Eventually, as time rolled slowly on, events conspired to return war back to quiet Scarab. Deep within the hidden city of the Dark Eldar, Archon Layr ruled over a mighty Kabal known as the Pain’s Way, and ultimately there came a day that the agent Phenas approached his master with an ancient account of a battle fought long ago.
According to the long-ignored account, the Eldar had fought against an unknown foe and as the battle concluded a Warlock Titan had been sacrificed to ensure the Eldar victory. The account hinted that the Titan was almost completely intact and that much undefended wraithbone was a temptation that no Archon could resist. With such a prize Layr could harvest enough of the precious resource to construct several Titans of his own - something which could not fail to help further his desires. How long ago the battles took place and with whom the Eldar fought were details lost to time and of little consequence to the greedy Archon.
Layr marshalled as many forces as he safely could from Commorragh as well as securing some additional troops and ships from his allies. Promises were made for a portion of the slaves to be captured during the raid, thus securing a force of Dark Kin that could cull a world such as this. Layr planned to let his men and allies raid the settlements and mining facilities scattered around the small desert planet while at the same time his most trusted force would quietly undertake a recovery of the ancient Warlock Titan.
Information gathered by agent Phenas showed that the majority of mon-keigh troops had been transported off-world, leaving only a pair of inexperienced training regiments to guard the entire planet. Layr set out with his small fleet confidently believing that nothing more was underway than a bold raid intended to recover the wraithbone and harvest a portion of the population of an Imperial world. It would be a victory for his Kabal true, but the actual raid itself was intended to be swift and untroubled; the Archon could not have known his actions would set the small desert world aflame with war.
Map of Scarab
The Culling
Layr’s Palace Cruiser exited the Webway with seamless precision along with a series of smaller ships. The Dark Eldar Corsairs swam around Layr's command ship in fluid patterns while the cruisers took up positions along the flanks of the formation. Rapidly the ships' mimic engines powered up to hide their true
shape from the Imperials. The feint was necessary for the task at hand; the target planet was devoid of any functioning gates and the nearest Webway exit point for the Dark Eldar craft was too far away to facilitate the execution of a more direct hit-and-run attack.
As the Dark Eldar ships cautiously approached the planet, they began to receive communications chatter from the Imperial defences in high orbit around Scarab. The humans were under the misapprehension that they had detected the energy signatures of friendly ships on an approach vector and still had not adopted a defensive posture when the first Impaler modules were launched towards Scarab's main orbital station. By this time it was too late for them to successfully resist the Dark Eldar attack. With a flicker of light, the Dark Eldar ships disengaged their mimic engines and activated their weapons batteries.
In desperate reaction, the human transports and system monitors boosted into high orbit as they realized the trap. A trio of Firestorm Escorts mingled with the local craft in an effort to support the orbital defences above. Managing only one sustained volley before the first of the Impalers sheared into its hull, the space station crews experienced brief satisfaction as one of the incoming Corsairs exploded with a flash, sundered by the Imperial weapons batteries. Moments later, fires had ignited on several decks of the station as boarding parties and enslaver teams ranged throughout the orbital, disabling vital systems and rounding up the stunned survivors.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Dark Eldar fleet engaged the floundering system ships, dark lances tearing open their hulls with terrifying ease as the human vessels frantically attempted to organize a defence. With most of the system ships reduced to blazing debris, the three Firestorm frigates made a last, defiant assault on one of the raider cruisers. Rewarded fleetingly for their bravery, the human frigates succeeded in causing significant damage to one of the Torture class cruisers before they too, were scrapped by the Dark Eldar’s highly advanced weaponry. With the space above Scarab now uncontested and the station under control, the Dark Eldar ships moved into low orbit, disgorging dozens of Executors and Slavebringers towards the planet below. Scores of Incubi and hundreds of Partisans, eager to further stimulate their jaded palates with acts of torture and sadism, were among the massed ranks of Warriors that gathered in preparation for their attack on the human city. Soon, their appetites would be sated…
Foothold
The platform city of Tempest Wash towered over the desert landscape on massive legs. To the hardy inhabitants of the city the titanic platform was a fortress against the harsh forces of nature. For a few scant weeks each winter the basin where Tempest Wash sat became inundated as the brief wet season battered the desert landscape. Water would rush in along the desert washes and dried riverbeds, flooding the basin and taking with it anything (or anyone) that stood in the open. The well prepared miners celebrated the annual storms as a time of rest from their hardships.
It was the knowledge of this phenomenon that sent the people of Tempest Wash into the city streets to watch as dark clouds gathered and thunder rolled across the moonless night sky. However, unlike the winter storms that developed over the nearby mountains, this storm had formed high above in the atmosphere; the gathering clouds were misshapen, fast moving, and ominously black. When the first Dark Eldar Raiders penetrated the clouds and dove toward the elevated city the civilians began to retreat in terror from the sky that had betrayed them so cruelly. The meagre
planetary defence forces stationed at Tempest sprang into action and lit up the night sky with anti-aircraft fire. As the shells penetrated the shadowfields of the invading Dark Kin, the outlines of the Executors and Slavebringers came into view. Like the orbiting forces above the planet, the human resistance began far too late to influence the battle to come.
Communications links were quickly destroyed by the invaders to maintain their advantage as further waves of xenos attack craft filled the view above the city. A single Executor would have been too much to defend against and now Tempest Wash was surrounded by three of the massive support craft. Slavebringer Assault Boats quickly unloaded their forces on the city’s landing pads while Raiders and Ravagers swarmed over those scattered human forces which attempted to hold back the inevitable. Dark Eldar riding bladed jet bikes and strange hover boards kept the population running and terrified. Their screams combined with the loss of communications rendered most of the Imperial fighting men useless with fear. The culling had begun.
There was a dual purpose behind the choice of Tempest Wash as the first Dark Eldar target. Archon Layr had now seized enough slaves in a single night to bolster his position with his Dark Kin allies, most notably with the fleet commander who had already sustained a significant loss. But more important was that - according to agent Phenas' information - the ancient Warlock Titan was no more than a day’s travel northeast from the blood soaked city streets. Able bodied prisoners were quickly rounded up and dispatched to the excavation point known to the humans as “Dig Site 113”, all under the direct supervision of the dark agent.
Once there, securing the archaeological dig site in the Equatorial area of the Deep Desert took the Dark Eldar raid no more than moments. Layr turned the seized crew and a selection of the
Tempest Wash prisoners to task on excavating the ancient Titan while sending raiding forces to attack the outlying mining camps along the planet’s most notable feature: Digg's Canyon.
Layr's personal Executor carried a Gate of Ransom in its cargo bay: a large Webway portal that allowed the larger vehicles of the Dark Kin to transport to the planet’s surface. One such use of the portable gate was for the Dark Eldar to launch their fighters and bombers without runway or landing pads. The Ravens and Razorwings – until this time safely stowed aboard Layr’s orbiting fleet - screamed from the Ransom Gate and took to the skies in search of targets. It would not be long before the mon-keigh sent its own (albeit inferior) aircraft to scout the area, and the skies needed to be controlled to keep the operation secure.