Gateway to Hell
The Gateway to Hell Campaign was a series of battles between the orks and the craftworld aeldari on the world of B7 in the IOL-9 system, far removed from the eyes and ears of the Imperium of Man. It involved the forces of both Craftworlds Ulthwé and Iybraesil, under the command of Farseers Vahlkaer and Taliesin respectively, pitted against the orks of Sirrus Bizniz and Guluk da Git - Goff Rokkers and Blood Axe mercenaries of Da Two Worlds Waaagh.
Previous Works and Prelude
Goff warboss Sirrus Bizniz, following a string of skirmishes with the aeldari (and Guluk da Git, who joined in the fun once he realised that Goff Rokk was actually alright), discovered that wraithbone (or “wurrbone” as the orks called it) had acoustic properties when hit in specific ways. After searching for sites from which to gather it with varying degrees of success, he eventually hit the motherlode: A strange arch-like structure surrounded by obelisks, all built of wurrbone. Immediately setting his grots to the task of gathering as much as possible, he also started building a colossal stage within the arch. Using it as psychic percussion he had his rokkers, under the direction of Guluk’s weirdboy psyker, produce rokk never before experienced by the orks of the Eridani sector. Slowly but surely more orks gathered, the rokk rising in percussive intensity (and volume) as they did so.
Farseer Vahlkaer of Craftworld Ulthwé felt these reverberations while meditating on the skeins of fate. Through them he saw exactly what the orks were banging on, and the ripples being sent across the other side of the dormant webway gate into the dark city of Commorragh itself. The obelisks were warnings to stay away, for the gate had long since become a portal into the depths of the nightmare city, a Gateway into Hell. Worse, the orks had set one particular future in motion: The Drukhari were coming to Eridani, and would doubtless take a sick pleasure in the unravelling of both his plans and the designs of Farseer Taliesin of Craftworld Iybraesil. He contacted his fellow seer and together they concocted a plan of action - one that was likely to result in fewer Aeldari lives lost, and objectives interfered with, than if they allowed the Drukhari free reign.
The plan was, at its heart, simple. Their best course of action was to convince the orks to remain where they were in IOL-9, and ideally to raise defences that the drukhari would not be expecting to encounter immediately upon entering realspace. The complication was ork nature: By the time the drukhari arrived it was likely that the leaders of the horde would have grown bored and moved on, invariably taking the vast majority of their boys with them. The logical course of action, then, was to provoke the orks into digging in and building the fortifications the aeldari desired. This was to be achieved with violence.
The Debut Album
Farseer Vahlkaer made his first move a trap for Sirrus Bizniz, the Goff Warboss in charge of the ork operation on Iol-9. Though hastily constructed and likely too crude to fool anyone other than an ork, he set out largely useless caches of supplies throughout an area of wasteland Loec’s rangers drew Sirrus into. Sirrus led his boys to retrieve the supplies, as well as to find out exactly which git had been pilfering his stage building spanners, and walked into a waiting Ulthwé strike force. The fight went well for the aeldari who killed swathes of orks, though unexpected teleporting burna boyz forced Vahlkaer himself to quit the field with a frankly heroic charge. Given a choice between certain death by fire or a one millionth of a second traversing the warp to escape he chose the latter, though he was beset almost immediately by daemons. Vahlkaer survived the ordeal, though he sustained a deep psychic scar that would take some time to heal. In the closing stages of the fight the remaining orks began to rout, carefully guided by aeldari fire towards their main base at the webway gate. Unfortunately this “guiding” fire proved too much for Sirrus, who while his orks continued fleeing decided enough was enough and that he would stand his ground. He broke the striking scorpions of the Shrine of the Splintered Shade in impressive fashion, dealing a crippling blow to the shrine that would last until the end of the campaign. His point made and facing advancing aeldari guns, Sirrus then followed his boys back towards the main stage - though he had wreaked too much carnage for the aeldari to convincingly be able to call the battle anything more than a stalemate.
Farseer Taliesin met with more success with his opening gambit. Guluk da Git, Warboss of da Two Worlds Waaaagh!, had taken up residence in an outpost on the very periphery of the rings of wraithstone obelisks that served as warnings to not approach the dormant gate at their centre. He showed no desire to move himself, so the aeldari of Craftworld Iybraesil resolved to make the base unlivable - destroying its power supply and other key systems that would force Guluk to head back towards the main base of operations. This they achieved, with the seer Osinell and a handful of guardians performing well against a large mob of assaulting orks. Though Osinell himself was badly wounded in the attempt, their sacrifice bought time for the rest of the Iybraesil to successfully destroy enough of the outpost such that Guluk abandoned it, falling back towards the main stage.
