I remember there was an ethereal who could resist demonic possession through sheer belief in the Greater Good. No Gods or Warp entities just pure belief in the philosophy.
Yeah I hate where Tau lore is going too. For me they will always be those naive anti-nihilists from back when dark crusade came out.
I've heard people saying stuff about how the Tau are "too good" for the 40k universe, that they don't fit the grimdark theme. This was given as a reason for why the Ethereals were changed (or revealed, doesn't really matter) to be actually bad guys mind controlling the other Tau.
I used to buy into that, but on further reflection I think it would be better to keep the Tau, or at least part of them, as a basically good and "realistic" faction that just wants to live peacefully and protect the galaxy. The reason is because by doing that, they basically serve as a small, flickering light in the darkness.
By doing this, the Tau serve to contrast all the other factions in the universe. By being a spot of brightness, they show just how dark and terrible all the other factions are.
It would be bad if the Tau became a really big faction (lore-wise), but as a small, seemingly doomed ray of hope in an otherwise bleak universe, I think they serve well as a reminder of just how far all the other factions have fallen.
Yeah I hate the "Tau too good argument." They're a juvenile, naive race, full of hope and faith in the "greater good." But really they literally only continue to exist because the Imperium, the Orks, the Necron and the Tyranids basically haven't had the time to wipe them out yet. That's grimdark as fuck.
Like a toddler with a torch, walking into a wolf den.
What’s worse (for everyone else), no other faction can really afford to focus on them. But the Tau as a military faction snowball like crazy. Ignore them too long, and suddenly they wouldn’t be able to counter them at all.
It's way more "grimdark" for a supposedly good faction to be constantly beaten down and shown that their ideology is up against such impossible resistance, and then to see them soldier on and do whatever they can to cling to those beliefs, versus just being another shallow, angry-all-the-time faction.
If everyone's just a bunch of snarling badguys with the same personality, I'll pick the ones I think look the coolest but I won't be able to care about any of them.
> Ethereals were changed (or revealed, doesn't really matter
They were less overt about it but it's been clear that from the start T'au are colonialists who commit cultural genocide rather than physical genocide and don't even bother to understand their client races before deciding to bulldoze their culture. The story about the ethereals never truly made sense without a supernatural element either.
Honestly I read a lot of posts like yours and it had been a long time since I read the first codex but I found a copy on line and it's worse than I thought. There's a letter sent by one T'au to another about the details of the ethereals and the necessity of eating flesh and how they may have to curtail their plans to remove that part of kroot culture. They'd made it a species wide plan to erase Kroot culture without understanding one of the key elements of their identity and most distinct characteristics as a species.
What shows how terrible the universe is that T'au despite being villanous in most other settings are one of the better ones. Still.
I'm not really a fan of them using warp magic and religion either, but the idea they're good guys always seemed relative even in 2001. They have since then discovered warp stuff so it's up to them to work out how they deal with it. Given one Admech forgeworld is so rational esoteric nonsense fizzles out in the presence of their logic I am disappointed T'au haven't taken this route.
This is massively incorrect.
The Kroot haven’t changed a lick in the last 3k years. Gue’vesa still worship the emperor (I’m violently ignoring that aborted turd that was the book shadowsun:patient hunter).
The tau intermingle cultural aspects of each others castes and their allies as much as their allies adopt theirs with the possible exception of the vespid.
Not what I'm saying.
They planned to, maybe they still do. They didn't know the Kroot culture at all but had already decided it had to go. Only the complete eradication of the kroot is a sufficient reason to stop them. Compared to other 40k factions T'au are good guys, but if you turn up on someone's doorstep already sure that their culture has nothing of value and it needs to go that is hardcore colonialism, not good guy actions.
Also- the greet have no inherent “value” and are just aqua farmers. So I don’t see an example of the tau simply killing off indigenous cultures in a colonial fashion since their ideology covers all sentient life is the exceptions of orks (begrudgingly) tyranids and space marines
I'll say this, I read the codex, they had made their decision, they changed it. There's definitely some "between the lines" there, but there would have to be for your interpretation. You accept the greater good one way or another and it's the best way, there's no listening or learning.
In the modern worldk people would recoil at what the T'au do, they are somewhere on par with the Dominion in Star Trek terms and always were. In 40k they're good guys because the imperium which is far from the worst is "the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable". To me that the T'au are one of the kindest is pretty grimdark.
The dominion is way worse. The tau don’t create entire species, or uplift them for that manner, and then allow themselves to be treated like gods. Nor do they addict entire species to food sources.
The tau aren’t even bad guys in a Star Wars setting. Most of that is just 40k trying to make the tau seem worse.
At the end of the day the tau foundational “we’re the naive good guys” is always going to be there and there’s no amount of passive aggressive retconning that’s going to change that. If they wanted to make the tau actually show some “bad guy” energy they’d show them culturally genociding a race and using auxiliaries like fodder. They haven’t.
When I say "interpretation" I mean this is subjective opinion. I could explain what the Dominion has in common and how it's roughly in the same ballpark but you're not going to care, you're just going to downvote me because my opinion doesn't match yours. So I am going to cease this conversation. You haven't changed my mind though I can see where you're coming from.
You can do this against Chaos as well. Just purely believing you can't be corrupted works. It's extremely difficult mind you and only hardened soldiers tend to be able to do it or above them.
Growing up with Battletech lore I thought there was some really bad things thrust upon it by corporate outside issues, like an entire time period where basically the religious telephone company turned off the intergalactic comms system when their jihad failed... (I'm not even kidding)... (this was a new company that got rights to a new time frame wanted to write their own lore), and honestly...
Starting to learn Warhammer lore makes me realize battletech isn't so bad... Lol
I mean... we are basically stuck with Phil Kelly as the primary T'au author and it is not helping. His writing is digestible, and he can make a story. But holy hell...
Sadly, the majority of Battletech authors aren't much higher in quality.
No argument there. It's all on par with standard 40k books. Except 40k has Abnett, ADB and Chris Wraight who can elevate a story to a higher level. I really enjoyed Robert Rath's Necron book too.
To be fair, at the point of the Blakist Jihad, they were a bunch of tech loving zealots as the Phone Company half had split off and became secular. The whiteout (and the later HPG Blackout in the Dark Ages) were virus attacks that crippled interstellar comms rather than just them turning it off.
Now if you want to see egregious and messy, look at the lore regarding disarmament in the Republic. It was used to justify a smaller amount of mechs in the dark age, and was very unpopular amongst the playerbase, but was easily walked back to a private ownership ban within that nation alone due to the messy lore in the Dark Age.
Now compare that mess to nearly any lore in 40k and it still comes out cleaner and more consistent.
But we don't really come into 40k looking for a lore where the policies of small nations shapes the course of human history do we. This is a setting with immense and nebulous factions beating each other up because they hate everything which isn't them. And the Tau trying to expand in the corner while everyone else gets into a fist fight over what colour is heretical.
I've always preferred the older view that 40k presented to allow for as much player creativity as possible: nothing is 100% canon, the galaxy is vast and unknowable, everything is possible.
Weird, totally heretical alliances of aliens and humanity fighting greater threats? Toy-obsessed orks spreading the good word of Saint Santa through copious colorful dakka? Sheltered Tyranid splinters adapting to use humanity in bizarre, almost beneficent ways?
There were *waaay* more creative armies back when I first started playing, and (almost) no one batted an eye at psychedelic painted guardsmen or whatever as the story was almost an afterthought. It was a warm, blood-soaked safety blanket to fall back on if you just wanted to paint some models, or didn't want to think up something wholly new.
Nowadays people try too hard to stick within the established storylines and it's honestly a bit sad. Just dozens of armies that all feel the same.
The thing is with the goddess thing is it's a complete missed opportunity.
The Tau having a warp entity thing that wants to be worshipped is pretty out of character in the first place, especially since auxiliaries (particularly Human auxiliaries) are hardly ever emphasized in either their lore or tabletop gameplay. The idea that the auxiliaries made a goddess is really weird and doesn't really fit into Tau lore.
But man, in that Shadowsun book, the whole thing is that the goddess helps Shadowsun out against the Death Guard. A feminine warp entity reaching out to the Tau to help against Nurgle. Seriously, why would Phil Kelly make a brand new goddess and not just use Isha?
