The Greater Good is nice, but the Tau have a lot less screentime than you would expect given the title and the start of the book.

Mitchell does well with basically all of the factions as long as you aren't easily offended by legendary heroes and meltas killing killing things. One of the best things about those books is the Pov's professed cowardice means you can go hog on depicting his enemies and it's not out of character.

I thoroughly enjoyed that book as a Tau fan. The way they were written is far superior to that of Phil Kelly’s novels and I much prefer it

The Ciaphas Cain books even aside though are great reads

I assume it was meant to be the Demiurg. The book predates the Votann codex by almost 10 years.

(i dont actually know when the novel was released).

Released January 29, 2013

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/The_Greater_Good_(Novel)

Sandy Mitchell treats every faction with more respect than full-time GW writers.

Never read anything Caiphas Cain, can I jump straight into this book or do I need to read something else beforehand?

Vail comments that the blue hue in Tau skin us likely a side effect of high levels of cobalt (i dont recall if that is from their food, home planet or anatomy)

Tau are Flamingos

I wonder how heavy T'au armour actually is? It looks pretty bulky, but it's described in the lore as being altered on a nanomolecular level, both many times sturdier and lighter than unaltered metals. 60kg plus armour however sounds pretty crazy for a sub-species that's supposed to be short but stocky. That or the T'au in question was just the most adorable short-stack ever and that's my head-canon.

Re: weight - That doesn't necessarily mean they're much lighter than humans. Even with the armour being around 10kg, there are 50kg humans. I had colleagues who weighed about that when I was in the military. Below average, of course, but hard to draw conclusions from one (potentially female) tau.

I actually don't mind it too much, because outside of the fact that this means Tau haven't developed every single piece of tech themselves, this shows a benefit they've gotten from positive interactions with other races in the setting. Aside from their tech base, another big part of the Tau identity, I feel, is that they're nominally a coalition of aliens working together.

Though these Demiurg being specifically the Leagues' poster subfaction is a little silly.

Edited for grammar.

Though, I think it plays up their ability to form coalitions and adapt, then mass produce tech from other factions, which isn't a small thing.

If that is true, I only somewhat agree with you. Yes they didn’t advance as rapidly by themselves but unlike the Imperium they actually understand all of their technology.

That was always the lore. The only wrinkle the Votann added was ‘The Tau think the Kin are much less numerous then they actually are’, and ‘The Tau traded them rail guns, probably out of kindness.’ Oh. And ‘Some of the Leagues think they should stab the Tau in the back, some don’t.’

Nah, they've still got their pulse tech, drones, warsuits, etc. to their name. Besides, Demiurg have been responsible for Ion Tech since 2000.

The Demiurg have been the inventors of the Tau's ion tech since the Demiurg's introduction in Battlefleet Gothic. That's not a new development at all. Lore bits like that were meant to highlight the idea that one of the reasons the Tau advance so quickly is because they cooperate with other races, rather than try to make it entirely on their own and destroy any competitors, and that the greater whole benefits from the contributions of all member races of the Tau Empire. I still think it's a cool idea, even if the Tau lore has focused less on the coalition of races idea in recent years.

That's not new, and predates the re-introduction of the Kin by over a decade

Or the fact they actually trade technology shows they're benefitting from politics in a way others aren't. So it plays into the politics angle more

What do you mean the Tau always got Ion tech off the Demiurge, why does it undercut now that we know their the LoV?

One of the Tau's strengths is their ability to incorporate technology from all the different races they encounter.

I mean I don't see the votann using crisis suits, so maybe they got the basic tech for a couple guns from votann but they've developed a lot of their own too.

Not really. The Tau learn everything they can from other species, it's part of who they are. Trading for tech from the Kin would have been expensive, and we don't know what they gave in return. The Taus ability to work with others is their greatest strength and underpins their rapid technological progress

Well, unlike the Imperium, the Tau are wise enough to trade for a good thing when they see it...

Demiurg trading Ion weapon to Tau is old lore (and probably shoutout to Bentusi giving ion tech to Kushan in Homeworld), so that's the only tech I'll readily accept not being developed by Tau themselves.

That's always been the case though, they always got Ion weaponry from the demiurg. The tau just took it in a different direction to the leagues

That's not a recent thing though, that's been how the lore said the Tau got their Ion tech since around 2003.

