That day was a disaster for the entire T'au race.
An immense fleet of Mechanicus Ships unlike anything they had ever seen descended upon the outskirts of the T'au homeworld, T'au, bringing a gray-black catastrophe down upon it.
The vast defensive fleet, a source of pride for the entire T'au Empire, stopped responding in space.
Even most of the machinery across T'au began malfunctioning.
The planet's communications were cut off.
Countless T'au watched in terror as strange changes unfolded around them.
Yet among the panicking masses, one person raised his head without the slightest trace of alarm.
He was Farsight, the T'au's once-renowned commander.
After a period of meditation, Farsight had concluded that the people of the T'au Empire would never be free as long as the Ethereals existed. He had therefore vanished of his own accord and become the Hermit on Vior'los. In reality, however, he had established his own independent domain—the Farsight Enclaves, a region the T'au Empire had declared off-limits.
This time, he had come to T'au in secret to visit a few old friends.
But he had never imagined what he would experience next.
The immense fleet of Mechanicus Ships had all but jumped directly to T'au.
The moment the titanic vessel Sword of the Void emerged from the Warp Route, the T'au defensive fleet—which had detected the unauthorized Warp transit and formed an encirclement well in advance—lost control completely.
The immense Sword of the Void possessed ample computing power. Unlike the two Guardian-class ships at Volkus, it had no need to hijack the enemy's computing resources to seize control of the fleet.
Using its own resources alone, the Sword of the Void instantly hacked into the T'au defensive fleet of more than two hundred vessels.
At the same time, it disrupted communications across T'au