Taros is a merciless desert world of blistering sun and endless dunes, its value to the Imperium lying wholly beneath its sands, where rich mineral deposits are torn from the rock by labouring work-gangs. A harsh mining colony far out on the Eastern Fringe, it dwelt for long years at the very edge of Imperial reach, its people enduring the killing heat to feed the endless appetite of distant forges.
Proximity to the frontier proved the world's undoing. Beyond the border lay the expanding T'au Empire, and in time the governor of Taros cast off his oaths to the God-Emperor and threw in his lot with the xenos and their seductive promises. Such apostasy could not be suffered, and the Imperium answered with a full campaign of reconquest, dispatching the Astra Militarum across the void to bring the traitor world to heel.
The Taros Campaign became a brutal war fought amid searing heat and choking dust, where Imperial soldiers laboured under a sun that killed as surely as any enemy, and where T'au firepower and guile exacted a fearful toll. The desert drank oceans of blood before the matter was settled, and Taros passed into grim legend as a warning of how easily a distant world may slip the Emperor's grasp, and how dearly it must be bought back.
The atlas continues
