//------------------------------//
// The dark age: the Void Escape 
// Story: A new faction 
// by Rub3r0n 
//------------------------------//

Void

The most part of the universe is void.

The lack of particles, atoms, the nothing.

The space between random amounts of matter, planets, stars, galaxies.

That's void.

And there was only one species, which was used to travelling through the void for millennia, searching new biomass to consume.

And they had found more.





Yet, in the void near a strange planet called Equus, a fleet was being brutally attacked by the tyranids. Their hit was strong and fast, a bio-ship crashed against the three other ships AT THE SAME TIME, bringing an alien boarding with it. Almost every crew member died, cause they couldn't defend themselves enough fast.

In "Equus dream", the headship of the fleet, a tiny group of survivors were fleeing, running as fast as they could to reach the evacuation capsules, prepared for critical situations.

This group was led by the great dragon, Volkano, who tried to fight back against the hostile aliens with his fire. It didn't work, but bought some time. Other members were guiding the rest of the group to the evacuation room, meanwhile Volkano stood and putted a fight, resisting against the tyranids for some time. Incredibly hurt, but living, he could reunite with the team and go back to Equus, so they could warn them of this threat.

There were a lot of feelings in the team when they reached the room, fear, anger, despair. Finally, one of the scientists turned the capsuled on, and they left the now destroyed ship.

What a great piece of technology, lost.

Even in the capsule, they had to use manual control to dodge several threats. The crew members saw how some other capsules flew, being launched out of their ships and going back to the planet too. Some achieved that, some didn't.

But then, the members realized, the shield. The seed was lost in the attack, what if the spirit can't let them in? When panic was taking control over the group, they detected how a rift in the shield opened. They mentally thanked the spirit and went back home safely.





The spirit of harmony was there, standing horrified in front of hunger, there was only hunger.

The memories of when the fleet was attacked wandered by its mind, those aliens soon reached the room where the seed was and devoured it.

For a long time, the spirit could only see darkness, even then, the hope of any survivors escaping from the ship was very present in its mind. This motivated the spirit to focus the most possible, it soon noticed some crew members of the now destroyed ship heading to Equus once more, reuniting a lot of magic power, the rift was opened, just as planned. Well... not exactly, they weren't planning to be attacked and almost everybody getting killed.

After that, the spirit of harmony noticed again the eternal darkness. This lasted for some time, until it appeared.

Hunger.

It was everything this thing ever felt. The Harmony didn't know exactly what was happening, but it would know.

This alien species was just part of something bigger and somehow the spirit connected to it, a huge, powerful and ancient mind.

Faster than any mind could comprehend, the spirit hid itself from this "Hive mind", which could encompass galaxies.

From its hiding place, the personification of harmony looked the mind, all the information that could get collected would be extremely important. Only the powerful ultramarine psycher Varro Tigurius realized the feat of connecting with the Hive mind without going crazy. Of course, Harmony, how some called the spirit, couldn't go crazy, that wouldn't make sense, the concept of harmony itself going crazy? Plus, the spirit was closer to being a god, if a human as Tigurius didn't go crazy, Harmony wouldn't either.

The spirit learned a lot of things about this aliens. They adapt, eat and adapt, their dinners were planets and their adaptation was unimaginably effective. A metaphorical sweat drop ran down the metaphorical forehead of the entity, trying to imagine how much devastación they could bring upon Equus.

I have to say it, fortunately, the tyranids couldn't assimilate everything from the equusians, just as with psychic powers, this species can't copy magical abilities. 

And, as the tau, equusians don't have a lot of genetic advantages, their DNA gives them some features to manipulate better the magic, but as it's the "equusian soul", which has the magic, this features are mostly useless for tyranids.

After looking for some moments at the tyranid Hive mind, Harmony began to feel disturbed. Its presence was being noticed by the mind. Quickly, the spirit focused again, this time, in the seed, or what could remain of it. An overload of magic passed in the seed, making it explode strongly. This broke the connection between the two entities, so Harmony recovered conscience in its actual body.

The seed has been just something as a spiritual extension of the crystalline body of the spirit, which once was a tree. But millennia ago the spirit decided to change that, turning its body into a ponified version of the tree, but still protecting the planet with its magic and feeling some of the events that occurred.

Two big blue eyes, skin of shiny and white crystal, wings and a horn, little claws at the end of the hooves, a mane and a tail made of what it seemed to be pink leaves and the six symbols of the ancient elements of harmony.





This is how the Dark Age began, with the first equusian fleet being totally destroyed by tyranids, or murderships, as they called them. This creatures had the bad fortune of finding the hive fleet "Ungulo", a hive fleet considerably small in comparison with others, but still having better numbers against their next prey.

Ungulo originally headed to the milky way, their next target of the Hive mind, entering by the eastern strip of the galaxy. Its inhabitants showed a great genetic potential 10.000 years ago with the overcharge of the artifact "Pharos", this caused a great and powerful light, which was noticed by the aliens.

Instead, Ungulo found a little ship in the middle of space void, which appeared apparently from nowhere. A bio-ship crashed against them, allowing the boarding and assimilation of the new biomass. Some survivors escaped and instantly disappeared, this was a call for the attention of the hive fleet and with the appearance and disappearance of more ships in the future years, which seemed to be researching the tyranids, the great devourer decided to stay there for a while, hoping to find new biomass.