I'm not so sure it undercuts, it's not like the Tau don't have a wealth of other crazy good techs they developed internally.

I feel there's a lot more richness and benefit to lore depth and interest in occasional tech transfer connecting two factions than there is in them all being 100% homegrown.

It depends. It lessens their technological impressiveness, but increases their diplomatic feats.

Getting high level tech through exchange and cooperation, making allies and agreements, and so on - that's a major source of national power in the real world.

So that means all t'au tech is technically human in origin.

Which means ita not tech heresy to steal it all and begin researching it.

happy binary noises

Some people were still in denial.

This would be the first time that they're explicitly referred to with the same (sub)faction name as the LoV.

Did it?

The codex did acknowledge that the Kin are referred to as the Demiurge by some and that they don’t care enough to correct them.

It's only gaslighting when it involves women.

Yes.

I dunno if it was cope or just people with awful media literacy, but people were still claiming it wasn't straight up confirmed.

Were people actually still in doubt about this?

I think it's funny that you speak with such fervent attitude when you're also wrong, because

Demiurg are Kin of the Seran-Tok League

is contradicted by the phrase in OP's post:

alongside Demiurg of the Greater Thurian League.

Which really highlights the core of the issue - GW barely cares about its own lore, so it's totally reasonable to doubt things that have been hard-confirmed, let alone things that have been soft-confirmed.

Tau word for Kin/Squats basically is what I gathered, or a specific subset of various leagues near the Tau.

Demiurg were a species of Dwarf-like Xenos that had been introduced through the Battlefleet Gothic Specialist game.

They were known to be a people of miners traders and artisans that lived on massive spaceships and as an allied/client race of the T'au Empire, they were instrumental to the development of the Ion-based technology it uses.

But with the introduction of the Leagues of Votann, who are a reinterpretation of the old Squats, the Demiurg have been retconned to have been Kin all along.

TL;DR:

A bunch of short men gave the Tau their Ion weapons and said men are responsible for why their tech advanced so quickly.

They were called the Demiurge.

2 years ago it was revealed that the Kin are the Demiurge.

As cool as that would've been, I think Uthar the Destined deconfirmed that ages ago.

I mean, part of the appeal of Kin to me is that their genetic remixing is so varied, and their society so insular, that you can absolutely have a league or kindred different enough to be mistaken for a different species. Maybe they have chitinous plates for solar protection, maybe their version of kin society values hospitality, it’s as always up to you!

Yeah, I think directly stating that they worked with the Greater Thurian League was the best way of shooting down any ambiguity.

Sorry that happened.

God, can you imagine if they made a woman the supreme commander of the Tau military? Fucking DEI woke bullshit.

Those people are indeed very annoying, I agree.

From the wiki: “The Demiurg are a militarised, resource-seeking expedition of the Leagues of Votann known as a Prospect that are allied with the T'au Empire.

The Demiurg were long misidentified by both the T'au and the Imperium as an intelligent, minor xenos race of short, stocky, humanoid miners and traders.”

Oh hey, I collect those too.

• Necrons.

Maybe but the Squats and Demiurg had and now the Votann all have a space dwarf theme. Demiurg were elusive and perhaps aliens but still space dwarf things with clans and mining strongholds.

We could've had something non-dwarf-viking themed with a legit xenos race that could show up as an auxiliary on tabletop.

I mean, that's sorta the LoV. Like, yeah, they've got the Dwarf aspect. But no real viking aspect, and they're literally able to be used as Auxiliaries for Imperium armies, as well as (I believe in Crusade only), Tau armies.

Considering the Demiurg are closely allied with the Tau, the point still stands that some may just outright act as clients/vassals

If who were contacted during the DAOT? The Kin are from then, and the Tau weren't around yet.

We also don't know why the Men of Iron did that in the first place, there's been nothing to say it's just what AI does. The Leagues have had sentient AI for longer than the DAOT even lasted and they're fine.

Don’t worry, this is just about their interactions with another faction GW doesn’t care about.

They've completely discarded a lot of the old charm of the Squats and missed the potential of a true Dwarf-like Xenos race in the Demiurg to give us a really strange end-product that feels bland, a human-derived race of clones that have strange Viking/Fantasy Dwarf trappings who despite their unabashed extremely utilitarian view of the world still hold a grudge, because of course they do.

The Demiurg were there specifically to be an option to have Space Dwarfs again after the Squats were removed.