Psychic Awakening

The Psychic Awakening is the term given to a phenomenon that enhanced the psychic abilities of many different individuals across the Milky Way Galaxy in the wake of the birth of the Great Rift in the Era Indomitus.

Phoenix Rising
"The Aeldari psyche is a powerful weapon. It can slay a distant foe with a pulse of thought. Like any other, it must be used with skill. Since the coming of the Dathedian its edges grow sharper than ever before, its grip more perilous to grasp.The slightest misstep can see its wielder, and even the reality in which they stand, laid open and bloody.""

- Eldrad Ulthran

Towards the end of the 41st Millennium, the galaxy was all but split in half by the Great Rift. To the Aeldari it was known as the Dathedian, and as a highly psychically attuned species, the aetheric phenomena that accompanied it affected them most of all.

The Cicatrix Maledictum, that great tear across the fabric of time and space, has further divided the fractious Aeldari species. After the coming of that celestial cataclysm, the Aeldari craftworlds sent out psychic communiques, reaching out to one another across the void. Two of the world-ships did not respond, their spiritual traces dwindling with every passing hour. Some amongst the Spiritseers of the Asuryani believe their souls have empowered Ynnead, the god of the dead, and that those craftworlders will never be seen again.

To a stellar empire as large as the Imperium of Man, this would have been considered acceptable losses, for Humanity's realm contains a million worlds and more. For the Asuryani it was a cost so high it wrenched at the heart. Perhaps one day the lost craftworlds would return, just as Altansar was drawn from the gullet of the Warp by the odyssey of the Phoenix Lord Maugan Ra. But for now, they were gone.

Far from uniting the survivors against the tide of Chaos spilling into the galaxy, that great loss fomented discord, and the rift between the factions of the Aeldari grew all the wider. Simple geography was itself a contributing factor, for the craftworlds were too far scattered across the galaxy to easily unite, and even the Aeldari paths through the Webway -- that maze of metaphysical pathways that spanned the interstice between realspace and the Warp -- were now battered and torn at by the raging fury of the empyrean.

Though the Harlequins continued to walk that strange unrealm at will and do what they could to unite the Asuryani and Commorrite Drukhari in purpose, the resentment and isolationism that had long characterised the fractured Aeldari species only worsened.

In the cultural hearts of the Aeldari peoples, the wound of the Dathedian festered in silence. No civilisation could look upon a sky mauled by the Warp-stuff of Chaos and not feel affected by it. To a people as sensitive to psychic energies as the Aeldari, the scar in reality was a constant dull ache in the mind, a reminder of all they had lost.

Perhaps it would never have existed at all were it not for the formation of the Eye of Terror, born from the sickening cataclysm of Slaanesh's birth. Across the galaxy, nightmares of guilt, doubt and surging aggression wracked Aeldari and Drukhari alike, and they steeped themselves in battle against tides of Chaos-worshippers in the hopes of assuaging these negative emotions.

A new era of war began as the turmoil within was turned into merciless strikes against ancient enemies, emerging foes and former allies. Much of the blame for the disastrous events was put at the door of the rapidly growing Ynnari movement and, by association, upon Biel-Tan. There, the populace had been divided between fervent support for Yvraine, the leader of the Ynnari, and the outright condemnation that followed her visitation -- coinciding as it did with the subsequent invasion of the craftworld by a ravening Slaaneshi horde and the fracturing of its Infinity Circuit.

Amidst that appalling catastrophe a new strand of fate was revealed, one that some believed would lead the Aeldari race to greatness once more. The being that Yvraine summoned from within Biel- Tan's broken wraithbone skeleton was an Avatar, of a sort, and its very existence was proof of Ynnead having stirred from his slumber. There was a chance that the Whispering God could save their souls from She Who Thirsts once and for all.

Barring only those dark kin of Commorragh whose powers have atrophied, all Aeldari possess some degree of psychic ability. Since the Great Rift split the galaxy, those gifts have burgeoned in a variety of different ways.

It is generally accepted amongst the Farseers of the craftworlds that this is a direct result of the Dathedian introducing a vast bleed of psychic energy into the galaxy. Of all the Aeldari, the craftworlders are most in tune with matters psychic, and without the Asuryani Path system -- that cultural process by which an Asuryani focuses his or her mind upon a single pursuit or skill to avoid the temptation of all others -- they may have found this flare of psychic activity maddening, and possibly even disastrous.

Yet the discipline of the Path was developed precisely to turn the Aeldari mind into a fortress against such unfettered activity. Of all the civilisations in the galaxy, the Asuryani could be said to have ridden out the swell of psychic energy the best, for in many ways they had been ready for it. Their entire culture was built around discipline, guardianship and self-denial, to prevent their worst excesses rising to doom them all.

Those Asuryani who trod the Witch Path found their prophetic glimpses escalating into full and potent visions, magnifying their ability to parse the skeins of fate and react accordingly. On every craftworld their Runes of Warding burned out at a daunting rate, the protective symbols being used up almost as fast as they could be regrown from psycho-reactive material. But for now at least, the inner psychic threat posed by their daemonic nemeses was held at bay.

With this influx of psychic energy came other new abilities for the Asuryani. Even those warlike souls who honed their physical skills over the mental found their talents blossoming when they brought the two into perfect balance. Aspect Warriors channelled the echoes of the Aeldari war god Khaine and focused the resultant energies through the lenses of their glorious Exarch leaders.

When Howling Banshees charged en masse, the wind itself screamed its fury alongside them; when Striking Scorpions gathered in the shadowed recesses of the battlefield, they became all but invisible to the naked eye until they leapt from cover and fell upon the foe.

Always the Asuryani had possessed such powers and employed them in battle, yet now they manifested in a heightened and doubly lethal form. Everywhere potential turned to talent, talent to mastery, mastery to supernatural prowess. The stage was set for the sacred phoenix of the Aeldari people to rise once more.

Faith and Fury
While the rest of the Imperium was beset by ever-growing threats following the opening of the Great Rift, the sanctified Talledus System was considered a safe zone under the protection of the Ecclesiarchy, and by extension, the Emperor Himself. The Shrine World of Benediction stood as a gleaming, golden monument to the Emperor's might.

Perhaps this semblance of peace is ultimately what attracted the Ruinous Powers to it. The psychic trauma wrought by the birth of the Cicatrix Maledictum gave rise to increasingly bizarre and terrifying phenomena.

Just as fringe cults began to reveal themselves as servants of the Dark Gods, an armada of six Traitor Legions of the Heretic Astartes, directed by the Dark Apostle Kor Phaeron of the Word Bearers, arrived to destroy the Talledus System once and for all, and deny the notion that anywhere might be safe from the predations of Chaos.

The Sisters of Battle and the Astra Militarum -- bolstered by a massive strike force of Adeptus Astartes led by the Black Templars of the Rutherian Crusade -- stood firm in their creed to defend Humanity, no matter the cost, in the Battle of Talledus.