Lu'Nasad

"I have seen it. Lu'Nasad, Dresil'ach, the Forgotten Ruin. It comes for us like an assassin in the night, and it will consume us all. Are you ready, Human? Are you ready to meet your God-Emperor?"

- Farseer Caille of the Crow Spirits

Lu'Nasad, known as the "Forgotten Ruin", was a minor Craftworld of the Eldar was destroyed after fleeing from their civilisation's destruction during the Fall of the Eldar. The scholars, Farseers and Warlocks of Lu'Nasad had spent centuries studying and discovering lost paths within the Webway which led through the Empyrean that no living being had walked since time out of mind. As fate would have it, the dark, twisting, and largely unknown paths taken by Lu'Nasad took her not to salvation, but directly into the seething heart of the Rifts of Hecaton, located in the Koronus Expanse. There in the midst of these damned and forgotten stars, Lu'Nasad came face to face with powerful forces of the Empyrean that were manifesting in realspace. A desperate and largely futile battle ensued as Lu'Nasad's defenders were overwhelmed by the Forces of Chaos, and in short order the Craftworld fell silent and drifted further into the Rifts, her only survivors the powerful Farseer Anaris and the crew of his ship. Bathed in the energies of the Warp and infused with the taint of Chaos, Lu'Nasad became a twisted, ugly parody of herself. Now, in the late 41st Millennium, the nightmare Craftworld spoken in Eldar prophecy, has returned from its ten thousand year exile among the savage, roiling Rifts of Hecaton. Her teeming inhabitants dead or corrupted, her formerly elegant spires toppled, her streets choked with the bones of her defenders, and her Infinity Circuit driven mad by centuries of pain and terror, Lu'Nasad once again wanders the Koronus Expanse, sowing madness and destruction in her wake.

A Fall from Grace
"The decadence and malignancy and sheer hubris of our ancestors rent the very fabric of space and time, and brought forth the existence of a new god of Chaos. We owe a debt to all races that we repay with the slow death of our own."

- Eldar Farseer Anaris

Ten millennia ago the once proud empire of the Eldar reached the pinnacle of its achievement and began its slow slide into decadence, corruption, and ultimate destruction. The proud and haughty Eldar saw themselves as the perfect race, above the squalor and petty squabbling of the lesser races of the galaxy. They had mastered technology and tamed the Webway, transcended the need for toil and suffering, and their worlds were peaceful and rich with art and music. Unfortunately, as pride goes before a fall, the arrogance and hubris of the Eldar slowly ate away at the heart of their glorious empire. Eldar society turned decadent and depraved, the people filling their ample leisure with dark excesses. Not all Eldar in these dark times became gibbering sybarites devoted only to pleasure and excess however. There were those who foresaw disastrous end that was coming. These Eldar, derided as self-punishing puritanical fanatics by their brethren, built massive, planet-sized ships with which to flee the depravity of their people. These ships, called Craftworlds by their masters, fl ed to the furthest reaches of space with numerous like minded Exodites. It was in these out of the way places that the Exodites believed they would be safe from both the excesses of their brethren and the coming doom that they had foreseen.

Eventually, the sheer depravity and excess of Eldar society brought about the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh. With a mighty scream and a burst of pure psychic power, Slaanesh came forth from the warp and destroyed the Eldar empire in an instant. Billions died in agony, their souls devoured by Slaanesh. This event created the Eye of Terror, a massive tear in reality where the warp and realspace co-exist, and it swallowed the seat of Eldar society whole. Even the far-fl ung Exodites who had fl ed their peoples' slide into madness, and the people and crew of the numerous Craftworlds heard the cries of Slaanesh's coming. Sadness fi lled their hearts at the loss of their kinsmen and their once great civilization. The Eldar felt resignation as well, for they knew that there was nothing that they could do, and that this fate was their final punishment. The Craftworlds with their refugees scattered to the solar winds, hounded across the galaxy by the forces of Chaos. Few survived the initial decades as they were caught and killed in the psychic fallout of the birth of Slaanesh. The rest dispersed, traversing the stars and carrying their precious cargo, those lucky few who survived The Fall, to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. As they travelled and the centuries passed, the Craftworlds slowly took on their final shape. They grew in size to meet the needs of their populations, the Bonesingers reshaping the vessels into something more akin to wandering planetoids than mere starships. Each Craftworld became a world unto itself. Even before The Fall each Craftworld had developed unique cultures among their populations, foreshadowing the manifold Paths and Aspects that the Eldar would soon come to follow. Some were dedicated to martial prowess while others were more content to contemplate the mysteries of the vast unknown.

