Battle on a Star Road By LordArcheronVolistad Watch

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A screenshot recovered from an old and semi-corrupted Forerunner data terminal accessed on March 13th, 2563 by the ONI vessel PRO Nightmask on the edge of former Storm Covenant territory. The screenshot was dated to approximately 1369 hours local time on a planet called Charum Hakkor, on the 29.35% of the year in the year 106,461 BCE. It depicts a war of a scale and chaos so great, that the Human-Covenant War would be but a forgotten skirmish compared to its ferocity and devastation.



It was a time forgotten by most of the universe, a time of legend, where empires of such esteem as to forge entire star systems were crashed into the anvil of war. Above the desolate, violated bedrock of the once beautiful world of Charum Hakkor, vast fleets and ground forces of the Forerunner Ecumene batter themselves relentlessly like waves against the vicious defending forces of the Hominid Dominion. Attack after attack came, and attack after attack was repulsed with professional, ordered brutality. For Humanity, Charum Hakkor was their throneworld, the place in the universe that they held to be sacred and honored above all else, and as Forerunner forces slowly pushed back the largely-inferior technological forces of Humanity and their San Shyuum allies, the remnants of the Dominion's once-mighty legions fight with a seeming inexorable determination, and an unweary, unending vigor borne of having been forced so close to destruction. Above the ever-darkening skies of the contested throneworld, vast megascale edifices known as Star Roads stretch for Megameters from the surface of the world, twisting, looping and intervening like a complex tangle of Eldritch stellar wire. These vast structures are also the site of uncountable battles, as the might of the Ecumene's seemingly infinite armies and fleets crash and ram against the

merciless fortifications of Man, meticulously--organized, planned, and built over millennia to make every space around and between the roads a killzone. Fortresses, defense networks, entrenched ship-launchers and embedded planetary defense arrays litter and infestation the vast structures like ivy growing on the trunks of venerable trees, spewing all manner of luminescent and invisible lethality through the waves of Forerunner battlegroups and assault fleets.

Batteries and launchers if all shaped and sizes pointed skywards, hoping to lessen the relentless deluge of Forerunner planetary cleansing forces such as land armies and vehicle divisions. The Forerunners tried to use their superior Slipspace maneuverability and production technology to overwhelm the Hominid defenders with sheer force of arms and numbers. Certainly the Ecumene had the resources to spare, and the swarms of warships and assault constructs they so gleefully threw at their hated rivals were largely-automated, but in the case of Charum Hakkor and its complicated system of Star Roads and Orbital Arches, their mobility was hampered to a degree. Not only did the gravitational presence of the roads cause complications, but the spaciotemporal tides and flow of solar wind between the megastructures naturally tended to favor the defenders, who themselves had fortified and bolstered defensive presence in the system to a degree that for most situations, would be considered quite excessive. The AHE took full advantage of the geography of the Star Roads, luring in Forerunner fleets and battle formations into tight groups and clusters with the help of false openings in defensive lines and fleets of directive harasser ships, into areas with little room to msneuver, then revealing their more-powerful defensive weapon installations to cut ribbons into the Forerunner fleets before any major damage to the installations themselves. In such battles, capital ships were a rare sight amongst the Dominion forces at this stage of the battle, with many lying back at long-range defending the inner planet itself or in squadrons out around he Forerunners' flanks. To secure Star Roads, main battlegroups would be reinforced and supplemented by detachments of smaller, more-nimble interception craft, such as wings of Sagittus frigates and Scorpio hunter-killers, ships with the firepower of a battalion but the speed and maneuverability of a fightercraft. These craft, as well as smaller ships like upgraded police monitors and raider vessels used by the many megacorporation dynasties during the heyday of the Dominion, were much better suited to acting as rapid response forces and sentries to ward off efforts of the Ecumene to land substantial ground forces on the Roads.

The Ecumene, on their part, knew that despite their technological supremacy and exponential advantage in manufacturing capability compared to their enemies, the Humans and San Shyuum seemingly know no limit to what technological horrors they are willing to unleash on their aggressors. From superweapons which seemingly fit in impossible volumes of firepower into the small frames of Dominion cruisers to unleash a thousand scattered beams all equivalent to spinal lances in of themselves, to defensive radiation fields which made the enemy see what appeared to be demonic perversions of their personal loved ones atracking them, the defenses were said to be cursed in some areas. Such weapons include vast prisms which tear apart hundreds of ships in a single volley, weapons both on the small and large scale that bypass traditional Forerunner defensive measures, and even devices which dissolved the very souls of all they touched, rendering recovery efforts via Durances unfeasible, making the Ecumene truly pay for every inch.



The Ecumene continued to press on, sending in an ever-increasing tide of war and destructive engines, heedless of how many of their own were broken or expunged along the way. Those with the most-influence in the war, the high and self-interested Builder rate of the Ecumene, gained more and more power as they were called and relied on to develop and supply the warships, defenses, vehicles and weapons of the Warrior-servants who fight on Charum Hakkor. As countless Ecumene fleets burned in the cruicible of Humanity's throneworld, their blood and bones were used as the Foundation of a new Power structure with the scheming Builders on top. Humanity was advancing in the fields of War for their very survival. The Builders, they were advancing the Ecumene in the fields of War for their twin gods of power and prestige. Thus, one empire fell to fire abd blood, and the other fell to corruption.



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