The World Of 'Warhammer 40K': T'au

Tabletop Games

Dec 24

T’au units in combat — Image Source: Warhammer-Community.com

We’ve already discussed the T’au (also called the Tau) at CultureSlate due to our review of the excellent Warhammer 40,000 novel, Elemental Council. But our article today will look at exploring these blue-skinned hooved bipedal aliens with a steadily expanding empire more closely. The T’au are fascinating in how they contrast with the Imperium of Man and other older factions in the 40K galaxy, yet also how they unfortunately follow some of the same ideals of groups like the Imperium. The T’au might not persevere into the future if the forces that surge against them prove too great, but they have shown remarkable resilience thus far in the face of a grimdark galaxy.

Mysteries Of T’au History

The T’au were once a divided people, living in diverse climates across their homeworld and at a pre-industrial level of society without sophisticated technology. Their various tribes fought vicious conflicts with each other, much like Earth’s real-world ancient history, but things changed when a truly enormous battle was set to take place during a siege of a great city. After strange lights were apparently seen in the sky, a new group of T’au appeared and sought to meet with the leaders of the army camped outside, as well as the city’s government. They brought these groups together and wove peace out of what might have been disaster. These newcomers began to unite the different tribes together, preaching cooperation and unity instead of conflict.

RELATED:

Featured

'Total War: Warhammer 40,000' Developer Roundtable Hints At What's To Come

A map of territory held by the T’au Empire — Image Source: YouTube

Meanwhile, the Imperium had discovered the T’au before this point, when an Adeptus Mechanicus fleet reached a distant eastern corner of the galaxy. Detecting the xenos life, the Mechanicus duly noted the planet, recommended its population for extermination so the Imperium could gather the world’s resources, and then moved on. But shortly after this, around the time the new group of T’au emerged, Warp storms cloaked this corner of galactic space, at the same time as Imperial records slowly forgot about the primitive species located in the region. When the Warp storms cleared millennia later, the galaxy was suddenly looking at a powerful, though small, empire, with vast technological ability and a united population. The jump in development had been utterly astonishing.

T’au society had been reorganized, as the T’au were set into castes drawn from four elements (Earth, Air, Water, Fire) while the fifth caste, the Ethereals, ruled over the T’au people as descendants from those who had brokered peace millennia before. The T’au Empire promoted the T’au’va, or the Greater Good, the idea that through unity under T’au leadership, the galaxy could be made a better place. Already, several xenos species had joined the T’au Empire, including humans from Imperium worlds abandoned or lost, and this “seizure” of Imperium territory quickly brought the T’au and Imperium into conflict. But how had the T’au achieved this shocking level of development in such a short time? Only a few millennia had passed from the time they were observed to living in a society akin to Earth’s Iron Age, and yet now, they had a multi-system-spanning empire with advanced robotics, computing, and other sophisticated information. The Imperium has its theories, some of them very outlandish, as does the fan community of this universe. But we’ll address these questions later.

A T’au world — Image Source: Warhammer-Community.com

T’au Technology

The T’au are a people with considerable technological prowess. With advancements made in the past few millennia, the modern Imperium could only dream of considering in its 10,000 years of stagnation. One of the most notable forms of technology is their ranged weaponry. The T’au do not like melee combat, finding it to be a barbaric form of conflict, instead greatly preferring conflict at a distance and on their terms. As a result, they heavily focus their native forces on ranged weapons, with sophisticated energy weapons being standard equipment among the Fire Caste. Not all of this technology is homegrown within the T’au, though, as some of it came through trade with other species, highlighting one of the ways the Empire is different from the Imperium of Man.

Another difference is their battlesuits. While the Imperium has powered suits of armor, particularly for Space Marines, the battlesuits of the T’au are advanced armor with copious sensors and ranged firepower with a sleeker frame (usually) compared to the often-bulky suits worn by humanity. The T’au also make frequent use of stealth technology, allowing suits big and small to shield themselves from easy sight by technology, but also allowing them to ambush their targets with great skill.

Various battlesuits of the T’au Empire — Image Source: Warhammer-Community.com

T’au technology also makes frequent use of AI. Unlike the Imperium of Man and their utter hatred for Abominable Intelligence, the T’au have embraced the technology through the creation of drones and advanced replicas of their people’s minds. While their drones are generally of an intelligence and personality like that of a family pet, the AIs that mimic the greats of their past can be incredibly sophisticated. T’au seeking to communicate with their honored dead, or even dishonored dead, can access devices that create a visual facsimile of the deceased person and, using data from public records and other sources, create comforting responses. But these AIs also serve military purposes. Drones are key assets on the battlefield, while the AI constructs of noted military leaders can be installed into battlesuits to aid pilots in combat.

Finally, Tau starships deserve a mention for how they don’t make use of the Warp. Aircraft are also notable as being key to both ground and air combat, being flown by the Air Caste in battles both in the atmosphere and in space. Meanwhile, the T’au space navy makes use of different technology to move across the galaxy. Compared to Warp travel, it is much slower, but it is also infinitely safer than the horrors of the Warp. The Fourth Sphere Expansion (Sphere Expansions being the term used for when the T’au Empire plans a major expansion of their territory) went horribly awry after the T’au made use of technology derived from captured human vessels. Their ships plunged into the Warp, and were considered lost, with the survivors rediscovered years later being deeply scarred by that experience. The T’au have dimmer souls, so most T’au themselves escaped immediate notice by hostile daemons, but their auxiliaries were slaughtered both by the daemons and later by the surviving T’au after realizing the links their client species had to the Warp. It was a very messy situation that remains a carefully guarded secret amongst the T’au. But, speaking of auxiliaries, that is where we turn our focus to next.

