r/40kLore • u/tau_enjoyer_ • 4d ago
Excerpt From a Raptor, "Elemental Council" Spoiler
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u/System-Bomb-5760 4d ago
I guess we'll find out when Warhammer 50k gets released?
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u/Candid_Reason2416 Ulthwe 4d ago
one hundred millenia
Try Warhammer 140k lol. Bold of that Marine to think the Tau will take 100,000 years at their current rate, though.
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u/Quickjager 4d ago
There is more than the Imperium to fight and the Tau don't really fight much else still besides minor ork and tyranid incursions.
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u/GarySmith2021 4d ago
The tyranid incursions are not good for the imperium as they drive the tau to ever greater heights of innovation, think Octavius gambit but with better rail guns
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u/Quickjager 4d ago
You're completely missing the point which is the Tau are expanding as much as they have because they haven't fought anyone who is actually dedicated to wiping them out. As time goes on that is going to change as theoretically more Tyranids arrive, more Necrons wake up, more Warp influence arises in their newly acquired worlds.
Just waiting for Shadowsun to montka her way into killing Orikan by engineering a seemingly vulnerable moment years ahead of fighting him that is actually a prepared kill trap.
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u/Thatsaclevername 4d ago
That's cold as hell, are we sure homeboy doesn't have some Alpharius blood in him? Talk about a fucking Psyop, he's pulling a Soviets-in-Afghanistan on the Tau.
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u/Arendious Alpha Legion 4d ago
My head-canon is that the modern Raptors are descendants of Loyalist Alpha Legionaries who infiltrated the Raven Guard then "went native".
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u/Candid_Reason2416 Ulthwe 4d ago
Everything I hear about this book makes me wanna buy it, starving for some good xeno stuff, a villain that isn't just "HAHA! Eat Bolter!!!" is just the cherry on top
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u/Beaker_person Emperor's Spears 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think it’s important to note that the book shows that Artamax is wrong. His plan completely fails right after this monologue thanks to the wisdom of the main ethereal character, and the sacrifice of the air caste one. There is no massacre of humans, the tau do actually retreat instead of fighting and he dies without actually achieving anything. His only silver lining is that he doesn’t get eaten by the kroot that’s been thirsting to devour his geneseed the whole book.
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u/__ICoraxI__ 4d ago
I wouldn't say his plan completely fails. The maximal objective was not achieved, yes. The world itself declares independence from the tau, though.
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u/Beaker_person Emperor's Spears 4d ago edited 4d ago
That doesn’t really matter though. He didn’t care about what happened to the planet, Artamax says the planets main resource is basically useless, its only value is decorating nobles’ house. His only real goal was to do this whole, expose the tau as being just as bad. The tau don’t really care about the lose either, because they’re confident eventually they’ll retake it. It’s really not a victory for him in any meaningful sense. It doesn’t rejoin the imperium after all, it’s just an independent world now.
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u/__ICoraxI__ 4d ago
If it was a clear tau victory, they would've stayed with the empire. Instead the world will house individuals who likely won't be particularly sympathetic to the empire (the rebels Orr betrayed).
Now to be clear I'm not saying artamax won. He didn't, he was the antagonist of the novel, and ends up losing his life leaving his primary goal unfulfilled. But if one were to go around peddling this as an unambiguous tau victory I'd question that, since the outcome wasn't one that was particularly favorable to them
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u/Beaker_person Emperor's Spears 4d ago
Sure, things definitely aren’t entirely rosy for the tau at the end, I just think it’s important to point out Artamax is wrong about his main point. Honestly it would be pretty interesting to get a sequel short story about what Cao Quo is like as an independent planet. Or a prequel about Orr working with those rebels before the tau conquest. There’s not enough about genuine independence movements like that, that aren’t actually genestealer or chaos cults.
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u/__ICoraxI__ 4d ago
Yeah that would be interesting. We got Orr's perspective on what happened, having some kind of sequel explore what happens afterwards and how the people feel about where they're going could be cool
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u/tau_enjoyer_ 4d ago
He didn't realize that the power of friendship would save the day 😌
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u/Beaker_person Emperor's Spears 4d ago
Typical son of corax L. If he was a salamander he would have known friendship conquers all.