As it was already explained, this gave origin to the dark age, the first years of space travel for the equusians. They were... hard. Discovering the horrors of outer space was NOT positive or good in any sense and now they would have to deal with it.

When the news first arrived, a great panic between the population spread, there were a lot of different opinions to the revelation of a hostile alien species and the anger grew in a lot of people. 

Finally, the accident was considered a big tragedy. The fallen ones were cried and honored, setting a special day for their memory. This didn’t stop the intention to expand into space, this species fought again against a lot of villains and problems and this was not gonna be an exception.

Thanks to the information obtained by the spirit of harmony, it was clear that negotiation or redemption were not options, this things were just monstrous alien aberrations.

So a plan was made. 





For ten years the so called "investigation fleets" were sent out of the shield to acquire more knowledge about their enemies. These fleets were most usually just one little ship, which stayed near of the shield in case something went wrong. You see, the biggest part of the investigation was made by non-manned remote-controlled drones, so no one had to worry about being killed. The ships were only a control center, from where the drones were controlled. They had some weapons, but because of the abilty of the tyranids to adapt, they preferred to flew before getting into a battle.

It is true, there were some... accidents and sure a huge part of the drones were destroyed and lost forever. However, before sending the fleets the Council assured a form to make more quickly and constantly and avoid any kind of crisis.

This drones investigated tyranids biology, tactics, weak points, several different organisms anchored to the Hive mind... At some point they discovered the Synapse creature, achieving more knowledge about how tyranid organisms connected themselves with the Hive mind. This gave them an idea.

What if they just... destroy this connection? How would the behaviour of these things be without the Hive mind? And how would they cut the connection? 

Yes, the most ambitious equusian project until the moment. They wanted to separate the alien entities from their shared consciousness, this would make a lot easier to defeat them, even if they overpassed the equusians in numbers, besides, if the Hive mind isn't conscious of what happens to its troops, it wouldn't be able to create new adaptations.

Yes, THIS was going to be what they would do!





Hundreds of experiments, tens of captured test subjects, years of hard work, sometimes it felt like an impossible task, but they succeeded.

Finally, the equusians created the DMS (Dimensional Mobile Shield), an artifact designed by the greatest minds on the planet for ten years and whose components are as much magical as technological, like so many other equusian inventions.

They discovered that if a tyranid goes to another dimension, it will lose the connection with the rest of the Hive mind. Taking advantage of the previous experience with interdimensional portals and dimensional manipulation, they made a device capable of doing such task.

The DMS would "create a pocket dimension" inside our regular space-time, without any kind of portals. When entering a zone affected by the distortion caused by the device, the aliens will lose almost all their advantages and it would be much easier for the equusians to win.





"Are you sure of this?" Nova asked her husband, who was going to go to space again. She felt uncomfortable because of their goodbye had to be through a phone call, but also because of what will wait Spacestar out there.

"Yes, of course!" He answered excitedly. "Don't worry."

"But the murderships..." She reclaimed.

"I'm afraid of them too, but we've been preparing for this for ten years," His voice had a self-security tone, which Nova wouldn't expect in the past, but now it was pretty normal and she liked that Spacestar stopped being so shy as he was when they were younger.

"Yeah, don't worry. Your husband is going to be totally safe! I'll make sure of that!" Added Volkano. The big, red dragon became a good friend of Spacestar after the first travel to space, when they... met those things. "I promise, no alien will Hurt my friend here! Or anyone else! As captain of one of the ships, I will NOT allow anyone to die."

"Thank you Volkano," said Spacestar. "Be calm, okay. The worst thing that could happen to me is eating too much barbecue," He said mockingly, looking at his friend with an eyebrow raised.

"Hey! What do you mean?! Of course, yes, I love doing barbecues, but I eat other things like...uhmm...APPLES!" Volkano answered.

Nova couldn't avoid letting out a little laugh for the dummy discussions this two sometimes had. But she was still worried about all this mission.

"Look, we now know what this things are, how do they work and most important, how to fight them. This mission wouldn't have been allowed if it could go wrong," Spacestar said, trying to calm down his wife. "And think on it, every time you look at the night sky, I will be there, and the best part, I will return."





The 2nd July of the year 10.010 a.C. (a.C. means after Crystals, year 0 is when the unity crystals were destroyed and magic was freed) the fleet "Void Escape" was launched into outer space. 

This fleet would be the first of the 1st growing campaign (the equusian equivalent to imperial crusades or tau expansion spheres), and it was formed by:
-1 great ship "Void Master" (600 crew members' capacity)
-3 big ships "Sneaky One", "Sky Explorer", "Murderships nightmare" (300 crew members' capacity each one)
-4 support ships for each ship, 16 in total (100 crew members' capacity each one)
-50 millions non-manned remote-controlled drones for several tasks, with a capacity of short-range teleportation, plasma guns, normal (but really powerful) guns, reduction devices useful for fighting the alien ships...
This fleet had also other very powerful weapons equipped, which would not be wasted.

This fleet would exit the shield soon and when they do that, they would have to face Ungulo to finally escape of the aliens and find more planets. The next battle is known as the Void Battle.