Client Species

A force of Kroot during battle — Image Source: Warhammer-Community.com

The T’au have expanded across their corner of the galaxy and, in doing so, have encountered a wide array of fellow lifeforms. Some are less than pleasant (Tyranids and Drukhari are vastly different kinds of evil the T’au were not prepared for), but others proved receptive to the T’au’va and joined the Empire. There are literally dozens of alien species incorporated into T’au society, serving many different roles in support of the Castes and their goals, but here are a few of the most notable.

The Kroot are a species of vaguely avian hunters and mercenaries from the world of Pek. They have a unique ability to adapt and absorb new genetic information after eating the meat and organs of other species, allowing for substantial evolution. The Kroot joined the T’au after the two species allied to help the Kroot fend off an Ork invasion of their homeworld, and so the Kroot have become one of the T’au’s most favored auxiliaries. Highly skilled at melee combat, but also skilled in ranged fighting, their forces are often seen alongside T’au Fire Caste warriors in the field of battle.
The Vespid are an insectoid species who came into the T’au’va peacefully. Their homeworld has unique crystals which function as a key part of their technology, and while initially resistant to T’au entreaties, the creation of translation helmets to be used and worn by the Vespid turned the tide toward the T’au. Now, the Vespid are seen on the battlefield alongside the T’au and Kroot, flying quickly around the battlefield and unleashing powerful sonic weaponry on their foes.
The Demiurg, as the T’au call them, are really just one Kindred in a League from the Leagues of Votann. Hardy resource gatherers who have lived in the void for millennia, the Kin of the Leagues are the ones who traded ion-based weapons technology to the T’au. The T’au believe that said Kindred is the whole of the species, unaware of the wider Leagues in the galaxy, though a brief detail in the novel The High Kâhl’s Oath implies that other Kin do trade with the T’au, likely maintaining the illusion on purpose or keeping their identities vague.
Lastly, there are the Gue’vesa or Humans, who make up an increasingly large part of the Empire’s population. Composed of former refugees, rebels, independent factions, and more, these Humans now allow the T’au to govern them, and serve at all levels of society from the military to the bureaucracy to construction and engineering, though rarely do they lead the T’au directly themselves. However, there is growing tension between Humanity within the Empire and the T’au, something explored in Elemental Council, and seen with the disaster that was the Fourth Sphere Expansion.

Farsight, Truth And The Modern T’au

T’au leaders studying plans — Image Source: Warhammer-Community.com

The T’au sound great, don’t they? They seem like a good group to get behind in a galaxy of religiously obsessed cultists, aloof and distant ancient species, murderous extragalactic bugs, and more. Yet there are darker sides to the T’au. For example, their Caste divisions within the T’au are maintained so rigorously that for an Earth Caste engineer to even pick up a gun to defend themselves on a battlefield, even when in mortal danger and without Fire Warriors nearby, is seen as a punishable offense. Additionally, the T’au employ reeducation camps and other facilities to ensure compliance in populations that might prove troublesome, or T’au who have lapsed in their total loyalty to the T’au’va…and then there is the mystery of the Ethereals.

The military commander known as Farsight helps demonstrate the tricky nature of T’au society. A decorated military leader, Farsight was part of an expedition that discovered a daemon-infused ruin at the edge of T’au space, and accidentally opened a portal to Khorne’s domain. Such is the T’au naivete that they assumed (and still somewhat do) that the daemons were the native alien species of the planet. However, the expedition ended in cataclysmic failure when the leading Ethereal was killed, and the remaining T’au entered a frenzied state of grief-stricken revenge. Farsight was ultimately able to close the portal that had opened, though he acquired a strange alien blade. Left on his own without oversight, Farsight began to consider all of these events and came to the conclusion that the Ethereals had been manipulating him and his fellow T’au as they had seemingly known about the portal. Other events throughout a review of his life led him to this conclusion, too, and he decided that he could not trust them. He broke away from the T’au Empire and formed the Farsight Enclaves outside of the Empire’s reach, building a new and different T’au society free from the control of the mysterious Fifth Caste.

Obviously, his betrayal was met with horror and condemnation by the Ethereals, and he was immediately vilified as a traitor, yet there remains broader hints that Farsight’s core intuition was correct. Something is wrong with the Ethereals. Mind control is a popular theory, as the sudden submission of the Vespids, the incredible fanaticism of certain groups of Humans to join the Empire, and other hints suggest something is off. Yet it may also be due to millennia of deeply ingrained cultural tradition and coincidence, as Elemental Council shows us interactions with an Ethereal who explains some aspects of Ethereal life, even as it teases us with the concept of scent-based control.

Like many Warhammer mysteries, it is unlikely this will be solved anytime soon, but it is notable to help make clear that the T’au are as much part of the wider grim-dark galaxy as some of the more openly insidious factions. What makes it worse in some ways is that you want to root for them, you wince and worry when they encounter an alien species people know is horrible, yet they have no idea what they are in for. Yet their naivete may one day wane in the face of the galaxy’s growing horrors, as the Great Rift has brought about great turmoil. Though with the Fifth Sphere Expansion underway, and a Sixth also being planned, the T’au will undoubtedly have a focus on fighting the good fight for the foreseeable future, adapting on the fly to the threats they face.

CultureSlate: Made by humans, for humans

READ NEXT:

Featured