In The Lore Explainer, we take a deep look at the lore behind our favorite games, movies, and books, and talk about the story behind them and sum up what you need to know and how you can find out more. In this article series, we’re looking at the lore behind the Damocles Gulf campaign in Warhammer 40,000.
If you missed any other parts of the Warzone: Damocles series up to now, here’s your chance to go back and catch the previous four:
- Part 1: The Taros Campaign
- Part 2: The Taros Air War
- Part 3: Apocalypse
- Part 4: Operation Shadowtalon and Burning Dawn
In October 2015 Games Workshop released the first major book of their seventh edition T’au campaign, Warzone Damocles: Kauyon. This book saw the T’au of Shadowsun’s Third Sphere Expansion face off against the Imperium in earnest, going up against White Scars and Raven Guard space marines, supported by Imperial Knights as they fought over the world of Prefectia in earnest.
As we mentioned last time, Prefectia’s importance here is more as a staging point for the T’au to begin their conquest of the entire Dovar System than its resources, though it’s also an “untapped reservoir of geomagnetic energy,” for whatever that’s worth in made-up sci-fi energy terms. For real life reference, geomagnetic energy is just the energy of a planet’s magnetic field, and Earth naturally generates that by having a bunch of molten metal spinning around its core. This is normally good for deflecting solar winds and harmful cosmic radiation but also is a problem because it can mess with electronics and can trap in harmful radiation in belts around the planets. On Earth these are referred to as the Van Allen radiation belt. Anyways, this is a long-winded way of saying that this is nonsense.
Kauyon picks up where Operation Shadotalon/Burning Dawn leave off, with Ethereal Aun’Do narrowly escaping the Raven Guard under the Command of fifth company captain Kyrin Solaq. The T’au strike at multiple planets, bypassing Voltoris to strike at Doth, Delinquence, and Carradon while reinforcing their efforts on Prefectia. The Imperium responded by committing forces to those same planets, and the Raven Guard and White Scars were dispatched to Prefectia, where Chapter Master Severax and Third Company Captain Kaayvan Shrike worked on guerilla campaigns looking for weaknesses in the T’au armor while the White Scars under Kor’sarro Khan just kept opting for fast strikes with his Stormlance battle company.
This more or less worked right into Shadowsun’s plans. She had learned a great deal about Imperial warfare from her time on Agrellan and Voltoris, particularly how Imperial leaders liked to fortify areas of ground they found significant. The T’au mirrored this by building a series of hexagonal fortifications around their outposts, fortified with guns and able to fire in any direction. Khan found this quaint – the T’au were learning from humanity and he’d just use the lessons of warfare from the last ten thousand years to break down their copied defenses. However Shadowsun’s plan was to get the Imperium into a siege mindest, then withdraw and have her opponents fall into a series of Kauyon traps. The T’au defensive structures were surprisingly mobile, and as the White Scars approached they found the fortifications were actually mobile ramparts that could rise and float away, pulling parts of the Scars’ armies apart as battlesuits descended upon the scattered forces and did considerable damage as the walls closed back in around the Scars to trap them in. The White Scars broke through this initial trap only to run into Shadowsun’s larger army, forcing them to fall back and nearly make a last stand until Imperial gunships could bail them out.
While this was going on, the Raven Guard were doing their thing, and staying secretive about it. They’d frequently do cool things like tell their allies they were going to do something and then not do it or do the opposite, just to throw off T’au forces who may have been eavesdropping on their comms. Naturally, this did not endear them to the rest of the Imperial forces, who thought they were untrustworthy jerks. They’d run into the same problem as the White Scars, striking at the T’au only to get caught in a trap and need timely help to dig their way out of it.