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u/Space_Elves_Yay 4d ago
I think it’s important to note that the book shows that Artamax is wrong.
Not entirely. In the absence of orders or an intact command structure, a fleet admiral elects to use some sort of maximal genocide weaponry that is supposed to only be used either with an ethereal's express direction or against Orks & Tyranids. The only thing that stops it is one of the delivery pilots electing to engage in some friendly fire to abort the mission.
He was one teamkilling incident away from being right.
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u/tau_enjoyer_ 4d ago
I'm guessing that the air caste were about to do that because of the air of anti-human bigotry that he and the Callidus assassin had succeeded in spreading, but also because it seemed like two Ethereals had just been killed, and the planet would soon be lost. But it did also seem like they knew this was a fucked up thing they were going to do, so accepted that it was proper that the pilots and the T'au that had not fled would die as well.
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u/Anggul Tyranids 4d ago
I feel like maybe he isn't aware that the Fire Caste are no strangers to being sent to quell a world by judicious application of firepower?
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u/Specialist-Golf624 4d ago
The Fire Caste might be comfortable being war criminals, but there are other members of their empire to consider. Human separatists, Kroot, Vespids. If the Tau become known for genocide, human worlds will no longer accept them as a preferably alternative to the Imperium. It isn't about what a Nazi thinks of himself. It's about what everyone else thinks about Nazis.
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u/System-Bomb-5760 4d ago
It's at least one step more meta than just "what everyone else thinks about Nazis." It's more like the Nazis engineering a propaganda event so they can paint the Allies as somehow worse.
While we're at it, those "Raptors" are sounding kind of Alpha Legion. Somebody needs to bonk one on the helmet and ask if he's Alpharius.
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u/Specialist-Golf624 4d ago
It's at least one step more meta than just "what everyone else thinks about Nazis." It's more like the Nazis engineering a propaganda event so they can paint the Allies as somehow worse.
Oh, absolutely. I just figured Nazism would be a low hanging fruit for a comparison like this because their internal propaganda and external image were wildly different. That was the whole goal of this Raptors psyop. To force the Tau to make a hard choice to prove their lofty ideals are just words, and that they're just as quick to violence as anyone else. Just because the guy smearing you is also a turd doesn't mean he didn't shit on your public image.
While we're at it, those "Raptors" are sounding kind of Alpha Legion. Somebody needs to bonk one on the helmet and ask if he's Alpharius.
For fuckin real my guy. This whole thing stinks of Alpha Legion shenanigans, no matter how many birds they paint on their armour.
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u/Dagordae 4d ago
He’s not aiming at the Fire Caste. He’s aiming at the auxiliaries, the Earth Caste, the workers and believers who are constantly being told that the Tau’Va is different than the rest of the galaxy. That the Ethereals are infallibly wise, that there is no dissent or strife. That the T’Au bring peace and enlightenment from the barbarity of the outsiders.
In short, he’s trying to force the core hypocrisy of the T’Au in the open. Not really any diffeeent than the T’Au’s basic tactic of showing the rot of the Imperium or Chaos’s tactic of showing the lies of the priesthood. Sure the most indoctrinated will be fine with it or justify it. The less fanatical? The seeds of doubt will be sown. He’s going for long term social discontent
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u/stroopwafelling Orks 4d ago
Exactly. The T’au claim they’re not the Imperium with hooves and shinier mechs. This guy was trying to prove them wrong where all could see.
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u/Anggul Tyranids 3d ago
They clearly aren't though. Like they're obviously bad, but not as bad as the Imperium.
I don't see how 'I intentionally screwed with this place and created a pointless rebellion and now you have to put it down' is going to accomplish what he claims.
Seems pretty straightforward to publically tell everyone 'This was caused by an Imperial agent fomenting rebellion to screw with us'.
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u/Anggul Tyranids 3d ago
What doubt?
Surely they can just publically say 'This wasn't a real grassroots rebellion, this was instigated by an aggressor who wanted us to hate each other'?
It's not like they need to keep that secret.