A Desperate Flight
"And thus they fled, the countless children of Cegorach, Isha, and Khaine. As their gods died in agony and their kinsmen turned on one another like savage beasts and the worlds that formed the cradle of their civilization were swallowed whole by the Ruinous Powers they fled like cowards. They retreated to their voidships and turned their faces away in shame, leaving mankind to pick up after them like ill-behaved children." From the journal of Kobras Aquairre}} When the Fall finally came, and the Eye of Terror swallowed the Eldar whole, Craftworld Lu'Nasad was docked on the extreme edge of the Eldar's far-flung civilisation, taking on supplies and Eldar passengers. During those first terrible hours while their civilisation collapsed around their ears, the leaders of Lu'Nasad took on as many of their kinsmen as the ancient ship could hold and fled the coming of Chaos. Hounded by forces of the Ruinous Powers and suffering from the lingering after effects of Slaanesh's birth, Lu'Nasad's masters devised a desperate, dangerous plan to escape. Always concerned with travel, movement, and the secrets of the Webway, the scholars, Farseers, and Warlocks of Lu'Nasad had spent centuries studying those ancient ways. During their studies they discovered records of Webway paths lost to the Eldar's knowledge, locked doorways and lonely paths through the Empyrean that no living being had walked since time out of mind. Indeed, they even charted some of these forgotten paths, and found them dangerous but largely passable. Surrounded by the forces of Chaos, with her Warriors fi ghting ravenous daemons in the streets and passageways running red with the blood of fallen Eldar, Lu'Nasad threw all caution to the stars and plunged into the twisting, empty bowels of the Webway, fi nding there an unusually large, unstable path that could accommodate the massive Craftworld, and was never heard from again.

A Wandering Age
As fate would have it, the dark, twisting, and largely unknown paths taken by Lu'Nasad took her not to salvation, but directly into the seething heart of the Rifts of Hecaton. There in the midst of these damned and forgotten stars, Lu'Nasad came face to face with powerful forces of the Empyrean that were manifesting in realspace. A desperate and largely futile battle ensued as Lu'Nasad's defenders were overwhelmed by the Chaos forces, and in short order the Craftworld fell silent and drifted further into the Rifts, her only survivors the powerful Farseer Anaris and the crew of his ship. Bathed in the energies of the Warp and infused with the taint of Chaos, Lu'Nasad became a twisted, ugly parody of herself. Her once proud defenders were corrupted, the ancient Eldar souls within her Infi nity Circuit were driven mad, and her elegant, soaring spires crumbled to dust only to be remade in a blasphemous mockery. The bones of her populace were stacked like cord wood in the streets, and daemons cavorted in the once sacred sanctums of the Bonesingers Gardens as the corrupt Warp Spider shells skulked among the ruins and the debased Dire Avenger shells howled and gibbered in the long night. For ten thousand years and more, Lu'Nasad wandered the Rifts of Hecaton in this nightmare state, and now it has returned to the Expanse, deeply corrupt and mad with pain, on a terrible errand of its own design.

An Unwholesome Air
A result from the deadly psychic fallout, Lu'Nasad itself is irrevocably corrupted after spending millennia wandering the Empyrean. Once sweet and clean, the air of the Craftworld is now haunted by the souls of long-dead Eldar and tainted by the corruption of Chaos. An acrid, charnel house smell lingers in the streets and buildings, and a thick, constantly swirling mist tints everything the colour of a day-old bruise. The lingering psychic echoes of death and destruction are incredibly dangerous to the unprotected. Special precautions, such as the protection of a spirit stone, are needed to keep a person safe.

The Dead Craftworld
Today as she cruises among the worlds of the Koronus Expanse, Craftworld Lu'Nasad is nearly unrecognisable as the once proud and powerful Craftworld of ten millennia ago. Her hull is bloated and misshapen, reformed by the warp. It is scored and stained by her centuries at large in the Rifts of Hecaton, and blasphemous prayers to the Ruinous Powers are scrawled all along her flanks. Her wraithbone structure is worn and thin, and is now milky and translucent, almost ghostly in the dim light of the stars. The domes of her habitats are filled with a noxious mist, and dark shapes can be seen flitting through the ruins of her towers and congregating in vast parks choked with dust and fragments of bone. In her wake trail long tendrils of debris and dust and pulverised Wraithbone. No lights shine from her domes and view ports, and all hails go unanswered. She is ill-looking and ill-favoured, and those who set eyes on her know that, aside from her xenos heritage, there is something dreadfully unwholesome about the giant vessel.