That said, the T’au were fighting a tough battle on their end. T’au forces were surprised at the Raven Guard’s ability to use cover, since they originally believed Marines didn’t use cover out of arrogance. Their biggest concern was keeping Shadowsun safe – Kor’sarro Khan had sworn an oath to take her head while the Raven Guard were conducting a planet-wide search and destroy mission for her. In his pride, Chapter Master Corvin Severax believed he could personally be the one to bring her down, and led the third company into battle against her forces. In the ensuing battle he tracked down Shadowsun and killed her… or at least he thought he did, right up until he was cut in half by a Ghostkeel piloted by Shadowsun. A decoy wearing a duplicate XV22 battlesuit was deployed (along with nine others) in her place, and while Severax was gloating over having killed her, she snuck up behind him and delivered the killing blow.
This was meant to be the big victory for the T’au, having killed the “warrior-king” of the Space Marines, and the loss of Severax sent the Raven Guard reeling. The T’au Empire’s hold on Prefectia grew stronger and as the new Ghostkeel suits were deployed on the planet their grip only tightened. However they underestimated the Space Marines, believing their morale would be spent after the death of their king. This was very far from the truth.
In the aftermath of Severax’s death, Kaayvan Shrike of the Third Company was named the new Chapter Master of the Raven Guard. Shrike understood that the Marines’ numbers had been cut down too far for them to achieve total victory and that they’d have to work together with the White Scars to succeed at all. Shrike had seen firsthand the difference psykers could make in battle against the T’au and had Kor’sarro Khan call on his Stormseers to create storms that could conceal their movements and break when they’d need it most.
The alliance of the two forces proved much more difficult for the T’au, and when the White Scars and Raven Guard acted in concert, forces from T’au and Vior’la were pressed much harder. Meanwhile reinforcements arrived to help, most notably the Knights of House Terryn. The T’au attempt to deploy Riptides to stop House Terryn’s Knights was completely ineffectual, as in the lore knight ion shields are more or less impenetrable and not unreliable garbage that only deflects a third of incoming attacks.
So it was time for the T’au to unveil their other new development, the KV128 Stormsurge ballistic suits, the largest and most powerful war machines the Fire Caste had yet brought to battle. These massive suits towered over Riptides and had some incredibly sick guns. While the Knights kept their ion shields rotated toward the Stormsurges ahead of them, Stealth Teams and Ghostkeels attacked them with fusion weapons from the sides and Knights began to fall, including the vaunted Obsidian Knight. The loss of the Freeblade turned the tide of the battle, and Imperium forces fell back to regroup as they realized Shadowsun had already left the battle.
This infuriated Kor’sarro Khan, who was desperate to kill her and starting to realize that the entire campaign was a trap to lure the Imperium’s strongest warriors into a series of battles that would wear them down through attrition. He and Shrike argued over how they should feel about getting their asses kicked before heading to the extraction point.
On the T’au side, it was time to figure out next steps, and war councils debated how to proceed. The T’au renamed Prefectia “Vas’talos,” which means “boundless scope,” a clear signal of the belief that unbrided expansion was around the corner. Many of the Fire Caste believed they should consolidate their gains, but Aun’Va overruled the council, saying that the expeditionary force would divide its strength, one half pushing into the Dovar system as the other half returned to fortify their supply routes to Mu’gulath Bay (formerly Agrellan). On the T’au comms channels word was already spreading of their great success, and of Shadowsun’s victory on Prefectia. They reported that the grand monarch of the Space Marines had been slain, a grim-faced figure in black armor. And they reported on the devastating new war machines which had brought that victory, the Ghostkeel and the Stormsurge.
The Rules
Like the entries in the Shield of Baal campaign before it, Kauyon is split into two books, one for the lore and one for the rules. The rulebook has rules for running missions in the Kauyon campaign as well as new rules for new T’au units and Detachments, and Detachments and rules for the White Scars and Raven Guard – though many of these rules, such as the Detachments, were also meant to be used by any Space Marines army.
The Missions
There are eight missions in this book, and they can be run as a sequential campaign, with rules for what bonuses each side will receive in the next mission after a win.
