The Withered Land, The Empire Falls: ABYSSIUM

ABYSSIUM, Part One

"During the period immediately following the appearance of The Wound in Emperium-controlled Galactic Space, and synchronous with the beginning of the sequence of events known thereafter as "The Long Death", on the homeworld of Teshiwahur, there was an Age of Chaos and Unreason. It was a Time when political separatism, civil unrest, domestic terrorism and widespread violence tore at the fragile underpinnings of the sprawling Emperium's planetary dominion. World-Father Draggyn Han'Khainus-Galorketh, also called Nemesis of Chaos, and bearing the title of "Omniperator Cosmoterius", unleashed the anti-human, mutant fury of his fascist Special Operations Counter-Insurgency Forces, who were known as "The Nahztreme", against a populace unprepared to stand against such a wave of merciless savagery.

"Beyond the planetary confines of the fractious and combative continental territories, the Emperium was in the midst of its Third Cosmic Offensive against the Rayth'kine, a multitudinous, nomadic and violent alien nation that had arrived into Emperium-space through The Wound and who were greedily in search of new worlds to conquer and plunder. The Rayth'kine were relentless and merciless, possessing little in the way of psychology and sociology that was in common with human civilization. The Emperium's Extraplanetary Expansionist Forces, particularly the battalions of the Territorial Expanse SpecOps division, were hard pressed to hold the line against the terrible fury of the alien invaders and depended on the staggering technological might and firepower of the craggy disc-shaped moon called "Pex'Insava" to bolster their defensive efforts.

"Unknown to the enraged World-Father, there were persons of great and terrible power, persons possessed of extraordinary ability, among his own forces who were determined to stem the tide of tyranny -- regardless its source. And some of these people achieved legendary status as powerful shapers of history.

"One such person was named Draekasen Se'nurqille Predayas frae'Bluhd and he was a masterless knight, a former Outland Marshal, and an ex-Knight in service to the Council of Free Territories, a survivor of the Emperium Crusades into the savage realms of Jaggerheim and Vanhelmslund.

"But it is a known fact of the physical universe that for every force, there is a counter-force, that there is always a Dark to oppose the Light, and the direct equipoise offsetting the contest between that which was Just and that which was Unjust was no less than the Knight Draekesen's own brother, Qrystatos Fa'neel Mica Bluhd, more commonly known and feared as 'Bluhd the Butcher'..."

-- "Chronicles of the Kingdom of Dust", Tales of the Homeworld, Book II, following the Crusade After the 1st Continental Reconstruction, as re-told in Calindrogg's Wartime Histories After the Collapse, the Orbital Heliar 103, Post-Wound

"Daegroab pshe'nurh rebeth'negas,

binshelle, conau Abyssium-vey

ayi'nertor votu kep'jal'il'nu.

Nabek chixe'nar renai-renoi-ren'dreteg

umberna'broe do'quee Yarq'kun Xhohn'le..."

TRANSLATION:

"Come, I have, alone unto Abyssium,

weeping and bearing the stain of murder.

Let the beauty of My Darkness

bind you to Damnation."

-- Vizier Magestratorius Supreme, Lord Tahlesmaune, excerpt from the Preamble to The Dark Tekk Antecedents, "An Oratory Before the Reconstructive Congress of Hegemonic Dominion Mage Masters"

D'SPAYR, THE EARLY YEARS, continued:

It is five years, Earth-Time, following the events of the fall of Koombari City and the massacre at the Duskhelm Priory in Shidraih-Hakaba, and twelve years before D'Spayr's fateful meeting with the Sorcerer-Princess Nygeia and his brother-at-arms Lumynn. It is at this time that the bitter and battle-hardened young Knight is unwillingly drawn into a deadly conflict between the outlaw remnants of the Emperium's Interplanetary Territorial Expanse forces and a band of murderous Offworld alien invaders, deserters from the invading Rayth'kine, to Teshiwahur, the planet also called Brimstone.