Darkened Pathways
Once home to hundreds of thousands of Eldar, the Craftworld also features massive crystalline domes kilometres long that cover whole cities complete with public spaces, broad street capillaries, towering spires, Exarch shrines, and everything else one would expect to find in any Craftworld built by the ancient and advanced Eldar. Where these places once bustling with commerce and Eldar life, they are now tombs, quiet save for the deep hum and sigh of the tortured Craftworld as it prowls the stars.

plunging through a rotten translucent wraithbone floor to their death. of Introspection, it was here that the long dead Bonesingers of Lu'Nasad congregated with their fellows to commune, make art, and further explore the secrets of their craft. A combination sculpture park and outdoor workshop, the Bonesinger's Gardens were once home to a myriad of Wraithbone statues both graceful and contemplative. They also possessed numerous small singing areas given over to other, related arts where Bonesingers could congregate to improve themselves and their path. Now, however, the Bonesinger's Gardens on Lu'Nasad are grim and oppressive places indeed. Their statues have been torn down or defaced, and black, thorny Wraithbone vines engulf those still standing. The graceful arches and spires of the workspaces are collapsed, and the ground is littered with broken Wraithbone and shattered Spirit Stones. Worst of all, dozens of the deadly Eldar automata known as Wraithguard stalk the once well-tended paths and rubble-strewn fields. Driven by the maddened souls of ancient Eldar heroes, these silent sentinels attack anything they encounter, including one another, and the bones of their victims and the shattered husks of dead Wraithguard can still be found tangled together in low lying areas of the Gardens. intervals are Lu'Nasad's numerous docks. Ranging in size from landing pads just big enough for a shuttle to huge docks large enough to dock a cruiser sized ship and protected by powerful pulsar lance batteries, these docks extend out into the void on delicately cantilevered Wraithbone supports. Just off these extended docks are the burned, collapsed, or otherwise ruined remains of Lu'Nasad's port facilities. Corrupt Wraithguard and various kind of daemon stalk here, making the docks very dangerous indeed. ancient, seething core of the Craftworld's plasma generators. Dozens of kilometres high, the plasma core is the tallest structure on Lu'Nasad, and perhaps the most important. The generator itself is a single graceful spire that tapers to a sharp point and houses the plasma generators and the numerous Spirit Stones that constantly monitor its performance. It is ringed by containment fi eld generators and is enveloped in a crackling, constantly shifting forcefi eld that occasionally vents raw plasma into the void. For innumerable centuries the core has generated the power for the great Craftworld, and it is a testament to the craftsmanship and technical acumen of the Eldar that it has done this for the past ten millennia without any support or regular maintenance. where the spirit stones of deceased Eldar are brought to interface with the Craftworld's infinity circuit. This massive room is as much a holy shrine as it is a technical nerve centre, and is home to the majority of Lu'Nasad's spirit stones. The walls and ceiling, along with numerous plinths and small obelisks that look all the world like workstations on a ship's bridge, are completely covered in twinkling gems of various size, each holding the soul of a long dead Eldar. The entire place is bathed in a mellow, multi-hued glow reminiscent of sunlight slanting through stained glass windows, and the only sound is the low hum of the ship's ancient systems.
 * Gardens of Instrospection - Once places of quiet meditation, these once lovely places have, much like Lu'Nasad itself, been corrupted and twisted into something unrecognisable. The towering trees and decorative plants have either rotted away to mere skeletons or are now twisted and vile things with waxy, purple-black leaves that spray noxious spores or leak poisonous sap when molested. The streams and reflecting pools are empty, choked with bones and the detritus of ten thousand years. In the sculpture gardens, the Wraithbone statues have been pulled down or horribly defaced, replaced with crude, blasphemous statuary dedicated to the Ruinous Powers. Here and there is evidence of dark rituals; altars stained dark with blood, cast off ceremonial accoutrement, and heaps of sacrificial remains. While largely abandoned, there is danger here among these twisted pathways and blackened trees. The Craftworld's Aspect Shells walk here on occasion, their shattered minds and souls pining for the past and keeping liaisons long since forgotten. There are also the ever present caustic, psycho-reactive mists that, much like in the rest of the ancient Craftworld, hang over the gardens like a shroud.
 * Living Chambers - These tall, once graceful spires were once the dwelling place of the thousands of Eldar that called Lu'Nasad home. Now they are crumbling, corrupt, dangerous edifices that lean crookedly against one another and reach up from the core of the Craftworld like skeletal fingers. The Eldar who lived here perished long ago, torn apart by daemons or their corrupted kinsmen, mutated beyond imagining by the dread energies of the Warp, or killed by starvation, misfortune, or sheer madness. Each fl oor has a number of chamber abodes that branch off of a communal corridor. The rooms are sized, shaped, and laid out in a fashion alien to a human eye, and tend to unsettle and discomfit humans. After millennia of neglect and exposure to Warp energies, there is precious little left in the Living Chambers. The spires themselves are dangerous, their foundations crumbling and their structures weakened by millennia of decay, and anyone walking their deserted corridors must tread lightly for fear of
 * Bonsinger's Gardens - Smaller and less common than the formerly lush Gardens
 * Landing Platforms - Ringing the outer perimeter of the Craftworld at regular
 * Webway Portals - Scattered among the ruins of Lu'Nasad are countless, Eldar-sized Webway portals that connect to the remains of the Craftworld's internal Webway. Like its larger, galaxy-spanning cousin, Lu'Nasad's internal Webway allows quick and relatively safe travel between points on the vast Craftworld through special tunnels through the very fabric of the Warp. The Webway portals on the Craftworld consist of a free-standing, intricately decorated Wraithbone arch roughly three metres high. Within each archway is a shimmering energy field that shows a constantly swirling pattern of blue light occasionally shot through with crackling blue-black energy bolts. While most still work, the long exposure to the Warp has twisted and corrupted Lu'Nasad's Webway, and using it is incredibly dangerous.
 * Plasma Core - Directly in the centre of the main dorsal side habitat towers the
 * Soul Shrine - Deep in the bowels of the dead Craftworld lies its Soul Shrine