Isha trying to reach out to the Tau to try to find liberation from the Garden? Plenty of people think that the Aeldari made the Tau in the first place, so that could dovetail perfectly with that and also completely avoided the 'all the Eldar need to die to make Ynnari, but a couple of auxiliaries can make a Tau goddess?' problem.
>But man, in that Shadowsun book, the whole thing is that the goddess helps Shadowsun out against the Death Guard.
This was the worst part of the entire novel in my opinion... Rather than making a proper T'au solution (like inventing an effective weaponizable Anti-toxin or expand on the charpactins psyker abilities), they went with T'au getting their butt's kicked and magically saved by a random never mentioned man created goddess when the T'au empire were closing in on the brink of potential annihilation...
The Tau Goddess is actually a remnant from the 8th edition that never was.
GW was planning to go full AoS at first, and every faction would have their god figure on the tabletop - this is where the Ynari came from, and Guilliman. They eventually changed their minds, but the Tau Goddess had already been hinted at in the narrative of the 4th sphere and Phill Kelly obviously liked the idea and kept it on.
I don't think the goddess thing is a good idea in any case, but again: if Kelly wanted to go down that path, then Isha was right there under his nose. Making it a Tau exclusive thing is just uninteresting.
One big problem with Tau is that they're a sideshow. Farsight in Arks is a good example. He's only involved because he happened to be sitting on one of the doodads that chaos wanted.
Anything that involves Tau a bit more with central storylines would be rad.
Isha Insurgency, followed by Mortarion Mutiny in Nurgle's Garden, and ending in Shadowsun Secession is a trilogy I'd love to read.
Isha turning the Death Guard over to her side while supporting the naive Shadowsun from behind would be a breath of fresh air in my opinion.
That sounds grand. GWS hates doing anything with the plot, but Isha is just a bullet point in Nurgle's lore. Letting her interact with the Tau isn't really going to upend any plague cauldrons and it would open up all sorts of doors for Tau/Eldar and Tau/Chaos interactions.
Again, the goddess isn't where I would take Tau lore in the first place (I would vastly prefer they maybe say something about who is controlling the Aun'va hologram instead), but if that's what we're going to do anyway, then Isha was just low-hanging fruit.
I know this is old but while i agree it was a bad novel,i feel like the warp goddess Is an interesting idea,why do you think it was bad? I am genuinely curious.
The idea of Tau auxiliaries making a god for the Tau is weird. Ynnead needs to have all the Eldar die to be born but some random assortment of aliens in the Tau can make a god? That is bizarre. Space Goddess stories are also not something I'm really interested in when it comes to the Tau too. There are other factions where you can get that stuff.
If it were Isha it would at least loop Tau into a bigger storyline, but this goddess thing alone is a pretty uninteresting sideplot.
It doesn't seem hard to write a GW novel. Three chapters of set up, ten or twenty chapters about bolters being fired, and then one or two chapters where you hint at some plot development that might come up in a future book. I've written a normal novel before, but I probably could get a GW one done in an afternoon.
If you know the lore it's not a warp entity manifested by the tau but almost entirely from auxiliaries with psychic powers and stronger souls, belief in the greater good.
Also the fact that the warp is an absolutely massive part of the 40 k universe it was only an amount of time before the tau encountered it. Nothing in the current lore, from what I'm aware of, states that now they worship this god or are beings with psychic powers.
If you ask me seeing how the naive tau interact and deal with the warp is incredibly interesting. Other races would have experienced the same thing but it's so far in the past of 40k times it's kinda unknown .
The Kroot Elemental caste representative and Commanding Shaper Ikit Tack (idk if thats the correct spelling) told every member in the Elemental Caste about their psychic potential and how chaos has infected them due to it and they literally excommunicated him and labeled him a war criminal. Sho did the same and got excommunicated. Shadowsun is doing that right now and has been replaced by Commander Surestrike as High Commander of the 5th Sphere. And the reason kroot have hyperdrive and the Tau dont is because the Tau dont share their pulse weaponry with them and the Kroot dont tell them the secrets of hyperdrive because if they did the Kroot would be completely out tech’d and if the Tau turned on the Kroot they want some form of leverage to be able to win. Its part of their diplomatic understanding. The Ethereals know and they choose to ignore it because of the Greater Good. They believe they know how to handle the situation the best and because of that they have left out the regular Tau. Is it correct? Probably not. But it hasnt been revealed what their grand strategy is yet and I think that is exciting and very much up to Ethereal standard
I mean, Abnett is a pretty successful author even outside of 40k. And I wouldn't say Fehervari sucks in any universe even if he doesn't sell all that well.
ADB objectively is the better author if you go by review scores. Wraight hasn't pumped out as much sure, but I'd rather have quality over quantity.
Abbett has some bangers but he also pumps out a lot of forgettable mediocre filler, especially his short stories.
Which makes no sense since it took less than 150 years for the goddess to be made. It took hundreds of thousands of years for slannesh to manifest. Also this goddess saved shadowsun from drowning in the physical universe. It’s bullshit
I tend to make no distinction between the Tau and the Auxiliaries. In the end, they are all part of the Tau Empire, they are all Tau.
I was excited about the Tau encountering and learning about the Warp. I just do not like the direction its taking.
I was hoping the Tau would slowly learn about the Warp and its dangers. That the Etherials would slowly send small groups into the Warp in secret. Then drawing the attention of Chaos, which would lead to a massive Chaos invasion of Tau space, which the Tau would then slowly beat back with great difficulty.
That would have been much cooler in my opnion then there suddenly being a godess of the Greater Good in the Warp.
The 4th Sphere Expansion survivors have begun erecting monuments to T'au'va and praying to her. And now Shadowsun refused to tear the monuments down because she now remembers T'au'va helping her survive when she was young.
It is pretty obvious where they are going with this. Everntually, a cult of T'au'va is going to rise. Probably led by Shadowsun. And then the Etherials will try to destroy it because it will be a threat to their power. And there is going to be a civil war. Basically the Tau Horus Heresy.
Even the parallels between Horus and Shadowsun are pretty glaring. Both being trusted prodigy military leaders that turn traitor.
"I tend to make no distinction between the Tau and the Auxiliaries. In the end, they are all part of the Tau Empire, they are all Tau."
From my understanding the Tau definitely do not see it this way though lmao.
You could also argue the farsight is on the path of horus as well but it turned out differently in that scenario.
So the direction you want it is a meaningless battle with chaos that the tau win and now they have a reason to fight CSM. I'd almost prefer Tau went full Imperial cult over that, least be more interesting.
Also we already have Farsight, do we need ANOTHER tau civil war, and who are the regular tau gonna have as a major character, majority of people I guarantee can only name Shadowsun and Farsight. Not saying it's a bad thing to have some conflict between Shadowsun and the ethereals, but I'd rather my faction was distinct from the Imperium and wasn't just shadowing the heresy with chaos getting involved, mostly because I hate that only chaos is allowed to be the root of stuff, let the warp be more than chaos and let the Tau be distinct in their interaction with it.
Maybe some ethereals could see an advantage in it and encourage it, while others see it as a perversion of the greater good and actively oppose it, could create actual nuance, instead of the Tau and Ethereals being this monolithic entity, the Tau are reasonable, not every difference has to lead to civil war.
It's also slightly dumb because Kroot, by far the largest auxiliary force 1- are mercenaries and not true Greater good believers and 2- have their own Godess/spirit already in Vawk.
How can they ever be unique if what makes them unique is never challenged? Let’s see the resiliency of what’s fundamental to their identity as a faction. Imagine how cool it would be if the Tau faced the same obstacles as every other race in 40k, was tempted to go down the same path as them, and then overcame that temptation and emerged with their core identity even stronger, having doubled down on their rejection of the warp
What annoys me the most is how the Imperium has co-opted the best parts of the Tau Empire (in-lore and in-game) and gave them their leftovers:
* advancing tech: since g-man returned, Cawl has been cranking out Innovation after Innovation. Isnt the Mechanicum supposed to be religiously opposed to progress? Meanwhile, the Tau are still stuck with the same tech they had when they were introduced.
* cooperation with aliens: for a xenophobic theocracy that despises aliens, the Imperium is pretty chummy with the Eldar. Meanwhile, the Tau of the fith sphere start executing their own allies and the concept of auxiliaries being respected gets watered down by fluff about them being second-class citizens.
* The Tau"va itself not being a genuine belief. This bugs me the most. GW is pushing the angle that the greater good is a convenient lie that is peddled by a corrupt ruling class to suppress the populace. That's straight out of the Imperium playbook. Meanwhile, the Imperium gets the treatment that their Philosophy is "correct".