The Sophomore Efforts
Though the orks were moving in the intended direction, they required further shepherding from the aeldari. A larger assault on the main structure was also necessary once the orks had gathered, and as such scouts would be needed to ascertain the lay of the land.
To the latter end Farseer Vahlkaer attempted to break past Guluk’s retreating boys in order to reconnoitre the coming battlefield, while also making it clear to the orks that they still only had one way to go. This initially went well for the Ulthwé until Guluk (much like Sirrus previously) decided he’d had enough “pansy bollocks” and ordered his boys to counter attack. They succeeded in ripping a wave serpent transport apart and exposing Vahlkaer who was sheltering inside, still reeling from his mental battle with the forces of the warp. Though the black guardians inside fell in the ensuing melee, the timely arrival of Exarch Isenmon and his Shrine of the Slicing Noose at the rear of the ork charge cut away the bulk of their numbers. Vahlkaer, head pounding and in a foul mood, obliterated those that remained with characteristic lightning bolts from on high. Ultimately the aeldari achieved victory with flanking Warwalkers and Isenmon’s Warp Spiders slipping past the surviving orks, who continued to fall back into the main arena.
Taliesin’s attention, therefore, was turned to Sirrus Bizniz. Attempting to keep the Goff Warboss from deviating from the path set out was not difficult as the main stage was the obvious place to be in the event of an attack as far as Sirrus was concerned - the issue was the number of orks he was gathering to him as he went. In an effort to thin their numbers Taliesin ordered a strike against his forces, stepping in and crippling a unit of killa kans that emerged from a small ork shanty town. Unfortunately this left Taliesin’s forces unexpectedly exposed in the face of an extremely belligerent ork counterattack as Sirrus continued to make various points, at one stage charging directly through a wall to get to grips with the elusive Farseer himself - who he promptly ground into the mud. The picture was similar through the rest of the engagement, with the aeldari taking heavy losses despite some heroics from Osinell and the swooping hawks of the Shrine of Fate’s Cast. These ended with a vicious deffkopta strafing run (and assault), leaving the Iybraesil force in tatters. Satisfied he’d won, Sirrus made it back to the main stage.
The Gig
The Set-up
With the orks gathered in the one place the aeldari needed to hit them hard enough that they felt the need to defend it - this meant it was time for the two warhosts to fight as one. Vahlkaer and Taliesin, while both accomplished seers, knew full well that their previous joint venture ended less than perfectly. Consequently, an expert in the ways of war was required.
Fortunately among Host Vahlkaer there was one such warrior: Autarch Ahlethanar Ishaneth. He was an experienced admiral and general, and voluntarily took to the field for the first time in the Eridani Sector on Iol-9, to lead where the council of seers lacked expertise.
The orks had built a crude stage around the webway gate and were using it as percussion in the making of their goffic rokk. This, coupled with the direction of an ork weirdboy, was the cause of the reverberations through the webway the drukhari were being called by. Their position was fortified, for though it had been built more as a temple to their barbaric rokker subculture than a fortress, orkoid engineering was invariably armoured, thickly sheeted in metal and robust.
The Stakes
The now combined forces of the aeldari launched a daring hit and run raid against the amassed forces of both the blood axes and the goffs. The aeldari objective was to hit them hard enough that the orks felt the need to dig in and fortify their base of operations against further potential attacks, while not losing so many warriors themselves that the orks believed they no longer posed a credible threat. Should they not believe there to be any real attacks still to come it was likely the orks would leave by the time the drukhari activated the gate and came through. This was unacceptable to forces that had already sacrificed much.
Known only to Vahlkaer (though he ominously hinted at it with Taliesin), there was another future in which the orks were still around when the drukhari arrived: Should the orks defeat the craftworlders decisively, it was highly likely they would begin a great celebration that would last until the arrival of the drukhari, drawing ever more greenskins to the site as they did so to get in on the good times. Though they would undoubtedly be intoxicated and without fortified positions, the sheer number of orks would pose (somewhat of) an obstacle to the emerging dark kin. Obviously the cost to this future was a completely unacceptable number of aeldari dead... Though it would still yield something of the ends Vahlkaer desired.
The Main Show
The orks, spurred on by Guluk and Sirrus, promptly charged the moment the aeldari arrived at the periphery of the arena, ignoring their defences in a mad sprint that took the aeldari completely by surprise. A flanking force of striking scorpions, guided by Autarch Ahlethanar, were immediately beset by deffkoptas - which they ably destroyed, only to then be mobbed and broken by vengeful orks. Though Ahlethanar and Exarch Morrorith acquitted themselves admirably, they were unable to remain in the fight, forced to withdraw or face certain death.
