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The Carnac Campaign: Episode One - Nightspear
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THE CARNAC CAMPAIGN: EPISODE ONE
NIGHTSPEAR
Joe Parrino
They waited for three days and three nights. They waited while the snow fell,
while the darkness consumed, while the moon pierced the clouds and the sky.
Cold light illuminated cold ground, set shadows to dancing, roiling and writhing.
Geometric stones rose and fell all around them, the evidence of past geological
upheaval. The stones were silent now, carved deep with the warding
superstitions of exodite clans. The world spirit’s song was silent in this place,
cowed by the taint of death that hung metal-heavy on the air.
Those gathered, hidden, interspersed among snowdrifts, overhangs, clawed
into ambush points, rifles pointing, hidden in the whisperquiet.
One hundred eldar, sons and daughters of the craftworlds, clan-blooded
exodites of Carnac, gathered, waited, and prepared for death. Nigh invisible,
they hid as the snow crawled around them, as the moonlight caressed the rocks.
Prophecy called the eldar to war. The ringing words of Eldorath Starbane, farseer
of Alaitoc, wisewitch, deathfriend, bonecaster, led them to this place. The
ancient foe, the deathless ones, the souldark, waited in slumber to march out
from the nightblack depths.
Illic, called the Nightspear, took it upon himself to halt this. This was his
doom, his destiny. He was the voice that cried to his people, that warned of
ancient foes. He was the messenger of the past. He would deny the necrons their
vengeance.
He nestled deep between the crags. His rifle, Voidbringer, rested lightly in his
long-fingered hands. The snow felt cold against his cheek, pale skin blending
with pale snow, with pale rock. The discomfort was momentary. He had endured
it for three days. He would have endured it for three months more were it
necessary.
It was not.
The souldark were fated to descend on this night, fated to gather, fated to
blight the maiden world of Carnac.
Starbane, eyes red in mourning, stained with the ashes of Somonor, blazing with
revenge, had spoken. This war had become an obsession for the farseer. The
anger of Khaine burned bright in his heart. Vengeance; deep, throbbing,
emotions steeped far from those offered by any Path save that of the Bloody-
Handed One. The exodites and their plight were merely another tool to be used
in the war against the souldark.
Illic accepted this, for this drove him too. He knew, perhaps better than any
other eldar alive, the threat posed by the souldark to his people. The mon-keigh,
the Lost Kin, She-Who-Thirsts, all these foes paled before the soulless evil of
the necrons.
He walked the Hidden Paths, sought the ancient truths. He spoke with ancient
voices, the warnings of eldar long since passed to dust, long since passed out of
the memory of his long-lived race. Illic, those few who followed him, and
scattered others among the craftworlds knew the threat posed by the souldark.
They knew and they raged against it. They sought the places once claimed by the
souldark, pushed the lesser races towards conflict, towards their own destruction
of the necrons.
Nothing else mattered.
Illic came to Carnac to serve his once-home, to answer the call of Eldorath
Starbane the Onehanded. To answer the call of Alaitoc. With him he brought his
followers, outcast sons and daughters of the craftworlds, peerless rangers and
pathfinders in his service.
This night would see the souldark gather, descending to tear this jewel from
the crown of the eldar. Illic, decisive, swift, gathered his rangers and pathfinders
and struck for the north.
The clan-blooded exodites of Carnac, joined them on the path, their barbaric
faces scarred and painted, tattooed and menacing. Illic greeted them as friends,
knowing well their worth.
Now they waited, sons and daughters of the craftworld, of the exodites. The
souldark would die, decapitated by the swift vengeance of the eldar.
Illic Nightspear let slip a breath, snow melting before him, cameleoline cloaked
against the chill, against sight. His eyes, the arctic blue of glacial melt, glanced
to his right, to the nearest eldar. It took his eyes no time to see her. She was
hidden, this was true, against the prying eyes of lesser races. To Illic’s practiced
gaze she was as obvious as a mon-keigh. She was no expert at this craft, no
wanderer on the Path of the Outcast.
Catritheyn, farseer, adept of Eldorath Starbane, was draped in the same
cameleoline Illic was, camouflaged against casual observance. Her breath
steamed in the chill night air, her eyes crackled with witchlight as she read the
skein. Orange and purple, the skein bled from her eyes. Words, the hissed and
hunched words of the skein itself, boiled from her mouth. A smile played along
her lips.
The witchlights faded. She nodded towards Illic.
‘The souldark come,’ she whispered over the gentle hiss of falling snow.
A subtle ripple passed along the gorge as eldar shifted, readied, focused. There
was no telltale glint, no glimpse of flesh, tattooed or otherwise, no other marker
or signifier to hint that the strike force was there. There was merely the drifting
snow and the deep, dark night of the gorge.
Seconds later Illic’s eyes registered a difference within the blackness. Green,
unhealthy, alien, bright and unearthly light squirmed up from the depths.
The souldark. He had seen the colours before, the evidence of their passage, on
Cano’var, on Gellyk, on other worlds and other places. He remembered it all too
well. He almost wished for the mon-keigh to stand beside him once more. Illic
fingered the tribal fetish gifted to him by the human Space Marine.
There was no noise. There was no sound of the souldark, no sight, merely the
neon green. The light flickered, grew, deepened.
Cold unease crawled down Illic’s spine. Where were the sounds? Where were
the souldark themselves? There was only the glow to meet his eyes.
The green light flashed. The darkness illuminated with eldritch symbols,
flaring painfully bright.
Skeletal shapes scrawled across the walls, shadows leaping, marching. The
eldritch glow grew, revealing horror.
Rank after rank of souldark, deathless, ancient foes of the eldar race, silver
bones tarnished by the passage of aeons, emerged from the darkness.
They marched in silence. They marched in ranks. Illic felt the old hatred flare
in his breast, felt it burn.
Souldark. Necrons, The ancient foe.
At the heart of the souldark legions, at the centre, stood three figures. They

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