The third year of the war.
The conflict between the Tyranids and the Eldrazi showed no sign of abating.
Given their capacity to continually reclaim and reuse biomass, the present intensity of the fighting posed little real problem for either side.
As the front lines stretched ever farther, the war fragmented into countless scattered battlefields. To replenish material and energy both sides butchered any nearby planet—there were mistaken kills but no mercies. They would fight while simultaneously harvesting resources.
The onlookers drew a grim conclusion: the Eldrazi and the Tyranids might survive this—those watching almost certainly would not.
Faced with such a dire reality, the system's spacefaring natives built starships and fled. Waiting in place was no option: if they could not defeat the invaders, they at least hoped to run.
What they did not understand was that Tyranid forces existed in nearly every neighboring system, many already ravaging their worlds. Those swarms might be stronger than the ones they escaped. Unless the refugees could flee unbelievably far, they would sooner or later run into another Tyranid host.
—
In the Solar System, humanity's nations were busily constructing lunar and Martian colonies and quarreling endlessly over territorial claims. Cargo ships ferried technicians and engineering equipment to and fro with the frequency of taxis. Human society surged forward with unprecedented momentum; propaganda and lofty promises filled every mind, and the stars themselves seemed to beckon.
By 3140, the Tyranids and Eldrazi still tore one another apart in that distant system, while Aeon occasionally drifted through the void like an idle wind.
Back in the Solar System, the Moon and Mars—thanks to covert technical aid from one "Mr. Ra"—had long since been transformed into verdant, habitable worlds. Plants and animals flourished; cities dotted the landscapes, governed by different nations. Humanity's gaze had turned to more distant planets. Where once they mined only what they needed, they now had the will and technology to terraform.
By 4685 (while Tyranids and Eldrazi still clashed), humanity had added more colonial worlds and reached a population of 170 billion. Biotech advances had extended average lifespans to three centuries and eliminated most congenital illnesses.
By 4799 (the war still raging elsewhere), internal divisions sparked open war among the colonies. Dozens of colonies fell, and millions of humans died. In 4811, after massive destruction, one side—helped secretly by Mr. Ra—prevailed and war was declared over. Thousands of cities lay in ruins and a quarter of humanity had perished, though no one dared to deploy weapons capable of sterilizing entire colony worlds. In consequence, the losses, while enormous, remained within a grimly acceptable range.
By 4837, after a decade of recovery, humanity had stabilized and, to prevent a recurrence of large-scale conflict, the nations publicly renounced their old sovereignties and united under a single banner: The Human Federation. For the first time, human civilization achieved a formal, unified polity.
—
Meanwhile, the Eldrazi–Tyranid war had become a drawn-out campaign across its system. The battle-lines lengthened, the fighting intensified, yet neither side's numbers diminished; if anything, they multiplied. The cost was the system itself: half its planets had been erased, the survivors stripped to barren husks. Native life—down to microbes—was either consumed or converted into soldiers. That vast region, tens of thousands of light-years across, lay ruined. When local resources declined, both species migrated, fighting as they went. Like two bottomless maws, they devoured everything along their paths. Galactic isolation meant little; they simply crossed it physically.
But then a twist: the Eldrazi made a strategic move into a new system only to discover it already ringed with Tyranid forces. The local Tyranids, under the Hive Mind's direction, had arranged an enclosure. The Eldrazi found themselves cut off: the region's resources had been pre-plundered by the resident Tyranids, and traps had been sown along the routes the Eldrazi were expected to take.
In the first moments of the attack, innumerable Eldrazi spawn and many Eldrazi themselves were slain instantly. The local Tyranids inflicted grievous losses before the Eldrazi had time to respond. The tide turned swiftly in the Tyranids' favor. Without pause, the Tyranids began a brutal encirclement. After decades of fighting, the Eldrazi army finally broke free of the trap, but only after losing one third of its forces. Even one of the three Commanders fell in that disaster.
Ulamog (Ulamog is slain).
The overlord was beaten to death: its hundreds of innate revival cycles exhausted by relentless Tyranid assault, it was sent back to Orsaga for resurrection—subject to cooldown and Orsaga's mercy. The surviving Eldrazi retreated under relentless pursuit and would not see any respite for a long time to come.
That catastrophe awakened Eldrazi command to a harsh truth: the Eldrazi's racial depth and logistical reach were inferior to the Tyranids. Nearby systems could offer Tyranid reinforcements; the Eldrazi could not reciprocate.
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