The day for the rebellion had come: Salaine Morn had destabilized enough of the Nexus of Shadows and united enough of the revolting slaves and Xenos that she felt the time to move on Zaergun Kul was now. The Dynasty were invited to join her in her final assault, or engage in some gentle raiding of the city with their own forces as a further diversionary effort. Though Eckhart wanted to keep watch on Salaine and ensure that she honoured her end of the bargain, ultimately he lost the argument to Hos’s desire to continue to search for his archeotech eye, Law’s request to keep his people out of danger, and Jian’s request to not be anywhere near the filthy Xenos as they fought.

Light raiding was the business of the day then! As the city burned around them, they made their way to the Hall of the Defeated, a great Dark Eldar exhibition where many trophies taken from their millennia of plunder were on display. While Caine and Fire led their forces in a diversionary attack, a small strike force of Hos, Eckhart, Law and Jian gained entry to the building, they first found themselves in surprisingly realistic recreations of famous battle sites, all relating to the Dark Eldar where according to Imperial History, the Eldar achieved at worst a result of a push. Refusing to be drawn into investigating those chambers though, they opted instead to search further through the museum for any of their supplies.

The hall itself was full of many exhibitions dating from empires great and small, but with Law and Hos’s ability to read the Eldar language, they located the area that held the most recent acquisitions, and it was hoped they would hold items pertinent to themselves. Periodically something would catch the eye of one of the Dynasty, and a particularly fine Archeotech Power Sword was too much for Hos to resist, and he managed to remove it safely, but not before detecting that there was indeed intricate security to try and prevent people from simply taking items.

Their search was thankfully not in vain: The Hos Dynasty artefacts were located in a suitably macabre fashion, with their skin and external augmetics mounted on life-like replicas of the Dynasty members, along with a plaque extorting the hubris of the Hos Dynasty in thinking they could tame the Expanse, and the inevitable nature of their fall. Law found a small exhibit devoted to the recently captured Tau, and thankfully several battlesuits including the ones belonging to himself and Fire. Hos was confident that he could not safely remove these items, and so he simply destroyed the crystal coverings of the exhibits, and the smash and grab began.

While most of the weapons not dependent on power cells were retrieved from these cases, the bodies themselves proved too cumbersome to transport. A gruesome solution was reached, as sicne Hos and Eckhart were both unwilling to part with their cybernetics, they severed the body at just below neck level in order to take their heads and limbs with them, before making their escape. Jian took what he believed to be examples of sacred relics of the Ministorum, while Law also regained the use of his Battlesuit, charging it with his internal power systems, and the group made to transport Fire’s battlesuit out of there as well when the first of the Eldar combat servitors emerged. Fast and dangerous, with an armed Dynasty, and especially a Psyker-endowed Eckhart, they were no match for the Dynasty, though they did not emerge unscathed.

Leaving as swiftly as possible, they were still confronted by another, better armed patrol of Eldar whose leader seemed to have armed themselves with examples from their own exhibit. Most of her guards fell easily enough, but rather than face her Hos offered her a chance for her life in exchange for a good word with the new ruler of the city. Mulling it over, the Eldar turned her weapons on the rest of her allies before ordering the Dynasty to leave with their spoils and no more, an offer which was accepted.

Outside, the fighting seemed to have died down, and a communication with Vasquez and Caine confirmed that Salaine’s rebellion seemed to have been successful. They prepared to leave, when the greatest spire of the Nexus broke apart revealing a void ship rising from its interior. Salaine identified it as the Soul Reaver, and told all loyal to her that if they valued their lives, they would flee beneath the surface – a directive that the Dynasty all too eagerly complied with as the vessel began to open fire on the surface of the Nexus itself.

The undercity offered protection from the scouring above, and Captain Shen – closely guarded by Vasquez – informed everyone that it was time to leave. The core of the planet held captured void ships that the Eldar used in their raids, and as she made to reclaim the Hostile Transaction, the Dynasty chose with their assembled liberated slaves a pair of Viper-class Sloops: dubbed the Black Adder and Black Mamba in recognition of their superior Archeotech components. As they were leaving, they decided to also use the two vessels to tow a third – a Corvette renamed the Cobra Kai along with them, while Shen salvaged some vessels of her own.

Deft piloting by Hos and Law brought the vessels to freedom, and with one last look at Salaine finishing her destruction of the world, they set off for open void. Captain Shen took this opportunity to say her farewells, as she wanted to also hide the voidship she had salvaged, but promised that as gratitude for getting her out from the Nexus she would carry on to Lucin’s Breath in her full-warp capable ship and perform some investigations for them regarding Navigators and new crew. With that, the two groups said their farewells and made for the outskirts of system for a warp jump.

Despite the speed of the Raiders, they were nonetheless overhauled by Salaine and her vessel, identified as the Soul Reaver. Salaine thanked them for their assistance in achieving her goals, and despite several fears she said she had no interest in betraying mankind, as she had her sights set on her kin in Craftworld Kaelor. This was greeted with general good feeling and an exuberant airpunch by Eckhart, and the Archon said that they would likely hope their paths never crossed again, before she made her own superluminal jump using the Reaver’s archeotech drive.

With that, calculations were made for a Chartist jump to Lucin’s Breath, and though the name of the Hos Dynasty had to be whispered for the moment, nonetheless the time for a resurrection had finally come…