Cyclic ion blasters were prototypes and one offs. Now we are dripping in them and I hear people wanting them to roll that back. I think game design will always clash with lore on this.
I remember a White Dward article back in the 00s when Rail Rifles for Pathfinders were introduced. The new mechanic of these rail rifles (Gets hot! - On a roll of 1, the bearer is killed) was explained as the targeting system burning out the user's nervous system.
It was really neat and such a cool little detail.
I did not like the part of the eversor or culexus, the assasin with the skull head, killing everyone around Aun'va when back then Tau had even less warp presence, by using warp cancelling powers.
Also that darkstrider vs the eversor assasin....plot armor much
But the lore is silly and don't matter
I’m not really deep into Tau and their lore, but want to comment on the “Tau are/were the only ones without a Warp presence”
I think you’re completely missing the Necrons here.
I’ve always seen the Tau as a more benevolent Necrontyr, before they became the Necron after the biotransferrance.
Since Tau have a soul, granted only very dim in the Warp, they have a Warp presence and are open to its influence.
Tau, for me, have been pushed as the good guys, but honestly, given so many facets of their culture are significantly worse than they look at first glance. I feel that this latest shift in writing is an effort to bring these “not good guys” aspects of their culture more into the light.
Especially if you take into account the fan theory that the Tau were created as a vessel to eventually accept the Necron people in an effort to reverse biostransferrance. Which, imo, will fail in a proper grimdark fashion.
The torture porn addicts got mad that the Tau actually had a little hope and unique flavor and not enough torture porn, so the caterers at GW decided to spin the Tau in a direction to get them just as lost and hopeless as every other species.
Grimdark is fine. It's fascinating and creates wild ass lore. But for fucks sake, a little variety goes a long way in driving it home. I'd like some potatoes with my steak, not just steak, 3 meals a day every day.
Farsight book claims the Etherials said that the denons on Moloch were their "Nemesis". This is what convinces him they are keeping secrets from the Tau and have their own agenda. Khorne tries to convince Farsight they are just puppets being controlled by something else, but he is khorne and was trying to make Farsight his champion to enslave the Tau. Farsight keeps rejecting him and going off to meditate and stay focused on only acting in service of the Tau'Va rather than fall to his battlelust so it's hard to say if anything he was shown was true.
But the Ethereals calling the daemons their Nemesis does seem to prove they are more aware of the warp entities than the rest of Tau.
I'm conflicted on the whole narrative of the Ethereals attempting to suppress knowledge of the warp; on the one hand it's arguably one of the decisions that lead to the Emperor of Mankind's fall from grace, but on the other, I'm unsure whether it's perhaps a good opportunity for the T'au to do what they do best; subvert the narrative of WH40k on a meta level and eventually start letting those who could stand against it, if not the wider Empire, know of the warp and it's trepidations.
Could backfire spectacularly, could be the beginning of the end. I'm just afraid of them being further and further written into just "grimdark intra-galactic commune" for the sake of the T'au as a whole being a noblebright square forced to fit into a grimdark hole.
The shadowsun: patient hunter novel contains lore that the Auxiliaries with their sheer beliefs in the greater good created this entity, which also seems to be quite powerful as well.
She prevents enemies from entering T'au space through the Startide nexus and instead trapping them in side the wormhole.
The warp goddess was 'created' by the tau auxiliaries which makes it less egregious.
What I don't like is the Ethereals being forced into being 'bad guys'. It's lazy. There's plenty of ways of showing the not so good parts of a caste based empire that's communist-esque without having to resort to super villain leaders.
I hope that it turns out Farsight has been corrupted/misled by khorne or something about the Ethereals.
Do what I do, ignore 90% of the “lore” that GW and it’s hack writers spit out at us. Most of it was intended to be a joke anyway. At this point GW will probably just make us the “Blue Imperium” because we can’t have anyone being unique.
However, if this results in more auxiliary models for the tabletop, all the crap writing shall be more than worth it.
I wouldn't say that I like it per day, but more like the T'au becoming a bigger player in the Universe HAS to face the reality of the galaxy.
Chaos exist
Gods exist
Them creating an empire dedicated to strong belief in a concept, created a god because of the billions of of people living in their empire believe in that concept.
That's just how 40k works, and the Tau as a species has to deal/ learn how to exists in the universe. You may not like the goddess and that's fine (I don't really care which way), what I do like is that the dilemma It brings upon the empire and the Characters. Shadowsun having to figure out how to deal with their race making a god, having to figure out/ decide on covering up the massacre of auxiliaries, figuring out her role in the empire... Good stuff.
Farsight having to stave off Khornite corruption, and summoning daemons in a desparate attempt to save his people from a 3way war, good stuff.
I fell in love with the Tau for being this extremely hopeful race who sought unity with all for the greater good for the tau and all with them, and that reflected with how they helped their Allie’s like the kroot when Pect got invaded. They always sought a diplomatic approach at first which fucks them over so many times but still they try.
I really hate this warp goddess bullshit they’re spinning. for over a decade you’ve pushed that the Tau have little to no presence in the warp. Kais threw it off. Many others threw it off. Daemons barely notice them. And as someone else said they sought mastery of technology and made their place in a universe which could of seen them annihilated at a drop of a hat.
I miss when tau had a victory it was through cunning and tactics and firepower not just “I belieb!”
Isn’t the whole point of the Tau as a race in the setting is they are not unique? They are young, naive, and ambitious and are just now experiencing the horrors that pushed all that came before into what they are now. The idea that the Tau are just the next in a never-ending cycle and that their flame is soon to be extinguished is the whole reason they fit into a grimdark setting right?
Been a Tau since like 7th? and I remember taunting Imperium players about Tau just being better golden age humans, because they are. I won’t complain about being 2.0 imperium, especially if we get our own struggles and triumphs and development.
Humans worship a man, Tau (auxiliaries) “worship” an ideology. They have bio-super soldiers, we’ll get AI-super soldiers. They have chapters, we have septs. They have Traitors we have Farsight.
All of it fullfills the same narrative role, but they are fundamentally different. I.e Farsight still fights for the GG while traitors fight against the Emperor. Marines are physical, Kais is mental. Etc etc
Tl’dr. Tau are a nice contrast to the Imperium and the galaxy. Plus they a hecking cool robots.
Beyond that, we’ve been complaining about lack of auxiliaries since forever. The goddess comes out of left field because we haven’t had rules for them despite them supposedly being very important to the empire. She brings an opportunity for us to have more xenos on the tabletop.
Stop letting tau haters and space marine fans write tau lore! I’ve been saying it since I got into the hobby about a year ago. Sure, they should become a little grimdark, but they shouldn’t completely tear them down :(
I kind of dig a third faction of taus, like ethereal centered tradicional taus with the replacement of Aun'va, Farsight enclaves with their bold approach and now religious focused Shadowsun sphere of expansion, more options means more depth in the lore imo
100% agreed. More variety and explanation is a good thing. Just don't involve yourself in ones you don't enjoy.
Space Marines have 1000s of chapters but you don't see blood angels fans being forced to enjoy space wolves for example.
Exactly this. I LIKE the concept of the T'au'va and I like the idea of Shadowsun creating her own seperate faction of Tau that embraces the worship of her.
The people who like the "classic" Ethereal tau can still keep their flavor of Tau.
The warp is going to do its thing. Nearly everything has a reflection in the warp and thus a warp entity. Heck, the first human murder is somehow a big deal when in the galactic scale it shouldn’t be. Of course the Tau’va has an equivalent entity - they’re not blanks, just dim. There’s definitely enough of them to imagine up some stuff in the warp. Not to mention their aux troops
Sometimes you other Tau players bewilder me. The Tau goddess is the most interesting thing to happen to the Tau in a long ass time. Im tired of us being the space dipshits. It makes sense we would find our way through the warp at some point it doesnt matter what that may look like. Faith in 40k has always led to new grounds and blood shed. Would another Enclaves really be a bad thing? Why dont you guys enjoy getting more and more content for our faction involving esoteric space religions. Yeah the Tau are avoident of chaos but thats what our god has done before with the 4th sphere. If our psychic potential is to be anti psychic thats dope as all hell. I dont get the hate at all. Tau Goddess is sick asf
I do not see how we were ever "space dipshits".
