Event · M42

Battle of the Startide Nexus

The Battle of the Startide Nexus was fought in the Nem’yar Atoll at about the start of M42, during the Fifth Sphere of Expansion. The Startide Nexus is a stable warp passage between the Nem’yar Atoll and the T’au Empire, formed when the lost Fourth Sphere of Expansion emerged from the warp. A few months after the Fifth Sphere of Expansion began, a Death Guard armada, the Death Guard being a Chaos Space Marine legion devoted to the god Nurgle, invaded the Atoll and boarded the orbital stations guarding the Nexus, where thousands of T’au died. Commander Shadowsun divided her fleet into small battle groups to relieve the stations, engage the Death Guard fleets, and make feints and feigned retreats, but could not halt the advance, and sent a drone into the Nexus to warn the empire. Suspicious both of the Fourth Sphere forces under Commander Surestrike and of the warp entity they claimed had saved them, Shadowsun sought the truth of the matter and was briefly relieved of command by the Ethereal Aun’la, a member of the T’au ruling caste, in favour of Surestrike. With a small band of auxiliaries, the Kroot Opikh Tak, the Nicassar Ven Tah Regah, and the Charpactin A’haia, she boarded the Death Guard battleship Nephylum; in the fighting she was drawn into the void, and the novel account holds that the same warp entity appears to have saved her. Aun’la then restored her as supreme commander. The Death Guard commander Oratius Glurtosk withdrew, and the Nephylum was destroyed in the warp by the entity; the Death Guard left the Atoll and never emerged at the other end of the Nexus, and their aim remains unknown. The battle mauled the Fifth Sphere fleet and slowed its advance, and a Sixth Sphere of Expansion is now being planned.

See where Battle of the Startide Nexus occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

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