Craftworld Defences
Despite their deep connection to the more immaterial and the spiritual aspects of existence, the Eldar are also an incredibly martial people. Indeed, every Eldar born is trained in the common weapons and tactics of their people so that they may take up arms to defend their Craftworld. They know more about the art of war than man will ever know, and they were waging war among the stars before mankind had progressed much farther than using sharpened stones as weapons. Each Craftworld is home to many citizen-soldier Guardians, highly specialized Aspect Warriors, armoured vehicles, fightercraft and elegant and deadly voidships. Lu'Nasad was no different, and once boasted a powerful navy and some of the finest Aspect Warriors to be found among their people. Nearly all of these forces were wiped out during those first months among the Rifts of Hecaton, and those that weren't were twisted nearly beyond recognition. The remains of Lu'Nasad's martial heritage can still be found among its crumbling ruins, and each is equal parts treasure trove and deadly trap. domes that were once home to the Craftworld's Grav Tank units. These domes provided both storage and maintenance for the deadly Falcon, Fire Prism, and Night Spinner tanks that were favoured by the defenders of Lu'Nasad, as well as housing and training facilities for those who walked this particular path of warfare. Now these domes are mostly deserted, their barracks empty and their maintenance apparatus long silent. Some are home to daemons or warp spirits, and squads of Aspect Shells sometimes sweep through as if on an inspection tour. While most of the Craftworld's armoured forces were destroyed in its defence against the Ruinous Powers, the occasional Falcon tank or Wave Serpent transport can still be found rotting away in its berth. fortifi ed weapon emplacements mounting the lethal Eldar pulsar lances normally found on voidships. They are mainly clustered around strategic locations like webway gates, the plasma core, and the Titan Temple, but many are located among the guardian spires and among the shrines and long dead forests. Many of these emplacements were destroyed in the longago battles with Chaos, and many more have rotted away or collapsed in on themselves over the long millennia. Others show signs of heavy fighting but are still active, their structures holed and blackened by weapons fi re and the talons of daemons. Those that were not destroyed outright or breached by enemy forces are still active and controlled by the souls of their deceased gun crews, their bodies long turned to dust and their spirit stones glittering in the dark, waiting for a call to arms that will never come.
 * Aspect Warrior Shrines - Towering above surrounding wraithbone structures on either side of the central plasma core are the shrines of Lu'Nasad's Aspect Warriors. Each of these massive edifices, one dedicated to the Warp Spiders and the other to the Dire Avengers, is a self-contained military facility. Behind their towering doors are barracks, shrines, training facilities, marshalling yards, vast armouries, and hangars for Eldar vehicles. Once these temples were home to throngs of Aspect Warriors and their Exarchs, and their presence served to remind all Eldar of the duty and sacrifice of these august warriors. The Aspect Warrior Temples today are much changed from their original form. Each is blackened and defaced, their mighty doors hanging agape and their facades a twisted mockery of their former glory. Within their echoing halls the remaining Aspect Shells continue to gather, their bodies long since turned to dust. Along with the dangers of the Aspect Shells, the shrines also contain a treasure trove of Eldar wargear and historical records that date back to before the Fall.
 * Grav Domes - Concentrated around the Titan Dome are a number of massive
 * Pulsar Lances - Scattered across the surface of Lu'Nasad are countless, massive,
 * Titan Temple - Sealed since the Craftworld's plunge into the Rifts of Hecaton and still protected behind a crackling forcefield, the burnished dome of the Titan Temple rises gracefully above its surrounding buildings in the shadow of the Craftworld's seething plasma core. Long ago this was home to Lu'Nasad's small force of Titans and all of the Bonesingers and steersmen needed to operate them. Within the armoured walls of the Temple is a wealth of information on Eldar titans and other war machines.