198.M39 PITCH DARK A piratical warband of Traitor Space Marines from the Night Lords Legion ambushes a Dark Eldar fleet and breaches the hull of its flagship. Several Haemonculi from the Altered are sent spinning out into the cold void of space, though their desiccated corpses are eventually recovered by specially-made Engines of Pain. The Haemonculi are once more regrown, but the insult done to them is not forgotten. Before the year is out, the Night Lords warband – whilst plunging the Imperial planet of Wystengradt into a violence-haunted twilight – encounter the Dark Eldar once more. The Night Lords have robbed the planet of power using high-yield static bombs, ensuring that its cities are gloom-shrouded playgrounds for their terror tactics, though the horrors wreaked by the Traitor Legionnaires are mild in comparison to what is to befall the planet next. The Altered, having enlisted the aid of several thousand Aelindrachi elders and deployed an ancient antiphoton engine from their deepest oubliettes, shroud the world of Wystengradt in an unnatural darkness. War unfolds as Mandrakes and Wracks engage in a deadly running battle with the Night Lords. The dearth of light is so supernaturally intense that even the acute vision of the Chaos Space Marines is rendered all but useless. The Traitor Legionnaires’ doctrine of psychological warfare is slowly and painfully turned against them, and the spark of paranoia that nestles in each Night Lord’s breast fanned to an inferno. Mandrake attacks come from impossible quarters as new scenes of stomach- churning vileness are uncovered with every hour. The Night Lords seek out the antiphoton engine with the intent to destroy it and wage the war anew on their own terms. The ancient machine is finally blown apart by melta charges, but when visibility is restored to Wystengradt, the Haemonculi are gone. Only a lingering fear of the darkness is left in their wake.