The aeldari quickly regained their composure, and formed a firing line that gave even battle hungry orks mid charge pause for thought. Vahlkaer gave the signal to fire in emphatic fashion - obliterating most of a squad of stormboys in flight with a bolt of lighting from the sky that sent their charred remains falling among their kin. The following storm of fire, ably supported by Taliesin’s council of seers, cut a full half of the ork’s advance to gory ribbons. Guluk da Git was only saved by activating his personal tellyporta as a swarm of tank-killing seeker missiles arced through the sky towards him, re-emerging on his ship and wondering what had just happened. As the smoke cleared, only Sirrus Bizniz still stood in no man’s land.
Sirrus, enraged by the devastation wreaked upon his boys, charged the aeldari line alone. Though the Black Guardians of Ulthwé heroically stepped up to receive him and limit the number of aeldari he could reach they were smashed aside by the raging warboss, though not before badly wounding him with searing plasma fire from their starcannon platform. Though he had scattered and broken the Dark House, Sirrus could not withstand the punishing Iybraesil fusillade that came after - finally falling to the dire avengers of the Shrine of the Fallen Moon. The alarming charge largely dealt with, the aeldari then set about pushing into the stage network and clearing those orks out that had not followed their bosses. Exarch Isenmon and his Slicing Noose, along with the swooping hawks of the Shrine of Fate’s Cast, emerged from the warp and sky - and though they paid for it with several valuable aeldari lives succeeded (in concert with the advancing main aeldari force) in digging out and killing the orks within.
What followed was a short, bloody affair in which the last remnants of ork resistance were put down hard - though the aeldari were sure not to kill every ork they found. They culled enough that their safe retreat was assured, but left enough wounded or broken that they would be able to rebuild. A crippling blow dealt to the orks, and the future in which they built up as many defences as they could against potential aeldari raids secured, the twin war hosts melted away as quickly as they had arrived. They stopped only to gather their dead and wounded, for they could already feel the reverberations coming now from the other side of the gate. The drukhari were coming, arrival could be at any time.
Outtros
Goff Rokkers
In the aftermath of the fighting Sirrus came round after having miraculously survived charging a full aeldari gun line. He found his base mysteriously intact, though almost totally bereft of living orks, and there was no sign of the pansy attackers that had struck without warning. He decided to build fortifications into his stage and arena complex, because there were doubtless more orks about, the wurrbone was still there and dead wurry when hit right, and the pansies would probably be back again. If he stuck to it he’d get the best of both worlds: Wurry goff rokk and krumpin’ - even if it was only pansies that showed up. He didn’t know how right he was about to be...
Da Two Worlds Waaagh
Guluk da Git, pleased that his tellyporta was still working as intended, decided to leave Sirrus to it and head back to Boff’s Rok. While it had been fun to fight with the goffs for a while, he was a mercenary at heart, and he wondered what the future held for him and his Two Worlds Waaagh!. A living legend among the orks (who conveniently also had no idea what had happened on Iol-9), Guluk knew he’d have no trouble raising whatever hell he liked. The Eridani Sector was, as the orks say, his teef-squig.
Craftworld Iybraesil
Farseer Taliesin, now a legend among the Iybraesil for his actions thus far in Eridani, returned to his chambers and pondered. The campaign had been a success, and unarguably for the good of both Iybraesil and Ulthwé - and both Vahlkaer’s work and his own efforts in Eridani were things that justified further drastic action... But even so it was difficult to celebrate. Many aeldari had died and there was much mourning to be done. He considered the idea of a joint ceremony for the dead, from both Iybraesil and Ulthwé, closure for their families, knowledge that death came in the service of a higher cause - the defence of not one but two craftworlds. It was hard to celebrate what they had done.
Craftworld Ulthwé
Aboard the Spear of Ulthanash, Vahlkaer Creidann sat deep in meditation. His head pounded, the psychic wound he’d taken in the early stages of the campaign still far from healed. He worked through the pain for he had little time to rest - endlessly scrying all manner of dark fates as the ship carried him back towards the Maiden World of Llaeth, the better to cheat them all in the name of his people. He had little time to spare for the fallen; there was nothing he could do for them and they had few uses in the work to come. Vahlkaer looked to the future, as he always did: In many of the grim events that followed the Gateway to Hell campaign, the forces of Craftworld Ulthwé remained concealed under his guidance... Almost as if they knew what was coming.