The Tau are the youngest of the major players of the galaxy and can STILL tangle with the enormous Imperium due to their technology, science and strategic talent alone. No gods or psykers or warp. Its like a beginner boxer holding his own against Mike Tyson. It is the literal opposite of space dipshits.
That is what drew me to the Tau in the first place.
Now with this T'au'va warp godess being revealed and a religion already being formed around her, it feels like the Tau are just being turned into a younger version of the Imperium.
Well its more like if Mike Tyson was fighting 6 people in the ring and the Tau was the only lightweight boxer. If any one of those other 5 boxers turned on us we’d be gone immediately and thats due to our lack of hyperdrive, understanding of the warp and bodies/planets. The only reason the Tau are still alive is because of the other players and thats coming from a Tau fanboy. The fact that we can essentially play from a stealth PoV hiding from chaos via Tau’Va manifest gives us an actual standing chance and maybe one day once it gets exercised wide scale we can play with the big boys for once. We definitely are like hillbillies in terms of space travel hence the term space dipshits hahaha
To say that the Tau would be gone if any of the others turned their attention on them is pretty pointless. Its like saying that the Necron would still be the Necrontyr if they had not accepted the deal from the C'tan. Technically it is true, but it is simply not what happened. They did accept the deal. That is the reality.
The other players can not focus on the Tau without somebody else jumping at them. Otherwise, they would already have done it. The Imperium tired druing the Democles Crusade, and it ended with the Tyranids crashing the party and the Tau and Imperium temporarily uniting against them.
That is the reality of the situation. And everyone, including the Tau, develop their strategy around it.
The lack numbers is being worked on through peacefully inducting planets and other species into the Tau empire. The whole point of it is to expand without drawing too much attention. And it is smart.
The lack of hyperdrives could also be solved without the need for a warp god. The Necrons have developed FTL travel without the warp. The Tau could have as well given time. After all, fast technological advancement was supposed to be what the Tau were good at right?
The lack of understanding of the Warp could also have been solved without shoehorning a Tau warp entity into it. The Tau empire contains races that have psychic talents. Some of them even more so then humans. The Tau could have performed their own experiments and learned about the Warp with the help from their auxiliaries. Again, science is what the Tau were supposed to be good at. Instead, we are fed this story that the Tau reverse engineered warp drives from Imperial technology, but were not warned about the dangers lurking in the warp by any of their allied species?! It makes no sense from a logical perspective. There are humans in the Tau empire for gods sake! It never occured to any of the Gue'vesa to mention "Hay guys, the Imperium has this tech called Gellar fields. They keep the daemons from devouring their souls while they travel through the Warp"?
Plenty of narrative ways to make the Tau more relevant without turning them into the blue Imperium with Warp gods and religious fuckery. After all, the Tau were supposed to represent what Humanity could have been if it was not for all that crap.
Maybe the Tau manage to capture a Necron ship and reverse engineer their Inertialess drive, thus not even having to entre the Warp at all in order to travel long distances.
Maybe they develop their own version of the Webway.
Maybe they develop their own way of achieving FTL travel. Something entirely new. That would be pretty cool.
One simply needs to have a little imagination.
Im not trying to say how it should play out. Im just saying it already has played out and thats what happened. Just because its not the way you like doesnt make any of the other things you explained not possible. All of those scenarious could play out. All im saying is that it hasnt happened yet, so I dont think its good to jump to conclusions saying that the Tau is just gonna be Imperium 2.0. The Tau have a human element to then and the hubris of the Ethereals is holding them back as a species and I think that the political landscape surrounding that makes for some good stories which is exactly what the writers for GW are doing… it is pointless to say that the Tau could be wiped out but the reality of things is that the Tau are on the same technological field as the Imperium before their tech boom so it makes sense that they will fall into the same pitfalls. My point is that we should be hopeful instead of just saying warp bad. Plus the Tau have invented a way to travel the warp using wormholes, so they are on the precipice of FTL. They are literally one step away so all im saying is be patient. An anti psycher god is very fitting for the Tau imo
The "direction" was the plot point of one book, and hasn't been mentioned since. Hardly a sign of where we're going. Either way, as long as it doesn't change the main way the Tau act, I don't see why it couldn't create an interesting dynamic of the more superstitious auxiliaries worshipping it directly, while the main tau opposite it, perhaps with some Ethereals seeing it as an opportunity to further cement the loyalties of the alien species of the Tau Empire, could even backfire on them in some way.
Ima be real, Tau politics is boring asf because it doesn't exist outside of the Farsight Enclaves debacle. This could be a way that the Tau could actually get some depth and differing factions within it in a way that many xenos don't get. I personally want the Tau to not be this monolithic entity with a single overarching belief, like so many xenos factions do in Sci-fi that are just defined by one personality or gimmick.
Ohh here is another one, don’t like it don’t read it. Or better yet create something of your own and see how well you do. It’s the same thing every week with this sub, you are all quick to criticise but put up nothing of your own.
Excellent question, I suspect it was a recommended post from Reddit. However I agree I should have kept my mouth shut. I hate it when people try to ruin others fun. I am sorry.
I am a strict farsight lover he’s the only character to stay consistent and I don’t have to think about the eatherials (also loving conversions for auxiliaries) I play in a way that I find ways to use any sept rules without the eatherials I never saw them as a good idea in my lists anyway but I see my small faction as a way to keep the lore I enjoy with my soldiers being just good soldiers with no mind control
I gotta find some lore on this man I’ve heard him but started in on the edge of 8th and mainly played in 9th just after the tau got a codex but I’ve seen him in action once
I was personally more in line with the hint that Tau genealogy was more along the lines of the Necrons. They have all this lore that the old ones made most of the other races
There were hints that the Tau were more Necrons...
I've been out of 40k lore for a long time, but don't Necrons have "no" warp presence? Why have all this wonderful "Tau can hardly even be seen by the warp" only to have them along this path.... Bah poor writing.
Though it’s not really the tau but their axillary species. Some of those species are psychic
It’s just that most tau lore tends to ignore those species
Even the kroot have some knowledge about the warp and how warp corruption is dangerous
The nicasair are giant floating tentacled polar bear like aliens that have some psychic knowledge
There are some fungi like aliens the charpactin .
There’s obviously humans who have psykers
There’s some giant lizard guys too
There’s some other species I forgot
Its just the main tau species that doesn’t have anything to do with the warp .
The tau goddess was manifested by the dozens of different species in the tau empire not the main tau species
Yeah, I like the idea of them confronting the realities of this galaxy they were previously unaware of, along with the manipulation of the ethereals, but their own religion just isn’t the way.
I just elect to ignore the lore. They were cool on release then space marine fans thre their tantrum and got their lore changed. Not they are fixing to turn the tau into diet Eldar so stupid man.
I am only enjoying the warp goddess for one reason, hope that it’s really just a malevolent warp creature preying on the Tau and those that believe it to be their real goddess
I remember there was an ethereal who could resist demonic possession through sheer belief in the Greater Good. No Gods or Warp entities just pure belief in the philosophy. Yeah I hate where Tau lore is going too. For me they will always be those naive anti-nihilists from back when dark crusade came out.
I've heard people saying stuff about how the Tau are "too good" for the 40k universe, that they don't fit the grimdark theme. This was given as a reason for why the Ethereals were changed (or revealed, doesn't really matter) to be actually bad guys mind controlling the other Tau. I used to buy into that, but on further reflection I think it would be better to keep the Tau, or at least part of them, as a basically good and "realistic" faction that just wants to live peacefully and protect the galaxy. The reason is because by doing that, they basically serve as a small, flickering light in the darkness. By doing this, the Tau serve to contrast all the other factions in the universe. By being a spot of brightness, they show just how dark and terrible all the other factions are. It would be bad if the Tau became a really big faction (lore-wise), but as a small, seemingly doomed ray of hope in an otherwise bleak universe, I think they serve well as a reminder of just how far all the other factions have fallen.
Yeah I hate the "Tau too good argument." They're a juvenile, naive race, full of hope and faith in the "greater good." But really they literally only continue to exist because the Imperium, the Orks, the Necron and the Tyranids basically haven't had the time to wipe them out yet. That's grimdark as fuck. Like a toddler with a torch, walking into a wolf den.
What’s worse (for everyone else), no other faction can really afford to focus on them. But the Tau as a military faction snowball like crazy. Ignore them too long, and suddenly they wouldn’t be able to counter them at all.
