As Tairos is becoming the center of attention in this sector, I found it prudent to do some research on this ill-fated world. Perhaps some knowledge locked in the past can help inform the future? We shall see. Majority of the records from Tairos’s earliest days were lost during the Burning at the end of the Heresy. Some, however, still exist within the archives of the Adeptus Administratum. I am collecting them here, for general reading.
-Inquisitor Malacin Grieg
+++ IMPERIUM RECORD AA-CLX-0124-GAMMA +++
+++ RELEASED UPON AUTHORITY OF INQUISITOR MALACIN GRIEG +++
+++ SUBJECT: TAIROSIAN POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS +++
+++ COMMENTARY BY ADEPT 431-A-VII +++
++++ BEGIN REMEMBRANCE 549 – 813.M30 ++++
++++ AS RECORDED BY REMEMBRANCER REN ++++When Mankind first encountered Tairos, it was a world besieged by massive dragons. Towering serpentine creatures the size of entire hab blocks roamed the planet’s surface, consuming all living matter wherever they trod. The first human settlers of Tairos had deployed the knight engines of the Mechanicum against these creatures, and, while some of the monsters were driven back, the menace was merely contained, not eradicated.
Thus, it had been that the earliest nobility among the Tairosian settlers established the ritual of the Final Hunt–men and women of great renown would ride to war against the monstrous dragons during closing ceremonies of the season. The ones who claimed the highest number of dragon bodies were declared the victors, and were granted glory and renown for the entirety of the next season–up until the next Final Hunt, of course.
The creatures always returned to their previous numbers, year after year, and it was not until the Imperium’s recent rediscovery of Tairos during this, our Great Crusade, that the monstrous skittering dragons were finally eliminated from the surface. The great war engines of the Imperium of Man and the Mechanicum, including the Collegia Titanica, ensured that the monstrous beasts were culled entirely from Tairos’s wilderness. Smaller specimens still remain across Tairos, however, left to smaller hunting parties to cleanse.
++++ END REMEMBRANCE 549 – 813.M30 ++++
The Final Hunt as recorded in the remembrance was reduced from the great, year-ending war for survival that it had been to little more than a celebratory game pursued by the nobles.
Despite the event itself being a fragment of its former glory, however, the renown of winning the Final Hunt remained, and they shaped the nascent courts and politics of Tairos’s surface world. Nobles would vie for supremacy over each other, often planning their plays for ascension years in advance. There was always a Final Hunt event involved, despite the nobles no longer riding against the dragons of yore. Often it would be a simpler hunt–a group of nobles looking to catch the most impressive wild game or the most savage of xenos beasts–and, if an accident were to occur during the course of the event… so be it. May the best noble house win.
Such was the way of early Tairosian politics.