encircled as the full weight of Commorragh was pressed against them and warriors from dozens of Drukhari noble houses joined the defence of the city. Yet the Space Marines' objective had been achieved, for the Forgehammer was free.A single curt comm-signal was sent and within mere moments, the main bulk of the Space Marines in the Dark City teleported away in a brief burst of light. Those that had been cut off from the main assault gave their lives to buy their brethren time or else were paralyzed by Drukhari hypertoxins and taken away to later fight and die as warrior-slaves.Confusion reigned as the Haywire fields that had shackled the Imperial spacecraft were disengaged one by one. The Battle Barge Vulkan's Wrath, now joined by the badly damaged Forgehammer, fired its retros and disengaged itself from the ruins of what had been Archon Xelion's pride.The vast starship's engine blast flattened spires and starscrapers alike before the Space Marines made their escape. The entire Astartes fleet then passed through the still-yawning Webway portal above High Commorragh and escaped triumphantly into realspace.In the aftermath of the Imperial invasion, Commorragh changed forever. The power vacuum left by the vanquished ancient Drukhari noble houses of High Commorragh was quickly filled by Asdrubael Vect and his jubilant Kabal of the Black Heart, who had proven their superiority to their rivals in the crucible of war.In the years that followed, Vect played politics like a true Machiavellian master of intrigue, forever asserting the meritocracy of the Kabals over the ancient aristocracy of the Aeldari noble houses. Into the yawning power vacuum stepped Asdrubael Vect and his Kabal of the Black Heart.Eschewing all pretence at innocence, Vect ensured that word of his machinations became public. All would know that to stand in the way of Asdrubael Vect meant certain death, and in the centuries that followed his grasp on power would inexorably tighten.So it was that the Kabal of the Black Heart rose to ascendancy over the Dark City in place of the old Aeldari nobility and Archon Vect's new position as the supreme overlord of Commorragh and the Drukhari people was sealed.