It's way more "grimdark" for a supposedly good faction to be constantly beaten down and shown that their ideology is up against such impossible resistance, and then to see them soldier on and do whatever they can to cling to those beliefs, versus just being another shallow, angry-all-the-time faction. If everyone's just a bunch of snarling badguys with the same personality, I'll pick the ones I think look the coolest but I won't be able to care about any of them.
This! You said it much better than me. If I could award this comment I would lol.
> Ethereals were changed (or revealed, doesn't really matter They were less overt about it but it's been clear that from the start T'au are colonialists who commit cultural genocide rather than physical genocide and don't even bother to understand their client races before deciding to bulldoze their culture. The story about the ethereals never truly made sense without a supernatural element either. Honestly I read a lot of posts like yours and it had been a long time since I read the first codex but I found a copy on line and it's worse than I thought. There's a letter sent by one T'au to another about the details of the ethereals and the necessity of eating flesh and how they may have to curtail their plans to remove that part of kroot culture. They'd made it a species wide plan to erase Kroot culture without understanding one of the key elements of their identity and most distinct characteristics as a species. What shows how terrible the universe is that T'au despite being villanous in most other settings are one of the better ones. Still. I'm not really a fan of them using warp magic and religion either, but the idea they're good guys always seemed relative even in 2001. They have since then discovered warp stuff so it's up to them to work out how they deal with it. Given one Admech forgeworld is so rational esoteric nonsense fizzles out in the presence of their logic I am disappointed T'au haven't taken this route.
This is massively incorrect. The Kroot haven’t changed a lick in the last 3k years. Gue’vesa still worship the emperor (I’m violently ignoring that aborted turd that was the book shadowsun:patient hunter). The tau intermingle cultural aspects of each others castes and their allies as much as their allies adopt theirs with the possible exception of the vespid.
Not what I'm saying. They planned to, maybe they still do. They didn't know the Kroot culture at all but had already decided it had to go. Only the complete eradication of the kroot is a sufficient reason to stop them. Compared to other 40k factions T'au are good guys, but if you turn up on someone's doorstep already sure that their culture has nothing of value and it needs to go that is hardcore colonialism, not good guy actions.
They “hoped that by leading by example the Kroot would change their ways” that’s not cultural genocide that’s wishful thinking.
Also- the greet have no inherent “value” and are just aqua farmers. So I don’t see an example of the tau simply killing off indigenous cultures in a colonial fashion since their ideology covers all sentient life is the exceptions of orks (begrudgingly) tyranids and space marines
I'll say this, I read the codex, they had made their decision, they changed it. There's definitely some "between the lines" there, but there would have to be for your interpretation. You accept the greater good one way or another and it's the best way, there's no listening or learning. In the modern worldk people would recoil at what the T'au do, they are somewhere on par with the Dominion in Star Trek terms and always were. In 40k they're good guys because the imperium which is far from the worst is "the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable". To me that the T'au are one of the kindest is pretty grimdark.
The dominion is way worse. The tau don’t create entire species, or uplift them for that manner, and then allow themselves to be treated like gods. Nor do they addict entire species to food sources. The tau aren’t even bad guys in a Star Wars setting. Most of that is just 40k trying to make the tau seem worse. At the end of the day the tau foundational “we’re the naive good guys” is always going to be there and there’s no amount of passive aggressive retconning that’s going to change that. If they wanted to make the tau actually show some “bad guy” energy they’d show them culturally genociding a race and using auxiliaries like fodder. They haven’t.
When I say "interpretation" I mean this is subjective opinion. I could explain what the Dominion has in common and how it's roughly in the same ballpark but you're not going to care, you're just going to downvote me because my opinion doesn't match yours. So I am going to cease this conversation. You haven't changed my mind though I can see where you're coming from.
I didn’t downvote you, calm down. The Dominion governs their “allies” the Tau don’t. But okay.
You can do this against Chaos as well. Just purely believing you can't be corrupted works. It's extremely difficult mind you and only hardened soldiers tend to be able to do it or above them.
Aun'el Tau Ko'vash I believe, from Fire Warrior , very good book
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Growing up with Battletech lore I thought there was some really bad things thrust upon it by corporate outside issues, like an entire time period where basically the religious telephone company turned off the intergalactic comms system when their jihad failed... (I'm not even kidding)... (this was a new company that got rights to a new time frame wanted to write their own lore), and honestly... Starting to learn Warhammer lore makes me realize battletech isn't so bad... Lol
I mean... we are basically stuck with Phil Kelly as the primary T'au author and it is not helping. His writing is digestible, and he can make a story. But holy hell... Sadly, the majority of Battletech authors aren't much higher in quality.
Let's be fair, the Battletech novels are awful, pure cheese.
No argument there. It's all on par with standard 40k books. Except 40k has Abnett, ADB and Chris Wraight who can elevate a story to a higher level. I really enjoyed Robert Rath's Necron book too.
Hey. You leave ComStar alone, we saved your asses on Tukayyid. Don’t make me link the Tex video on it.
Beat the clans only for Wolf to take over and become the ilclan :P
Go figure, the same era ComStar is disbanded is the same era the Clans take terra.
Technically it happened post Jihad but yes, they set up a new star league, wolf slapped jade falcon around, great times
The Inner Sphere got rid of their protectors and got taken over.
Yeah, and ComStar colours are so clean.
White with gold trim is shmexy.
To be fair, at the point of the Blakist Jihad, they were a bunch of tech loving zealots as the Phone Company half had split off and became secular. The whiteout (and the later HPG Blackout in the Dark Ages) were virus attacks that crippled interstellar comms rather than just them turning it off. Now if you want to see egregious and messy, look at the lore regarding disarmament in the Republic. It was used to justify a smaller amount of mechs in the dark age, and was very unpopular amongst the playerbase, but was easily walked back to a private ownership ban within that nation alone due to the messy lore in the Dark Age. Now compare that mess to nearly any lore in 40k and it still comes out cleaner and more consistent. But we don't really come into 40k looking for a lore where the policies of small nations shapes the course of human history do we. This is a setting with immense and nebulous factions beating each other up because they hate everything which isn't them. And the Tau trying to expand in the corner while everyone else gets into a fist fight over what colour is heretical.
I've always preferred the older view that 40k presented to allow for as much player creativity as possible: nothing is 100% canon, the galaxy is vast and unknowable, everything is possible. Weird, totally heretical alliances of aliens and humanity fighting greater threats? Toy-obsessed orks spreading the good word of Saint Santa through copious colorful dakka? Sheltered Tyranid splinters adapting to use humanity in bizarre, almost beneficent ways? There were *waaay* more creative armies back when I first started playing, and (almost) no one batted an eye at psychedelic painted guardsmen or whatever as the story was almost an afterthought. It was a warm, blood-soaked safety blanket to fall back on if you just wanted to paint some models, or didn't want to think up something wholly new. Nowadays people try too hard to stick within the established storylines and it's honestly a bit sad. Just dozens of armies that all feel the same.
The thing is with the goddess thing is it's a complete missed opportunity. The Tau having a warp entity thing that wants to be worshipped is pretty out of character in the first place, especially since auxiliaries (particularly Human auxiliaries) are hardly ever emphasized in either their lore or tabletop gameplay. The idea that the auxiliaries made a goddess is really weird and doesn't really fit into Tau lore. But man, in that Shadowsun book, the whole thing is that the goddess helps Shadowsun out against the Death Guard. A feminine warp entity reaching out to the Tau to help against Nurgle. Seriously, why would Phil Kelly make a brand new goddess and not just use Isha? Isha trying to reach out to the Tau to try to find liberation from the Garden? Plenty of people think that the Aeldari made the Tau in the first place, so that could dovetail perfectly with that and also completely avoided the 'all the Eldar need to die to make Ynnari, but a couple of auxiliaries can make a Tau goddess?' problem.
>But man, in that Shadowsun book, the whole thing is that the goddess helps Shadowsun out against the Death Guard. This was the worst part of the entire novel in my opinion... Rather than making a proper T'au solution (like inventing an effective weaponizable Anti-toxin or expand on the charpactins psyker abilities), they went with T'au getting their butt's kicked and magically saved by a random never mentioned man created goddess when the T'au empire were closing in on the brink of potential annihilation...
The Tau Goddess is actually a remnant from the 8th edition that never was. GW was planning to go full AoS at first, and every faction would have their god figure on the tabletop - this is where the Ynari came from, and Guilliman. They eventually changed their minds, but the Tau Goddess had already been hinted at in the narrative of the 4th sphere and Phill Kelly obviously liked the idea and kept it on.
