Event · M41

Fracture of Biel-Tan

The Fracture of Biel-Tan was a battle of 999.M41 in which Craftworld Biel-Tan and the Ynnari repelled a daemonic invasion led by the Masque of Slaanesh. It took place during the thirteenth Black Crusade of Abaddon the Despoiler, as the newly risen Ynnari sought the Croneswords, artefacts required to awaken Ynnead, the sleeping Aeldari god of the dead. One blade lay hidden within Biel-Tan’s wraithbone spine, and the Ruinous Powers, alarmed at the prospect of Ynnead’s rebirth, moved to seize it first. The battle is recorded as the Ynnari’s first major victory and as one of the opening episodes of the Gathering Storm, the wider upheaval that followed the fall of Cadia. The conflict began on two fronts. On the Maiden World of Ursulia, a warp storm transformed the planet into a domain of Chaos, and the webway gate known as the Obsidian Gate offered a path into the craftworld itself. Biel-Tan’s Autarch Meliniel was drawn into battle there, in defence of what his people believed to be a threatened Exodite colony. While the Aeldari fought on Ursulia, the Herald of Slaanesh known as the Masque, accompanied by the Bloodthirster Skarbrand, broke through the Obsidian Gate and carried the war onto Biel-Tan. The Masque infiltrated the craftworld’s Infinity Circuit and seeded it with daemons, even as the Avatar of Biel-Tan met Skarbrand in single combat and the Phoenix Lord Jain Zar led the Howling Banshees against her. The turning point came with the arrival of Yvraine, prophet of Ynnead, and the High Farseer Eldrad Ulthran of Craftworld Ulthwé. They came through the webway with a Ynnari host of Harlequins and Drukhari converts, accompanied by Yvraine’s sword-bearer, the Visarch. Yvraine drew the second Cronesword from the craftworld’s own spine. This act shattered the already corrupted Infinity Circuit and released the psychic energy from which the Yncarne, the avatar of Ynnead, was born. The Yncarne’s birth, together with other cataclysms of the age including the fall of Cadia, is held to have contributed to the tearing open of the warp rift later known as the Great Rift. Biel-Tan survived, but its Infinity Circuit was broken and its structure badly damaged, leaving the craftworld dependent on long repair. Its populace was divided between adherents of Ynnead and those angered by the harm done to their home, and civil war threatened. Seers of Craftworld Ulthwé sacrificed the stored souls of dead Farseers to open an emergency portal and withdraw the Ynnari before that division could turn to bloodshed. On the Orrery map the event is anchored at Biel-Tan, with Ursulia as its secondary theatre. On the timeline it sits at the close of M41, immediately before the opening of the Great Rift and the Era Indomitus, and it marks the moment the Ynnari became a force in Aeldari affairs.

See where Fracture of Biel-Tan occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

Open in universe