Act 1: The Ashes of T'ros'ka - Mission 1: Scorched Fields

 Mission 1: Scorched Fields.

The sun over T’ros’ka burned low and red, casting long shadows across fields that had once fed an entire sept. Irrigation towers lay shattered, their elegant Tau curves split open and smoking. Fires crept through the crops in slow, hungry lines. Among the ruins, armored figures moved with brutal efficiency—Abhuman Squat mercenaries, methodically executing Tau farmers who had survived the initial orbital strike. Their armor was thick, scarred, and utilitarian; their weapons spat death without ceremony.

From the edge of the scorched fields, a joint Aeldari–Tau crew advanced in silence. Shuriken fire whispered through the smoke while pulse rifles cracked in sharp, disciplined bursts. The combined force moved with purpose toward the remains of a fallen irrigation tower, its exposed dataservers sparking and half-buried in ash. Whoever these mercenaries were, the answers would be in that wreckage. 

Voss and the mercenary captain in single combat

As the firefight intensified, the sniper drone BF1942 rose smoothly into the air, its optics locking onto a high vantage point. For a heartbeat, it had the perfect firing lane—then its systems froze. A mandatory driver update scrolled uselessly across its interface. A second later, Squat troopers turned their guns skyward, and the drone was torn apart in a storm of rounds, its wreckage crashing into the dirt below.

Near the center of the field, Aeldari Captain Voss stepped forward, blade flashing as he met the mercenary leader in brutal single combat. Steel rang against alien alloy. The Squat leader fought like a living bulwark, and despite Voss’s speed and skill, a crushing blow sent the Aeldari reeling, wounded and bleeding. Before the mercenary could finish him, a Kaelor Veylar broke cover, leveled her weapon, and cut the leader down with a swipe of her wraithbone blade.

On the far flank, Aeldari runners darted across the battlefield, vaulting craters and sliding through smoke to reinforce the Tau Pathfinders. From close range, shuriken pistols screamed, shredding armor and felling the Squats’ heavy gunner. The clash reached its violent peak as both sides fought amid fire and falling debris.

'Coldshot' finishes off a mercenary trooper

At the heart of the ruins, Renn Jax’la, the Tau hacker, knelt at the data node, streams of stolen information flooding his display. A flash of blue-white light split the air—a plasma bolt struck him squarely, killing him instantly. Without hesitation, Jallen Varr, the Tau First Mate, leapt into the open. Under covering fire, he seized the node, completed the download, and ripped the data free.

With their leader dead and their objective compromised, the remaining Squat mercenaries faltered. The combined Tau and Aeldari forces closed in from all sides, pulse and shuriken fire cutting the mercenaries down one by one. The last resistance ended in the smoking fields where it had begun.

When the guns finally fell silent, the survivors secured the remaining data and pulled wounded Tau farmers from the ruins. Amid the ashes of T’ros’ka, Captain Voss and First Mate Jallen Varr faced one another. Without words, they understood the truth revealed by the stolen data—someone had sent these mercenaries, and this was only the beginning.

They clasped hands, sealing an uneasy alliance.

The campaign had begun.

 

Voss and Varr begin their adventure