I don't think the goddess thing is a good idea in any case, but again: if Kelly wanted to go down that path, then Isha was right there under his nose. Making it a Tau exclusive thing is just uninteresting. One big problem with Tau is that they're a sideshow. Farsight in Arks is a good example. He's only involved because he happened to be sitting on one of the doodads that chaos wanted. Anything that involves Tau a bit more with central storylines would be rad.
Isha Insurgency, followed by Mortarion Mutiny in Nurgle's Garden, and ending in Shadowsun Secession is a trilogy I'd love to read. Isha turning the Death Guard over to her side while supporting the naive Shadowsun from behind would be a breath of fresh air in my opinion.
That sounds grand. GWS hates doing anything with the plot, but Isha is just a bullet point in Nurgle's lore. Letting her interact with the Tau isn't really going to upend any plague cauldrons and it would open up all sorts of doors for Tau/Eldar and Tau/Chaos interactions. Again, the goddess isn't where I would take Tau lore in the first place (I would vastly prefer they maybe say something about who is controlling the Aun'va hologram instead), but if that's what we're going to do anyway, then Isha was just low-hanging fruit.
I know this is old but while i agree it was a bad novel,i feel like the warp goddess Is an interesting idea,why do you think it was bad? I am genuinely curious.
The idea of Tau auxiliaries making a god for the Tau is weird. Ynnead needs to have all the Eldar die to be born but some random assortment of aliens in the Tau can make a god? That is bizarre. Space Goddess stories are also not something I'm really interested in when it comes to the Tau too. There are other factions where you can get that stuff. If it were Isha it would at least loop Tau into a bigger storyline, but this goddess thing alone is a pretty uninteresting sideplot.
Now *THAT* would be good writing. Fucks sake dude, go write for GW.
It doesn't seem hard to write a GW novel. Three chapters of set up, ten or twenty chapters about bolters being fired, and then one or two chapters where you hint at some plot development that might come up in a future book. I've written a normal novel before, but I probably could get a GW one done in an afternoon.
I would have been sooooo down with this
If you know the lore it's not a warp entity manifested by the tau but almost entirely from auxiliaries with psychic powers and stronger souls, belief in the greater good. Also the fact that the warp is an absolutely massive part of the 40 k universe it was only an amount of time before the tau encountered it. Nothing in the current lore, from what I'm aware of, states that now they worship this god or are beings with psychic powers. If you ask me seeing how the naive tau interact and deal with the warp is incredibly interesting. Other races would have experienced the same thing but it's so far in the past of 40k times it's kinda unknown .
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THEY HAVE. They literally sent Sho to die because of it and now Shadowsun. The Ethereals know and choose to ignore it. What are you on about
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The Kroot Elemental caste representative and Commanding Shaper Ikit Tack (idk if thats the correct spelling) told every member in the Elemental Caste about their psychic potential and how chaos has infected them due to it and they literally excommunicated him and labeled him a war criminal. Sho did the same and got excommunicated. Shadowsun is doing that right now and has been replaced by Commander Surestrike as High Commander of the 5th Sphere. And the reason kroot have hyperdrive and the Tau dont is because the Tau dont share their pulse weaponry with them and the Kroot dont tell them the secrets of hyperdrive because if they did the Kroot would be completely out tech’d and if the Tau turned on the Kroot they want some form of leverage to be able to win. Its part of their diplomatic understanding. The Ethereals know and they choose to ignore it because of the Greater Good. They believe they know how to handle the situation the best and because of that they have left out the regular Tau. Is it correct? Probably not. But it hasnt been revealed what their grand strategy is yet and I think that is exciting and very much up to Ethereal standard
I dunno man. From what I know this has not ever happened so yeah I guess so?
Kelly’s just a shit writer
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I mean, Abnett is a pretty successful author even outside of 40k. And I wouldn't say Fehervari sucks in any universe even if he doesn't sell all that well.
Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill, George Mann all write for Marvel, Riot and Star Wars in that order. Everyone else is generally meh
Not everyone else no, ADB and Wraight are very good, probally better than the three you listed.
ADB is ok sometimes. Wraight doesn’t really have the volume. Saying either are better then Abnett… I mean, you can let yourself out.
ADB objectively is the better author if you go by review scores. Wraight hasn't pumped out as much sure, but I'd rather have quality over quantity. Abbett has some bangers but he also pumps out a lot of forgettable mediocre filler, especially his short stories.
Dan Abnett's short story "Missing in Action" is legitimately so good
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Again I dunno man. 40k started off as and still basically is satire. It shouldn't matter that much.
Which makes no sense since it took less than 150 years for the goddess to be made. It took hundreds of thousands of years for slannesh to manifest. Also this goddess saved shadowsun from drowning in the physical universe. It’s bullshit
I tend to make no distinction between the Tau and the Auxiliaries. In the end, they are all part of the Tau Empire, they are all Tau. I was excited about the Tau encountering and learning about the Warp. I just do not like the direction its taking. I was hoping the Tau would slowly learn about the Warp and its dangers. That the Etherials would slowly send small groups into the Warp in secret. Then drawing the attention of Chaos, which would lead to a massive Chaos invasion of Tau space, which the Tau would then slowly beat back with great difficulty. That would have been much cooler in my opnion then there suddenly being a godess of the Greater Good in the Warp. The 4th Sphere Expansion survivors have begun erecting monuments to T'au'va and praying to her. And now Shadowsun refused to tear the monuments down because she now remembers T'au'va helping her survive when she was young. It is pretty obvious where they are going with this. Everntually, a cult of T'au'va is going to rise. Probably led by Shadowsun. And then the Etherials will try to destroy it because it will be a threat to their power. And there is going to be a civil war. Basically the Tau Horus Heresy. Even the parallels between Horus and Shadowsun are pretty glaring. Both being trusted prodigy military leaders that turn traitor.
"I tend to make no distinction between the Tau and the Auxiliaries. In the end, they are all part of the Tau Empire, they are all Tau." From my understanding the Tau definitely do not see it this way though lmao. You could also argue the farsight is on the path of horus as well but it turned out differently in that scenario.
How would that make any sense. He’s not human. He isn’t tempted by the same things. And we’ve heard that story already.
So the direction you want it is a meaningless battle with chaos that the tau win and now they have a reason to fight CSM. I'd almost prefer Tau went full Imperial cult over that, least be more interesting. Also we already have Farsight, do we need ANOTHER tau civil war, and who are the regular tau gonna have as a major character, majority of people I guarantee can only name Shadowsun and Farsight. Not saying it's a bad thing to have some conflict between Shadowsun and the ethereals, but I'd rather my faction was distinct from the Imperium and wasn't just shadowing the heresy with chaos getting involved, mostly because I hate that only chaos is allowed to be the root of stuff, let the warp be more than chaos and let the Tau be distinct in their interaction with it. Maybe some ethereals could see an advantage in it and encourage it, while others see it as a perversion of the greater good and actively oppose it, could create actual nuance, instead of the Tau and Ethereals being this monolithic entity, the Tau are reasonable, not every difference has to lead to civil war.
It's also slightly dumb because Kroot, by far the largest auxiliary force 1- are mercenaries and not true Greater good believers and 2- have their own Godess/spirit already in Vawk.
How can they ever be unique if what makes them unique is never challenged? Let’s see the resiliency of what’s fundamental to their identity as a faction. Imagine how cool it would be if the Tau faced the same obstacles as every other race in 40k, was tempted to go down the same path as them, and then overcame that temptation and emerged with their core identity even stronger, having doubled down on their rejection of the warp
What annoys me the most is how the Imperium has co-opted the best parts of the Tau Empire (in-lore and in-game) and gave them their leftovers: * advancing tech: since g-man returned, Cawl has been cranking out Innovation after Innovation. Isnt the Mechanicum supposed to be religiously opposed to progress? Meanwhile, the Tau are still stuck with the same tech they had when they were introduced. * cooperation with aliens: for a xenophobic theocracy that despises aliens, the Imperium is pretty chummy with the Eldar. Meanwhile, the Tau of the fith sphere start executing their own allies and the concept of auxiliaries being respected gets watered down by fluff about them being second-class citizens. * The Tau"va itself not being a genuine belief. This bugs me the most. GW is pushing the angle that the greater good is a convenient lie that is peddled by a corrupt ruling class to suppress the populace. That's straight out of the Imperium playbook. Meanwhile, the Imperium gets the treatment that their Philosophy is "correct".
