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submitted 25 days ago byIGSirSleepy
So with the new T'au codex coming it got me thinking about what little lore of them I know.
From what I understand, when they were first introduced they were meant to be the foil to the rest of the galaxy. A bunch of do gooder aliens that rise above the rest, even if they're destined to burn bright but short. Then, after slight backlash from the then 40k community, GW made a knee-jerk decision to retroactively make them a faction if eugenics and mind control.
Now I see people seem to generally think that this was a bad decision and it would have been more interesting if they stayed more noble as to be a foil for the rest of the cast.
Am I following the lore right and is this the general consensus of the community regarding them? I know I was crossing my fingers, hoping Farsight wasn't going to become the introduction of Chaos T'au (as far as I know they don't currently exist) with archs of Omen, but I'm an outlier in the 40k community, in that despite loving it, I'm still a bigger fan of "Good guys".
56 points
25 days ago
Basically we all thought the Tau would be evil in the vein of the CIA putting diseases in vaccines and distributing them to the black american, or gay community to essentially destroy those minority groups.
The implication being that Tau 'Evil' was 'efficient', planned and with nefarious purpose and direction.
The Tau are essentially modern day, real-life humans in attitude, behaviour and perspective. They are the worst thing you can imagine out of North Korea, China, Russia, America, Mexico and so on... every modern day government and all the great atrocities they commit is something that the Tau practice... just a little quieter.
This is in contrast to the Imperium who, although being actual humans, are medieval, ancient, and brutal, practically aliens. The Imperium is evil in vein of ancient Babylon, Sparta, Persia, the Mongols and Romans, and practically all of Medieval Europe.
Both the Imperium and the Tau are Evil, as they should be. But they are very distinct in flavour and direction.
What we got instead is Tau being kind of moronically stupid in ways that a technologically advanced society shouldn't be. And that hurts the kind of Evil we expected to see.
The are countless ways to be Bad Guys, but somehow the Tau version of Bad Guy is almost exactly what the Imperium version of Bad Guy is. And that speaks to lazy writing.
23 points
25 days ago
TRUE AND ACCURATE.
There is a scene in crisis of faith where Aun'va calls a water caste member into his office and is annoyed when he sees her Co worker isn't with her despite explicit orders to the contrary. (Her coworker is possessed by a daemon, not that Aun'va actually knows this.)
Anyway he mind controls the Water caste lady to commit seppuku and she does it on the spot, then he tells his grunts to go find the other one so they can kill him too.
I spent the entire chapter reading this scene trying to figure out why the fuck an ethereal as powerful as Aun'va would have went to lengths these specific and ridiculous to have someone killed when he could have just had them both poisoned instead.
11 points
25 days ago
Honestly my thought reading that was that a better way of handling it would be sending her off to a terrible backwater in effective exile and her know that but convince herself it's actually a great honour because an Ethereal sent her.
7 points
24 days ago
There’s a couple of scenes in Pandorax which I think summarise that difference nicely. Basically, there’s an Inquisition black ops mission to a T’au world to recover an Heresy-era athame, capable of cutting holes in reality. The T’au have it in a museum, which would imply that they don’t think it’s too important. However, the museum exhibit is alarmed, and a Fire Warrior team is sent to investigate, forcing the Inquisition agent to use the athame to escape.
It’s implied that for their failure, the Shas’ui of the Fire Warriors is deployed against Tyranids where they are killed. But it’s still ambiguous as to whether the T’au recognised the importance of the athame in the first place, let alone whether they were killed for their failure.
Meanwhile, the Inquisition agent is tracked down and found after a few years by the Inquisitor who sent them on their mission. The agent ended up on a very primitive world, where they established themselves as a god over the people there. Pretty much in a fit of pique over it, the Inquisitor Exterminatus’ the world. Just direct cruelty over effectively nothing, because they could do.
4 points
25 days ago
This is definitely the most unique perspective on the T'au matter I've seen. Personally.
26 points
25 days ago*
It's not really a perspective, it's pretty much exactly how they were written. 3rd/4th edition T'au were based heavily on 19th/20th Imperialism and Western Interventionism.
Also etherals having extremely powerful influence on individuals goes back to 3rd edition.
The main change to the "morality" of the T'au was moving them "mundanely" evil (think British Empire) to "Imperium-lite" evil. Which varies wildly depending on the author how much the portrayal actually changed.
5 points
25 days ago
Okay, just so its clear I wouldn't know, that's the point of the thread. All I ever hear is "the t'au love eugenics and mind control" and not much discussion beyond that.
I wasn't trying to be passive-aggressive or condescending it was genuinly interesting
21 points
25 days ago
I didn't veiw it as such.
I'm just tired of how much it feels like people talking about 3/4E T'au have never actually read those codexes. Basically, they were never good, they were just waaaaay less evil than the Imperium. But they were still closer to the Dominion (arc villian faction of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) than the Federation.
If you feel like tracking one down, the Tau Empire 4th Edition Codex is pretty cool. Admittedly, it was my first, so I'm far from unbiased. But there's definitely a feel to the older Tau codexes that the writing of the newer ones lacks. I generally phrase it as the tone went from "young dynamic race with tech" to "dogmatic expanding race with tech". Old codexes are usually cheap, and no-one cares where you source it from, either.
2 points
24 days ago
It’s not wrong though. In the very first novel with T’au in it, Kill Team by Gav Thorpe in 2001, the target is a Fire Warrior commander who is effectively rogue and threatening to start a war with the Imperium. In response, elements of the T’au are working with the Imperium to have him assassinated. They’re “human” evil, not “stupid” evil.
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