#nenime

Do you have to tell her?

(HH2.0) Zone Mortalis Mission: Relics of the Crone

Players: Loyalist Space Wolves & Aeldari Relic Hunter vs. Traitor Warbands

Mission Type: Zone Mortalis, with custom Arcane Objectives.

Mission Special Rules

1. Warp-Touched Battlefields:

The Crone World’s residual psychic energy seeps into everything, affecting both sides unpredictably.

At the start of each turn, roll a D6 for each unit on the battlefield.

On a roll of 6:

Warp Empowered: The unit gains +1 Strength until the end of the turn.

On a roll of 1:

Warp Drained: The unit suffers -1 Toughness until the end of the turn.

2. Clarity of Purpose (Loyalists)

The Space Wolves' drive to return to their Primarch sharpens their focus.

Whenever a Space Wolves unit completes a successful charge, they gain +1 to their Attack characteristic in the Fight phase of that turn.

3. Shadowed Foes (Traitors)

The Traitor forces are bolstered by malevolent warp echoes within the Crone World, granting them an unnatural resilience.

Traitor units gain +1 to their Leadership when in combat within 6" of an Arcane Objective and can re-roll failed Morale tests.

4. Phantom Whispers

The palaces of the Crone World are haunted by the echoes of tortured Aeldari souls. These whispers linger near the relics, confusing the minds of those who venture too close.

At the beginning of each turn, any unit within 3” of an Arcane Objective must pass a Leadership test or reduce their Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill by 1 for that turn as the voices of the past unnerve them.

Primary Objective: Arcane Relics

Three Arcane Objectives (relics) are scattered across the battlefield in strategic positions. Each objective represents an ancient, potent artifact, attuned to the psychic resonance of the Crone World.

Activation: A non-Vehicle unit in base contact with an Arcane Objective may attempt to activate it at the end of the Movement phase. Roll a D6, adding +1 if Nenime is part of the unit:

On a 3+, the objective is activated and claimed.

On a 6, the objective is overcharged. Consult the Arcane Objective Table below for a bonus effect.

Points Scored: Each Arcane Objective controlled at the end of the game is worth 5 Victory Points.

Secondary Objective: Protect the Relic Hunter

The Traitor forces have recognized Neni’s importance to the Space Wolves’ mission. They’ve been ordered to capture or eliminate her.

Victory Points: If Nenime survives until the end of the game, the Loyalist side scores 3 Victory Points. If Nenime is slain, the Traitors score 3 Victory Points instead.

Deployment & Game Length Deployment:

Both forces deploy at opposite ends of the Crone World ruin. Game Length: The mission lasts for 5 turns or until one side is completely eliminated.

Arcane Objective Table

If an Arcane Objective is activated with a roll of 6, roll a D6 on the Arcane Objective Table to determine the artifact’s unique effect. This effect applies to the unit that activated it.

D6 Roll Artifact Effect

1 Crown of Cruelty: The unit gains +1 to their charge rolls for the rest of the game.

2 Aegis of the Dominion: The unit gains a 5+ invulnerable save for the next two turns.

3 Veil of Shadows: The unit may be replaced anywhere on the battlefield, at least 9" from an enemy unit.

4 Sword of Khaine: The unit gains +1 Strength and +1 Attack for the next Fight phase.

5 Prophecy of the Fall: The unit may re-roll all failed hit rolls in the next Shooting phase.

6 Soulstone Menhir: The unit gains +1 to their Leadership and ignores Morale tests permanently.

~🍋~

NENIME

Unit Type: Unique Character, Infantry

Points: 130

M: 8" | WS: 5 | BS: 4 | S: 3 | T: 3 | W: 3 | I: 6 | A: 4 | Ld: 9 | Sv: 4+

Wargear:

Ghostblade of the Lost Stars: +1 Strength, AP2, Rending (5+), Master-crafted, Ghoststrike: Re-roll failed wound rolls against targets with higher Toughness.

Aeldari Refractor Field: 4+ invulnerable save.

Neuro-Disruptor: Range: 12", Strength: 4, AP2, Pistol 1, Instant Death, Shred.

Raven-Feather Cloak: +1 Leadership to friendly units within 6" and immunity to morale-based psychic effects.

Special Rules:

Lightning Reflexes: 6+ Feel No Pain.

Walked the Eye of Terror: Once per game, Nenime may add or subtract 1 from the result on the Arcane Objective Table.

Grace of the Banshee: Enemy units within 3” must pass a Leadership test or suffer -1 WS for the turn.

Eldar Battle Agility: Nenime ignores penalties from difficult terrain.

[🎨 by @merry-brandyfuck ]

By the Steward Sulime Arenan, with notes by the Lady Y'pollea.

Before spring comes the longest night of winter.

It began in tragedy. Nenime had returned from wild space and taken a commanding role beside our mother, Matriarch Yavannie [1]. Their first expedition took them and a mighty force of a hundred and nine warriors to what had seemed like a miracle.