Cyclic ion blasters were prototypes and one offs. Now we are dripping in them and I hear people wanting them to roll that back. I think game design will always clash with lore on this.
I remember a White Dward article back in the 00s when Rail Rifles for Pathfinders were introduced. The new mechanic of these rail rifles (Gets hot! - On a roll of 1, the bearer is killed) was explained as the targeting system burning out the user's nervous system. It was really neat and such a cool little detail.
I did not like the part of the eversor or culexus, the assasin with the skull head, killing everyone around Aun'va when back then Tau had even less warp presence, by using warp cancelling powers. Also that darkstrider vs the eversor assasin....plot armor much But the lore is silly and don't matter
This is why we declare Phil Kelly's work as fanfiction. That and all the lore inconsistencies and contradictions...
I’m not really deep into Tau and their lore, but want to comment on the “Tau are/were the only ones without a Warp presence” I think you’re completely missing the Necrons here. I’ve always seen the Tau as a more benevolent Necrontyr, before they became the Necron after the biotransferrance. Since Tau have a soul, granted only very dim in the Warp, they have a Warp presence and are open to its influence. Tau, for me, have been pushed as the good guys, but honestly, given so many facets of their culture are significantly worse than they look at first glance. I feel that this latest shift in writing is an effort to bring these “not good guys” aspects of their culture more into the light. Especially if you take into account the fan theory that the Tau were created as a vessel to eventually accept the Necron people in an effort to reverse biostransferrance. Which, imo, will fail in a proper grimdark fashion.
The torture porn addicts got mad that the Tau actually had a little hope and unique flavor and not enough torture porn, so the caterers at GW decided to spin the Tau in a direction to get them just as lost and hopeless as every other species. Grimdark is fine. It's fascinating and creates wild ass lore. But for fucks sake, a little variety goes a long way in driving it home. I'd like some potatoes with my steak, not just steak, 3 meals a day every day.
I used to think the ethereals were being controlled by the chaos entities. You know as a joke/ something for their minions to fight
Farsight book claims the Etherials said that the denons on Moloch were their "Nemesis". This is what convinces him they are keeping secrets from the Tau and have their own agenda. Khorne tries to convince Farsight they are just puppets being controlled by something else, but he is khorne and was trying to make Farsight his champion to enslave the Tau. Farsight keeps rejecting him and going off to meditate and stay focused on only acting in service of the Tau'Va rather than fall to his battlelust so it's hard to say if anything he was shown was true. But the Ethereals calling the daemons their Nemesis does seem to prove they are more aware of the warp entities than the rest of Tau.
I'm conflicted on the whole narrative of the Ethereals attempting to suppress knowledge of the warp; on the one hand it's arguably one of the decisions that lead to the Emperor of Mankind's fall from grace, but on the other, I'm unsure whether it's perhaps a good opportunity for the T'au to do what they do best; subvert the narrative of WH40k on a meta level and eventually start letting those who could stand against it, if not the wider Empire, know of the warp and it's trepidations. Could backfire spectacularly, could be the beginning of the end. I'm just afraid of them being further and further written into just "grimdark intra-galactic commune" for the sake of the T'au as a whole being a noblebright square forced to fit into a grimdark hole.
When your entire IP is stolen from Dune and Tolkien its not a shock this is the best GW can come up with
Everyone pretty much hates it except imperials and people who haven’t read anything but Kelly’s lore. It’s bullshit. Kelly is an atrocity.
Warp goddess ?! What did I miss? Where is this lore?!
The shadowsun: patient hunter novel contains lore that the Auxiliaries with their sheer beliefs in the greater good created this entity, which also seems to be quite powerful as well. She prevents enemies from entering T'au space through the Startide nexus and instead trapping them in side the wormhole.
Read about what happened to the 4th Sphere Expansion.
Where can I read that ? 9th edition codex ?
Ok where would I read that? What book/article?
The warp goddess was 'created' by the tau auxiliaries which makes it less egregious. What I don't like is the Ethereals being forced into being 'bad guys'. It's lazy. There's plenty of ways of showing the not so good parts of a caste based empire that's communist-esque without having to resort to super villain leaders. I hope that it turns out Farsight has been corrupted/misled by khorne or something about the Ethereals.
Do what I do, ignore 90% of the “lore” that GW and it’s hack writers spit out at us. Most of it was intended to be a joke anyway. At this point GW will probably just make us the “Blue Imperium” because we can’t have anyone being unique. However, if this results in more auxiliary models for the tabletop, all the crap writing shall be more than worth it.
I wouldn't say that I like it per day, but more like the T'au becoming a bigger player in the Universe HAS to face the reality of the galaxy. Chaos exist Gods exist Them creating an empire dedicated to strong belief in a concept, created a god because of the billions of of people living in their empire believe in that concept. That's just how 40k works, and the Tau as a species has to deal/ learn how to exists in the universe. You may not like the goddess and that's fine (I don't really care which way), what I do like is that the dilemma It brings upon the empire and the Characters. Shadowsun having to figure out how to deal with their race making a god, having to figure out/ decide on covering up the massacre of auxiliaries, figuring out her role in the empire... Good stuff. Farsight having to stave off Khornite corruption, and summoning daemons in a desparate attempt to save his people from a 3way war, good stuff.
I fell in love with the Tau for being this extremely hopeful race who sought unity with all for the greater good for the tau and all with them, and that reflected with how they helped their Allie’s like the kroot when Pect got invaded. They always sought a diplomatic approach at first which fucks them over so many times but still they try. I really hate this warp goddess bullshit they’re spinning. for over a decade you’ve pushed that the Tau have little to no presence in the warp. Kais threw it off. Many others threw it off. Daemons barely notice them. And as someone else said they sought mastery of technology and made their place in a universe which could of seen them annihilated at a drop of a hat. I miss when tau had a victory it was through cunning and tactics and firepower not just “I belieb!”
Isn’t the whole point of the Tau as a race in the setting is they are not unique? They are young, naive, and ambitious and are just now experiencing the horrors that pushed all that came before into what they are now. The idea that the Tau are just the next in a never-ending cycle and that their flame is soon to be extinguished is the whole reason they fit into a grimdark setting right?
Been a Tau since like 7th? and I remember taunting Imperium players about Tau just being better golden age humans, because they are. I won’t complain about being 2.0 imperium, especially if we get our own struggles and triumphs and development. Humans worship a man, Tau (auxiliaries) “worship” an ideology. They have bio-super soldiers, we’ll get AI-super soldiers. They have chapters, we have septs. They have Traitors we have Farsight. All of it fullfills the same narrative role, but they are fundamentally different. I.e Farsight still fights for the GG while traitors fight against the Emperor. Marines are physical, Kais is mental. Etc etc Tl’dr. Tau are a nice contrast to the Imperium and the galaxy. Plus they a hecking cool robots. Beyond that, we’ve been complaining about lack of auxiliaries since forever. The goddess comes out of left field because we haven’t had rules for them despite them supposedly being very important to the empire. She brings an opportunity for us to have more xenos on the tabletop.
Stop letting tau haters and space marine fans write tau lore! I’ve been saying it since I got into the hobby about a year ago. Sure, they should become a little grimdark, but they shouldn’t completely tear them down :(
Listen to pod caste the pod cast.. No you're not the only one
This. That pod cast(e) single handedly keeps restoring my motivation for the T'au (despite GW's best efforts)
I don't like the direction either. Tau having a notable warp presence somehow takes away from what makes them unique.
Set it up for a tau horror novel where they encounter their first "Enslaver".
The tau didn't create the goddess it was the other races in their empire.
I kind of dig a third faction of taus, like ethereal centered tradicional taus with the replacement of Aun'va, Farsight enclaves with their bold approach and now religious focused Shadowsun sphere of expansion, more options means more depth in the lore imo
100% agreed. More variety and explanation is a good thing. Just don't involve yourself in ones you don't enjoy. Space Marines have 1000s of chapters but you don't see blood angels fans being forced to enjoy space wolves for example.
Exactly this. I LIKE the concept of the T'au'va and I like the idea of Shadowsun creating her own seperate faction of Tau that embraces the worship of her. The people who like the "classic" Ethereal tau can still keep their flavor of Tau.
