The Rangda, also called Rangdans, the Rangdan Cerabvores or the Rangdan Osseivores, were a hostile alien species first encountered by the Imperium of Man during the Great Crusade in the galactic north and east.
After the Imperial expeditionary fleets first breached the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy, they inadvertently came to the attention of the Rangda, who launched an assault against Imperial space from the galactic north and east, unleashing the terrible military campaigns remembered only as the "Rangdan Xenocides."
History[]
The Rangda were an incredibly vicious and technologically advanced species that assaulted the Imperial forces during three campaigns remembered as the Rangdan Xenocides, starting in the decade of the 860s.M30 and ending in the early tenth century of the 30th Millennium. It was the bloodiest conflict the Imperium would fight in its earliest days before the start of the Horus Heresy.
While the Rangda were ultimately defeated, it required the direct intervention of the Emperor Himself and at least three Space Marine Legions, over a dozen Legio Titanicus Titan Legions, several Imperial Knight houses, the military forces of the ancient Mechanicum and hundreds of thousands of troops of the Imperialis Auxilia.
The conflict would do lasting damage to several of the Space Marine Legions. The Dark Angels took the brunt of the casualties and the war against the Rangda would be the reason that the numbers of the Ist Legion dwindled to the point that the Ultramarines would eventually overtake them as the largest of the Legiones Astartes.
The Imperium of Man later claimed that it had purged the entire species and their home star system in the Third Rangdan Xenocide, but the accounts of these events were muddled and often contradictory. It also seems likely that the Imperial records deliberately or accidentally mislabelled the world of Advex-Mors as "Rangda," the species' capital world.
Technology[]
Very little about this species is known, since the records surrounding the conflict were sealed long ago.
Reports say that the Rangda attacked with two forms of warriors, "Rangdan Cerabvores" and "Rangdan Osseivores." Their elite warriors were said to be a rare match for a Space Marine in combat, wielding weaponry perhaps even more advanced than and superior to that possessed by the Imperium and protected by personal, defensive energy shields.
The Rangda preferred to have others fight their battles, unleashing vast legions of slave armies drawn from multiple intelligent species and sending them against the foe, seeking to exhaust their enemies until the exact right moment and place to strike presented themselves. Their campaigns were conducted by officers known as "warmasters" while the elite Rangda who commanded their slaves were known as "overlords." The Rangda were capable of creating vast artificial war-moons manned by millions of slaves who were controlled via neural collars that caused intense pain if the slave sought to remove it or disobey their Rangda masters.
Rangda warships fired radioactive, electromagnetic blasts known as "Shadow Blasters" for the ominous shadow they left behind of their victims' remains. Rangda starships were characterised by a somewhat organic appearance, possessing spines and flails which dragged behind the voidcraft like metallic tentacles, giving them the appearance of Terran jellyfish.
The Rangda were also said to possess Slaugth "murder-minds," suggesting that they may have been a slave or servant species of those even more vile xenos. The Slaugth were observed following in the the wake of the Rangda by Imperial forces, harvesting the bodies of the dead and any survivors they came across to feed their unnatural hunger.
The Rangda were also feared by the military forces of the Imperium for their skills at mimicry.
Sources[]
- Alpharius: Head of the Hydra (Novel) by Mike Brooks, "Xenos Extremis"
- The Horus Heresy Book One: Betrayal (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pg. 99
- The Horus Heresy Book Seven: Inferno (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pp. 81-82, 133
- The Horus Heresy Book Nine: Crusade (Forge World Series), pp. 89-91, 120-122, 125-126
- Scions of the Emperor (Anthology), "First Legion" by Chris Wraight
- White Dwarf 470, pg. 101