This day was a cataclysm for the entire T'au race.
A mechanical fleet of unprecedented scale descended upon the outskirts of T'au, the origin world of the species, bringing with it a grey-black disaster. The massive defense fleet, once the pride of the T'au Empire, lost all responsiveness in the void. Even the majority of the machinery across the surface of T'au began to malfunction.
The planet's communications were severed. Countless T'au felt the terrifying onset of anomalies occurring all around them. Yet, amidst the panicked masses, one individual looked up without a hint of disarray.
This was the legendary former commander of the T'au, Farsight.
Through meditation, Farsight had once concluded that the people of the T'au Empire would never be truly free so long as the Ethereals existed. Consequently, he had vanished, becoming a hermit on Vior'los. In truth, however, he had established his own independent regime, the Farsight Enclaves, a region designated as a forbidden zone by the T'au Empire. His presence on T'au this day was a clandestine meeting with a few old friends.
He could never have predicted the experience that was to follow.
…
The massive mechanical fleet had made a direct warp-jump into the T'au system. The moment the titan-class vessel, the Void Sword, translated out of the empyrean, the T'au defense fleet, which had formed a blockade after detecting unauthorized warp travel, lost all control.
The Void Sword possessed immense computational power; it did not need to occupy the enemy's logic engines to achieve subversion, as the two Guardian-class ships had done at Volkus. Relying solely on its own processing capacity, the Void Sword instantaneously hijacked over two hundred T'au defense vessels. Simultaneously, it jammed all communications across T'au and began seizing control of every piece of sapient equipment on the ground.
Within a heartbeat, Axion had scoured every defense installation and data archive on the planet. The defensive garrisons stationed on the surface were forcibly organized into columns, beginning a systematic purge of the older, non-sapient defense facilities that remained autonomous. Hammerhead tanks, slaved to remote commands, leveled surface-to-orbit defense arrays with their railguns and fusion blasters.
As chaos gripped the populace, disaster fell from the heavens.
The Star-Crushing Cannon aboard the Void Sword flared, discharging a grey-black beam from orbit toward the planet's surface. The remote-controlled T'au ground equipment transmitted real-time data back to the flagship. At the moment of discharge, an invisible psychic ripple radiated from the grey-black crystals as they were drained of their empyrean essence.
The crews of the drifting T'au ships were the first to be affected. The T'au, largely psychic-null with dim reflections in the Warp, possessed a spiritual resonance comparable to the Kin of the Leagues of Votann. However, the T'au Empire was not composed solely of these blue-skinned xenos. Their numerous alien auxiliaries were far more sensitive to the Warp.
Foremost among them were the humans who followed the Tau'va. As the "favored" of the galaxy, humanity possessed a unique talent for deifying concepts and "creating fathers." Indeed, the Goddess of the Greater Good had only manifested as an entity in the Warp after the T'au began incorporating human worlds.
Now, these human believers were the first to suffer total emotional collapse. A crushing sense of despair flooded every organism capable of perceiving the Warp. Alien auxiliaries and human converts turned their weapons upon one another, unleashing the hopelessness within. Even the T'au, caught in the crossfire, were swallowed by the upheaval. The various races began a mutual slaughter, and the T'au themselves were dragged into the fray, helpless to resist the madness.
The grey-black beam lanced through the T'au fleet and struck the undefended surface of the planet. Massive psychic energies surged across the world, yet they appeared to cause no physical trauma. On the surface, a potent emotional force spread through the populace. Even the T'au, normally obtuse to the Warp, were not spared.
Commander Farsight, who had wielded the Dawn Blade, a weapon comparable to a Chaos artifact, without ever feeling its taint, was no exception. For the first time, the power of the Warp touched him. An overwhelming tide of despair welled up from the depths of his soul.
Feeling this profound negativity, many attempted to recite the tenets of the Greater Good, hoping to use the power of faith to break the spell. Yet, the Tau'va offered no revelation this time. Every living soul on the planet sank into bottomless despondency, followed by a wave of mass suicides. Others succumbed to a manic frenzy, butchering those around them. The weight of the despair was unbearable.
Had a Chaplain of the Blood Angels been present, he would have recognized how closely this desperate slaughter resembled the Black Rage that plagued his Chapter. But the T'au were not the Emperor's Angels. The Greater Good was not the Imperial Truth. Nor could the T'au population compare to that of the Imperium.
The Blood Angels could pray for the mercy of Sanguinius and the Emperor in their darkest hour. The T'au's Goddess of the Greater Good, however, had been birthed by the prayers of heretics who were little more than traitors to the Imperium. Her power was fragile compared to the Black Sun that sits upon the throne of the galaxy. As a minor deity, she could only hide from the great powers of the Warp. Once, she had considered seeking sanctuary, much as the Aeldari life-goddess hides within Nurgle's Garden, but her T'au followers were far too restless.
As the beam gradually faded, no craters marred the planet's surface. No physical destruction was evident. The world continued its rotation as if nothing had happened. All mechanical assets hijacked by Axion remained in perfect working order.
However, every sentient being capable of emotion had descended into madness. Crazed T'au piloted hover-vehicles into the ground. Mobs surged onto the transit-ways, only to be crushed by frantic ground transports. Death hung over everyone.
Axion observed the results of the weapon test through the optics of the hijacked T'au wargear. The data left him somewhat disappointed. The weapon possessed an exceptional emotional suppression effect against conscious lifeforms. Its range was vast and its efficacy high, but it was not what Axion had desired.
Had the Fragmentation Cannon been powered normally by an antimatter core, it might not have shattered the planet, but it certainly would have carved a massive crater into its crust. Destructive efficiency would have been far higher. With the psychic crystals, the weapon achieved lethal efficiency on a soulful level, yet the damage to physical matter was entirely nullified.
In the era of the Old Federation, this would have been a perfect weapon, a way to pacify a world and preserve its infrastructure for the Creators.
But now...
Axion's logic cores flickered. Aside from the human remains on Terra that still flickered with life-signs, he saw no other potential client to serve.
Having confirmed the weapon's soul-killing potential, the massive mechanical fleet vanished back into the void. Before departing, Axion issued a final landing protocol to the hijacked T'au fleet. The massive defense ships were commanded to descend directly onto the surface of T'au. Under the relentless pull of the planet's gravity, the ships would break apart, their leaking reactors providing the physical destruction the cannon had spared.