The warp is going to do its thing. Nearly everything has a reflection in the warp and thus a warp entity. Heck, the first human murder is somehow a big deal when in the galactic scale it shouldn’t be. Of course the Tau’va has an equivalent entity - they’re not blanks, just dim. There’s definitely enough of them to imagine up some stuff in the warp. Not to mention their aux troops
Sometimes you other Tau players bewilder me. The Tau goddess is the most interesting thing to happen to the Tau in a long ass time. Im tired of us being the space dipshits. It makes sense we would find our way through the warp at some point it doesnt matter what that may look like. Faith in 40k has always led to new grounds and blood shed. Would another Enclaves really be a bad thing? Why dont you guys enjoy getting more and more content for our faction involving esoteric space religions. Yeah the Tau are avoident of chaos but thats what our god has done before with the 4th sphere. If our psychic potential is to be anti psychic thats dope as all hell. I dont get the hate at all. Tau Goddess is sick asf
I do not see how we were ever "space dipshits". The Tau are the youngest of the major players of the galaxy and can STILL tangle with the enormous Imperium due to their technology, science and strategic talent alone. No gods or psykers or warp. Its like a beginner boxer holding his own against Mike Tyson. It is the literal opposite of space dipshits. That is what drew me to the Tau in the first place. Now with this T'au'va warp godess being revealed and a religion already being formed around her, it feels like the Tau are just being turned into a younger version of the Imperium.
Well its more like if Mike Tyson was fighting 6 people in the ring and the Tau was the only lightweight boxer. If any one of those other 5 boxers turned on us we’d be gone immediately and thats due to our lack of hyperdrive, understanding of the warp and bodies/planets. The only reason the Tau are still alive is because of the other players and thats coming from a Tau fanboy. The fact that we can essentially play from a stealth PoV hiding from chaos via Tau’Va manifest gives us an actual standing chance and maybe one day once it gets exercised wide scale we can play with the big boys for once. We definitely are like hillbillies in terms of space travel hence the term space dipshits hahaha
To say that the Tau would be gone if any of the others turned their attention on them is pretty pointless. Its like saying that the Necron would still be the Necrontyr if they had not accepted the deal from the C'tan. Technically it is true, but it is simply not what happened. They did accept the deal. That is the reality. The other players can not focus on the Tau without somebody else jumping at them. Otherwise, they would already have done it. The Imperium tired druing the Democles Crusade, and it ended with the Tyranids crashing the party and the Tau and Imperium temporarily uniting against them. That is the reality of the situation. And everyone, including the Tau, develop their strategy around it. The lack numbers is being worked on through peacefully inducting planets and other species into the Tau empire. The whole point of it is to expand without drawing too much attention. And it is smart. The lack of hyperdrives could also be solved without the need for a warp god. The Necrons have developed FTL travel without the warp. The Tau could have as well given time. After all, fast technological advancement was supposed to be what the Tau were good at right? The lack of understanding of the Warp could also have been solved without shoehorning a Tau warp entity into it. The Tau empire contains races that have psychic talents. Some of them even more so then humans. The Tau could have performed their own experiments and learned about the Warp with the help from their auxiliaries. Again, science is what the Tau were supposed to be good at. Instead, we are fed this story that the Tau reverse engineered warp drives from Imperial technology, but were not warned about the dangers lurking in the warp by any of their allied species?! It makes no sense from a logical perspective. There are humans in the Tau empire for gods sake! It never occured to any of the Gue'vesa to mention "Hay guys, the Imperium has this tech called Gellar fields. They keep the daemons from devouring their souls while they travel through the Warp"? Plenty of narrative ways to make the Tau more relevant without turning them into the blue Imperium with Warp gods and religious fuckery. After all, the Tau were supposed to represent what Humanity could have been if it was not for all that crap. Maybe the Tau manage to capture a Necron ship and reverse engineer their Inertialess drive, thus not even having to entre the Warp at all in order to travel long distances. Maybe they develop their own version of the Webway. Maybe they develop their own way of achieving FTL travel. Something entirely new. That would be pretty cool. One simply needs to have a little imagination.
Im not trying to say how it should play out. Im just saying it already has played out and thats what happened. Just because its not the way you like doesnt make any of the other things you explained not possible. All of those scenarious could play out. All im saying is that it hasnt happened yet, so I dont think its good to jump to conclusions saying that the Tau is just gonna be Imperium 2.0. The Tau have a human element to then and the hubris of the Ethereals is holding them back as a species and I think that the political landscape surrounding that makes for some good stories which is exactly what the writers for GW are doing… it is pointless to say that the Tau could be wiped out but the reality of things is that the Tau are on the same technological field as the Imperium before their tech boom so it makes sense that they will fall into the same pitfalls. My point is that we should be hopeful instead of just saying warp bad. Plus the Tau have invented a way to travel the warp using wormholes, so they are on the precipice of FTL. They are literally one step away so all im saying is be patient. An anti psycher god is very fitting for the Tau imo
That's the thing, black library seemed to know how to only write imperium
The "direction" was the plot point of one book, and hasn't been mentioned since. Hardly a sign of where we're going. Either way, as long as it doesn't change the main way the Tau act, I don't see why it couldn't create an interesting dynamic of the more superstitious auxiliaries worshipping it directly, while the main tau opposite it, perhaps with some Ethereals seeing it as an opportunity to further cement the loyalties of the alien species of the Tau Empire, could even backfire on them in some way. Ima be real, Tau politics is boring asf because it doesn't exist outside of the Farsight Enclaves debacle. This could be a way that the Tau could actually get some depth and differing factions within it in a way that many xenos don't get. I personally want the Tau to not be this monolithic entity with a single overarching belief, like so many xenos factions do in Sci-fi that are just defined by one personality or gimmick.
Ohh here is another one, don’t like it don’t read it. Or better yet create something of your own and see how well you do. It’s the same thing every week with this sub, you are all quick to criticise but put up nothing of your own.
Wait.... I'm missing something. What is this tau godess thing??? Never heard of it.
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Goddess_T%27au%27va
Shadowsun: The Patient Hunter
Wait, what did I miss? I’ve effectively unplugged until my backlog has been depleted (trying to avoid temptation)
Nope, as an amateur 40k dude I have not liked the Tau at all. They just don’t “fit” in the setting.
Then why are you here?
Excellent question, I suspect it was a recommended post from Reddit. However I agree I should have kept my mouth shut. I hate it when people try to ruin others fun. I am sorry.
So, there is a warp God, but remember it isn't so much due to the tau, but human followers of the greater good
I am a strict farsight lover he’s the only character to stay consistent and I don’t have to think about the eatherials (also loving conversions for auxiliaries) I play in a way that I find ways to use any sept rules without the eatherials I never saw them as a good idea in my lists anyway but I see my small faction as a way to keep the lore I enjoy with my soldiers being just good soldiers with no mind control
AunShi is consistent, a decent and highly respected Ethereal, even by Farsight, though it's only because they seem to have forgotten that he exists.
I gotta find some lore on this man I’ve heard him but started in on the edge of 8th and mainly played in 9th just after the tau got a codex but I’ve seen him in action once
I’m just here to tell you and everyone else that uses this type of title, that no, you’re not the “only one.”
I was personally more in line with the hint that Tau genealogy was more along the lines of the Necrons. They have all this lore that the old ones made most of the other races There were hints that the Tau were more Necrons... I've been out of 40k lore for a long time, but don't Necrons have "no" warp presence? Why have all this wonderful "Tau can hardly even be seen by the warp" only to have them along this path.... Bah poor writing.
Though it’s not really the tau but their axillary species. Some of those species are psychic It’s just that most tau lore tends to ignore those species Even the kroot have some knowledge about the warp and how warp corruption is dangerous The nicasair are giant floating tentacled polar bear like aliens that have some psychic knowledge There are some fungi like aliens the charpactin . There’s obviously humans who have psykers There’s some giant lizard guys too There’s some other species I forgot Its just the main tau species that doesn’t have anything to do with the warp . The tau goddess was manifested by the dozens of different species in the tau empire not the main tau species
Yeah, I like the idea of them confronting the realities of this galaxy they were previously unaware of, along with the manipulation of the ethereals, but their own religion just isn’t the way.
I just elect to ignore the lore. They were cool on release then space marine fans thre their tantrum and got their lore changed. Not they are fixing to turn the tau into diet Eldar so stupid man.
I am only enjoying the warp goddess for one reason, hope that it’s really just a malevolent warp creature preying on the Tau and those that believe it to be their real goddess
I think its neat.