- The Martyrs’ Charge –Â This one sees White Scars rushing out to meet T’au forces, trying to strike at a Tau force in the center of the battlefield before they’re outflanked by T’au reinforcements.
- Ploys and Ruses –Â This mission has Raven Guard forces taking on a T’au army with Tidewall Defence Network fortifications. Again, the T’au hold a major part of their army in reserves to close in on the Raven Guard mid-battle.
- Bringing the Storm –Â White Scars forces redouble their efforts to bring down the T’au and are again surrounded.
- Death Run –Â This is a much more unique mission, designed to be an air battle using flyers on a table that is 24″ wide but 18 feet long. That said, it’s also a rolling road mission, so each round the battlefield moves along, only showcasing the current 72″ span. This was designed to be done with Citadel realm of battle tiles, so you’re instructed to pick up one tile and add a new one to the other end, moving the remaining two down each time.
- To Sever the Head –Â This is Severax’s big attempt to kill Shadowsun. It has a cool rule in that you pick a Ghostkeel to be the real Shadowsun and it gets BS 5 (or BS 2+ in modern terms).
- The Khan and the Raven –Â The White Scars and Raven Guard team up in a mission that has to include Kor’sarro and Shrike.
- The Surging Storm –Â This mission has Imperial Knights of House Terryn squaring off against the T’au with the focus here being KV128 Stormsurge battlesuits.
- Blood and Vengeance –Â The big “final battle” between Imperial and T’au forces of this book, with electrical storms raging overhead.
These missions are fine. They’re not as imaginative as some of the others we’ve seen in prior books, but that Death Run mission is pretty cool.
White Scars
The White Scars received their own Chapter rules for this book, for the first time in seventh edition and really giving them more detail than they’d had since Index Astartes back in third. They gained a “Decurion”-style army structure, able to build an army of Detachments like the Stormlance Battle Demi-Company, and if you built your army this way your units would gain the powerful Hit and Run special rule, plus an extra D6″ when advancing. They also got their own Relics and Warlord Traits.
Raven Guard
The Raven Guard also received a similar treatment here, with the Pinion Battle Demi-Company as their core organizational structure, plus detachments, warlord traits, and relics.
Tau Empire
Finally, the T’au made out best in this book, with not just new Detachments but new units here. The T’au army could be built around a series of Detachments similar to the others, starting with the Huntre Cadre Detachment. The big new unit rule additions here were the Ghostkeel and Stormsurge, the latter of which had a memorably large gun.
Final Thoughts
Some of the coolest moments in this book focus on the T’au more or less finding out about how messed up the Imperium is, like when they find a missile guided by a mutilated person/servitor instead of using an artificial intelligence guidance system. “They believe their machines have souls,” Shadowsun reasons, “and perhaps this is how they guarantee it to be the case.” Or thinking Severax was the humans’ “warrior-king,” given the marines’ backwards, superstitious culture. Shadowsun uses this to her advantage in battle as well, creating flashes of light and white armor using the decoy XV22 suits to create doubt and superstition among the white scars, rumors of something called “the Void Ghost,” which could steal battle-brothers away in the night.
Overall this book goes back to the pattern of “T’au stay winning,” and sets us up for the almost inevitable retaliation blow in the follow-up book. Again, as much fun as it is to watch the fledgling T’au win battled with things like “technological innovation” and “flexible tactics,” they’re still massively outmatched by the Imperium. And that’s before you consider that the T’au just cannot match the Imperium’s ability to travel quickly through the warp. The T’au thinking they’ve won because they killed the Space Marines’ king is a fun indicator of this – they have no idea of the scope and scale of the Imperium, nor how the Space Marines are truly structured.
Next time around we’ll finally jump into the meat of the Damocles campaign, with the final book in the two-part campaign series released in seventh edition. Stay tuned next week for week for War Zone Damocles, Part 6: Mont’ka.
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