Beforehand, the Crone-Council of Iybraesil had been battered by visions of a wonder born from the elder days, a time when the newborn aeldari race had fought against the devourer gods of the Necrontyr. Some called it a shrine to lost powers. Others, an altar of martial resurrection. A few understood it as a workshop to engineer an empire. It was a jewel in the skeins. It came to be called the Nexus of Fate [2].

Such had been the potency and headiness of those visions that Matriarch Yavannie was persuaded to gather her forces in haste. An influential autarch along the southern habitats of Iybraesil, Matriarch Yavannie did not wait for further reinforcements. So it was that a reclamation force composed of aspect warriors and militia sworn to the House of Arenan was readied to traverse the most treacherous spars of the webway.

Only Nenime spoke out against the expedition.

The Crone-Council was emminently wise, Nenime argued, but the treasures of the past were seldom so benign [3]. She knew as much. Great treasures often came at a great cost. Turn away, this promised wonder, she said, was simply another weapon. Our Fall had damned our foreseeable fate, but so too had it cursed the remnants of our past.

Slowly, strangely, the council began speaking of the imminent restoration of the grand Aeldari Dominion.

They had become fixed and intolerant of dissent. To speak of tools of war was one thing, but to take it a step further... Nenime called it delusional. Foolish. Evil.

First, Nenime tried to charm. Then she begged. Finally, she threatened. It was only when the Council suggested that Matriarch Yavannie would be sent into the impossible labyrinth without her youngest daughter that Nenime seemed to relent. It was Nenime who led Iybraesil's forces through the webway, making use of all the skills she had developed as a Voidscarred. What Matriarch Yavannie thought of Nenime's disquiet, we do not know. Mother and daughter keep their secrets. What is known is that the expedition continued without further delay; the reclamation force arrived at the Nexus of Fate, and all went wrong [4].

It was like a dark diamond, feeding parasitically on the star it orbited. Further words fail to encompass what Matriarch Yavannie's force discovered, but it can be said that the Nexus was not unlike a vault. Charged aether-crystal assemblies lay in darkness, starsteel forges lay silent. There were armaments, precursors to high aeldari art, and towering constructs armed with the same. That was not all. There were other, stranger weapons, clearly meant for different beings. The wonder could not have lasted long. For a moment, the hopes of the Crone-Council seemed realized, but as the force delved deeper and scattered throughout the vault, not all was as it seemed. The Nexus would be no birthplace of glory. Honor would never be drawn from that place. The Dominion would never rise again.

The Great Enemy, Chaos, nested at the heart of the Nexus.

Whatever polarity wards had shielded the Nexus from the energies it fed upon had been shattered, inverted by the psychic backlash of the Fall. Matriarch Yavannie's arrival had at long last awoken the ancient evil slumbering at its heart. Nenime had been right, alas. Yet even she could not have imagined the extent of the horror.

More predators loomed in the shadows of the Nexus.

Led by the haruspicy of Dark City Heg-Crones and the tortured visions of psychic medusae, a substantial party of kabalite trueborn and incubi sworn to the Kabal of the Dying Sun had lingered in the shadowed hull of the Nexus, awaiting the glory and terror that came from hunting their own kin. The Dracon at their head had promised his followers ample opportunity to sate their inherent murder-lust. Above all, he offered his starveling killers the chance to claim waystones from those they felled, for a shattered waystone is a vaunted status symbol among the warrior cults of Commorragh.

Their intent was not to claim the Nexus, but to use it as a hunting ground. The Drukhari either did not know, or did not care for the weapons within. They waited in the shadows, eager for the moment in which they could strike the most dolorous blow.

It is impossible to say how or when the attack began. We know the constructs shivered to life, revealing a corruption that had lain dormant and concealed but a moment before. Pale creations, maliciously possessed by the archenemy, fell upon the reclamation force with mighty weapons of old, horn, and claw. Six herald daemonettes screamed light into the dark in rapturous revelry. Daemonic trills and the cloying scent of ancient doom filled the air as the true master of the Nexus stepped forth from the vault's warp-tainted heart: The hymns of lamentation refer to this entity as the Sorrowsister, servant of Sai'lanthresh, the exalted Keeper of Secrets, Ni'nui. Her daemonic legion had infested the Nexus eons before and fate had at last delivered playthings onto her cruel playground.

It was as Matriarch Yavannie's forces reeled, and surely sought to extricate themselves from the unfolding disaster, that the Drukhari revealed themselves. The ambush had been well planned; null-slaves had been placed throughout the nearest webway accesses as to prevent the withdrawal of their Asuryani prey. Incubi prowled with with klaives as preening kabalites roamed in packs, all intent on the foulest murder [5]. A vicious three-way battle ensued.

