NIGHTFALL PREVIEW IV

The Sukhoth Cluster Rebellion

The Sukhoth Cluster Rebellion

BY PETER NEALEN

It began on Sukhothal, capital of the Sukhoth Cluster for over three thousand years. A previously uncharted comet—in and of itself a matter for mark and suspicion—passed near the planet, and for days coruscating displays of burning debris and auroras danced in the sky above the ancient city sprawls that covered tens of thousands of square miles.

There were reports of strange phenomena, including what seemed like mass psychosis in some of the smaller cities, but given the size of the population of Sukhothal, such things were not all that out of the ordinary.

Then the Disciples arrived.

That was all they called themselves. Arriving in a fleet of strange vessels the likes of which no one in the sector had ever seen, they descended on Sukhothal in force, shrouded in hooded cloaks when they made planetfall, claiming to be on pilgrimage to this world, where they said that the Powers of the Universe had touched the world itself.

Initially, the governing powers of Sukhothal had little problem with this. So ancient a world had long taken a turn for the secular, and most faiths, even the predominant creed that held The Eternal as an avatar of God, were viewed as little more than curiosities by the elites. The Imperial Office of Faith determined to keep a close eye upon the Disciples, as the Office’s remit was to police any new faith that threatened the order of the Empire. By definition, that meant any that went against Natural Law and Natural Theology.

That was why, when the Disciples made their move, the Office was their first target.

It wasn’t a direct assault. Not at first. The Disciples had immediately begun building near the areas where the stranger phenomena had been reported, shrouding their works in high-walled compounds and generally keeping to themselves. When they began to build the largest temple on the surface of the planet, however, and began to preach that the Doom had come, that the true Powers of the Universe had grown tired of humanity’s heresies about one God, then the Office truly took notice.

The first investigative teams simply disappeared. So did the follow on teams. By the time the Office summoned the 43^rd, 56^th, and 78^th Sukhothali Phalanxes and moved on the temple in force, it was far too late.

The vanguard of Disciples were revealed to be renegade Paladins, and they had landed a considerable amount of military hardware in the course of their project. The temple was an ambush, and despite the Sukhothali numbers, the Disciples were ready for them. It was a slaughter.

In the immediate aftermath, the Disciples moved quickly to seize the governing centers of the planet, as their fleet unmasked its weaponry, annihilating two major cities in the first couple of hours as a warning. Those governing bodies not taken hostage immediately capitulated quickly, especially as their resistance was crushed with a combination of orbital fire and merciless slaughter on the ground, heedless of civilian casualties, and backed up by weird phenomena that defied the known laws of physics.

Within days of the temple ambush, Sukhothal was no longer an Imperial world. Most of what follows has been gleaned by the Office and Imperial Intelligence from interrogations of captured Disciple fighters during the wars that followed.

Resistance was maintained, but it was not supported by the wealthy elites of the planet, most of whom still considered religion a poor reason to die. Often those elites would hand over any information about the resistance they received to the Disciples.

Not long after the fall of Sukhothal, an event happened in the newly completed temple. A manifestation. No one has ever been able to quite describe the entity that appeared there, but most of those inside the temple at the time went permanently insane. The Disciples sheltered them, calling them the blessed, who had been touched by the Powers of the Universe, their minds shattered by the depths of the knowledge granted to them.

It is believed that the entity maintained its presence in the temple, and a shift of mentality began to spread out from it. In a matter of weeks, the most stalwart secularists were frothing zealots for the Powers and their representative in the temple.

Thus it was that the first offensives began less than a local year after the conquest.

While resistance stiffened as the jihad went forward, the older worlds closer to Sukhothal fell quickly. Many elites, cowed by the violence the Disciples were demonstrably able and eager to bring to bear, found reason to surrender or sabotage their planet’s defenses, in hopes of saving their lives.

Sometimes, it even worked, though only when they converted, first in the interests of self-preservation, then more sincerely, as they were subjected to the influence of the entities worshiped by the Disciples.

The Sukhoth Cluster lies deep within Imperial territory, and aside from relatively small geopolitical feuds, had been at peace for a very long time. Far from the frontiers that are the Empire’s chief military focus, it took years for the response to be properly mustered. By then, the Disciples had already conquered nearly thirty worlds, and those still resisting were steadily crumbling under the weight of fanatical numbers.

The hastily assembled force of three Paladin clans—the Silver Sentinels, the Obsidian Circle, and the Iron Vow—and twenty understrength Imperial Phalanxes assembled in the Idrial stars, a closely-spaced trio of systems just to coreward from the spreading front of aggression and human sacrifice. There they would begin to hold the line and at least slow the bleed.

It was the beginning of the true clash between the Empire and the Disciples of the Void Dwellers in the Sukhoth Cluster. After nearly a century, the war has passed back and forth, with Sukhothal still firmly in the Disciples’ hands, as destruction has raged across nearly fifty worlds (some more than once).