The Vespae Encounter

As the relentless advance of Hive Fleet Poseidon continued unabated through the fragmented region known as the Rifts of Hecate in 05.025.M42, the long-ignored xenos menace began to draw the attention of the Aeldari. For millennia, the Vespae system—an isolated world held in secret by the craftworlds and their outlying allies—had been warded and watched, considered a quiet node in the ever-changing tapestry of fate. That assumption would not survive the month.

When auguries detected subtle disturbances in the biosphere and anomalous psychic echoes from Vespae’s surface, the Farseers of Alaitoc dispatched a swift reconnaissance force via the webway. Comprised of elite Aspect Warriors and guided by a seer council, the group was reinforced by the deathless might of a Wraithlord and a unit of Wraithguard—an indication of the seriousness with which the Craftworld viewed the threat.

Upon arrival, the Aeldari forces encountered the unmistakable spoor and psychic shadow of the Tyranid hive mind. The planet was not yet overrun, but vast mycetic spores had already seeded the wilds, and the leading edges of the swarm had begun to manifest. The ensuing battle was short and brutal. The Aspect Warriors were torn apart by monstrous bioforms, and the webway ingress was almost overrun in minutes. Only the Wraith units, their necrodermis bodies resisting the corrosive tides of biomass and acid, managed to retreat to the safety of the portal—battered, silent, and grievously damaged.

The survivors brought with them fragments of alien tissue and data impressions—enough for the Farseers to confirm their worst fears. The Tyranid swarm on Vespae bore the genetic hallmarks of Hive Fleet Poseidon. Somehow, impossibly, tendrils of the fleet had slipped through the Hecate Gap undetected, bypassing major Imperial and Chaos positions and establishing an advanced beachhead in a region thought to be secure.

The implications were dire. Vespae lay within an area the Aeldari had long deemed strategically vital. If Poseidon was already present beyond the Rifts, then the entire Hecate Gap could collapse in a matter of months, with the hive fleet potentially striking deep into the coreward sectors of the Hadron Expanse.

The Aeldari councils fell into urgent and bitter debate. Should they intervene directly to halt the spread? Or, more dangerously, should they reveal what they had learned to the crude and squabbling factions of the Mon-Keigh, risking their own secrecy in exchange for a broader coalition against the xenos tide?

For now, the Craftworlds remained silent. But the shadow of the Great Devourer had fallen upon Vespae—and perhaps far beyond.