It can only be said with certainty that the mother sought to keep the forces of the archenemy at bay whilst the daughter sought an exit through the Drukhari, or some way, any way, to get her sisters in arms out. In time, Nenime came across her counterpart, the Dracon of the Dying Sun [6]. There was no glory in this encounter. The raiders had lingered less than a fortnight, but that had been enough for their Dracon to fall victim to a particular kind of madness. The Dracon, it seems, had become obsessed with the dominance the Nexus held over its star. So apparent had been his deterioration that, as the Iybraesil strike-force arrived, his warlords had wrested command of the ambush and abandoned their master to his own obsessions.

As the ambush began, the Dracon looked upon the emaciated star from some chamber, heatshields lowered, visual filters drawn. He had even removed his armor, to feel the heat upon his flesh. The Nexus was so close to its star that the light within was blinding, the heat blistering. That was when Nenime faced the Dracon.

Unbeknownst to all, as the atrocity raged, the mad Dracon had set the Nexus on a plummeting dive into its star, so that all might be consumed in dying, solar glory. Nenime slew him, and took from his remains a remote that would detonate the collars of the scattered null-slaves. At last, the survivors could attempt an escape.

Trapped in its headlong plunge, the Nexus could not be saved.

By now, breaking apart and suffused with unbearable heat and brilliance, it had become apparent that the farce was at an end. The Drukhari were sated; their warlords gathered what forces they cared to save and slinked away to safety. Even the heralds of the Sorrowsister fled with their own favorites. Nenime rallied what forces she could, saving what waystones she could, and found Matriarch Yavannie locked in mortal combat against the Sorrowsister.

Matriarch Yavannie, head of the House of Arenan, Mother to three, had already been wounded half a dozen times. The Matriarch plunged her blade through the creature's heart even as she was speared through her side.

Accounts fail us. Nenime added her own blade to her mother's and the Sorrowsister was banished for a thousand years, until the seasons wheeled and the creature once again brought sorrow to Iybraesil [7].

The disaster was complete. Nenime returned home with ten other survivors and our mother's remains [8].

All of Iybraesil mourned. Our father decided Nenime would be the first to walk the path of grief, followed by her elder sisters. House and craftworld came together to celebrate the life of Yavannie Arenan, faithful and dauntless, but Nenime remained as a woman in a nightmare.

What shades lay in her heart then none could say. Many believed that it was the longest night of winter in her soul. Doubtless it was so, but when Nenime looked out into the night she wondered at a deeper darkness. What was her fate, if not to stand beside our mother? So too did she yearn for justice. The Sorrowsister's heralds were still out there; the Drukhari warlords were still at large.

An age had come to and end. Neniwe, the Springsong, yet remained in silence and ruin.

Telling no one, Nenime strayed from the sorrow-path and set plans into motion. For even after the longest night comes morning, when shadows grow long.

~🧿~

[1]: Thankfully, Nenime's first forays into corsairhood lie beyond the purview of this account. Suffice it to say, she made the right friends and sucked up to the right people. You gotta give it to her. She's got guts and a killer form with sword and pistol. Nenime had risen respectably high among the corsairs of Math'lannor when she got homesick and decided it was time to go home.

[2]: Nenime rarely speaks of it, but when she does, she calls it a farce.

[3] This has to be the nicest thing Nenime has ever said about those old hags, plainly.

[4]: How did Nenime foresee that particular calamity? Most kinda guess that it was her corsair's instinct, the one she had earned during her service to Princess Math'elenna. Nenime had indeed walked on many Croneworlds and fetched her fair share of soulstones. But that's just caution. Too simple. When I imagine Nenime before Iybraesil's mummified council, I sense a certain omniscient horror in her voice as she speaks. They drag her out and she cries, 'You don't know what you're doing!'. Maybe that's just me. Something was screaming in her, right? Perhaps she felt the touch of Ynnead even then.

[5]: Nenime thrice reached out to the raiding party's six warlords, sybarites and hierarchs both, with entreaties once it became apparent doom would envelop them all. Her offers were rudely rejected.

[6]: His name goes unrecorded. Nenime claims she genuinely can't remember.

[7]: The archenemy attacked Iybraesil as the Dathedain tore the galaxy a new one. Nenime’s role during this - can’t we talk about that instead? (S: No. Please adhere to the standards discussed) Whatever.

Raven Rest

The home of several Corsair kin-bands, Iybraesil outcasts, and the descendants of no less than three Exodite worlds, Raven Rest is a lively little town nestled between the Rookery mountain and the Y’pollean sea.

The City of Leaves

For how long have these spires and domes stood undisturbed but for the rustling of leaves? The learned suggest the City of Leaves was once an exodite colony, abandoned for the safety of a passing craftworld. But why, and what became of the original inhabitants of Springsong? Alas, we cannot know for certain. Scant evidence remains of this vanished maritime people. The city’s true name is lost to time. The jungle has laid claim to what once was.

For a time, only the port and its webway gate saw use and habitation, for a southern road toward Raven Rest had been laid through the jungle by the Heg Ravens. Yet footfalls ride the alley winds once more. This most elder of cities has seen a rebirth in lanterns and bright banners. The City of Leaves is to host the grand Feast of Blades, an event renowned among western corsairs, along with several plays and a scavenger hunt.