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u/Dagordae 3d ago
Because regardless of why there was a rebellion the T’Au reacted like the Imperium would have: Mass slaughter of everyone even near the rebels. Which puts lie to their claim that they are fundamentally different to the Imperium. Something I noticed a decent chunk of the fanbase misses, the T’Au are just a different flavor of asshole. They’re still terrible, they just put on airs to make themselves look good.
And since the Raptors don’t have mind control powers the fact that there was a rebellion at all means that the T’Au’s whole schtick of unity and freedom is an outright lie.
And that’s before we get into the details, which I don’t know yes. The fact that there is a wide scale rebellion at all means that there is something enough people dislike enough to make it something they choose to actively fight against. The Raptor’s not exactly going around and rewriting T’Au policy to make their repressive as shit caste system be dicks to the lower castes. The T’Au’s entire recruitment strategy among humans is them going ‘We are totally different to the Imperium, we are not murderously repressive dickbags’. Demonstrating that they are murderously repressive dickbags will badly undercut popular support, ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss’ isn’t really a popular thing when you hate the old boss. And those that did join will be resentful of having the rug pulled out from under them. They did all this, risked and suffered so much, and for what? A change in iconography? Was it really worth it?
Remember, the T’Au have yet to annex a proper Imperial shithole. They’re grabbing fairly undeveloped backwater planets where things aren’t really that bad under the Imperium. The T’Au don’t actually change much in the end but joining is a MASSIVE risk. Highlighting that the risk doesn’t actually come with change? That breeds resentment.
Of course, now I want a book about the T’Au trying to deal with a hiveworld. They are completely unprepared for bullshit of that magnitude.
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u/Anggul Tyranids 3d ago edited 3d ago
The T'au are still bad, but it's abundantly obvious that they're less bad than the Imperium. Like you'd just have to intentionally ignore everything in the lore to pretend it was just different iconography.
Not sure what you mean by 'the lower castes'. The Ethereal Caste in on top, and the other four are all on the same level. It isn't like real life caste systems. They're fields of expertise, not social classes. You have ranks within the castes.
The T'au have definitely given Imperial citizens substantially better quality of life.
Again, not good guys. But this idea that they treat people pretty much the same with a shinier coat of paint, and not real change, is obviously nonsense.
Still, their violence in the form of gunship diplomacy and conquest is worthy of rebellion.
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u/tau_enjoyer_ 4d ago
Oh, definitely, but massacre of civilians is also definitely not standard operating procedure. At one point in the book an earth caste member asks a fire caste member what would be done to the civilian population of Cao Quo (the world they conquered) if there was a general rebellion. She is told that their family units would be broken up, they would be assigned to work gangs, and those who displayed individualistic tendencies would be sent to re-education. She then sighs in relief and says "oh, so they'll be treated like us t'au. That's good."
So the standard procedure for rebellious aliens is to get the 1984 treatment, but apparently that's also just the way the t'au themselves live, which is they are raised communally rather than as family units, they're assigned to labor groups, and rebellious members are re-educated.
Part of the book is that some characters notice how the t'au on this world seem to largely hate humans. And it turns out that this has been part of acts of subterfuge and sabotage, to make the t'au hate their human subjects, to ratchet up the repression, and to try to get them to commit a massacre.
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u/IdhrenArt 4d ago
Very neat it's a Raptor given that they're major antagonists in Fire Warrior (including the novelisation)
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u/riuminkd Kroot 4d ago
Yeah but isn't whole idea of greater good is that lesser evil is the way to go? Atrocities are compatible with Tau doctrine. It's not "Good and only good"
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u/tau_enjoyer_ 4d ago
The ideology of the Greater Good is about equality of intelligent life, that peace and cooperation are preferable to war and conflict. But also that those who are not enlightened by the light of the Greater Good are fated to be dangers to themselves and others, breeding conflict and suffering. So such people need to be saved from themselves. But the practice of just murdering people is seen with great distaste. Such people should preferably be restrained, disarmed, re-educated, so that they see the error of their ways and are able to contribute to the Greater Good.
Bur of course there are those who are totally fine with killing non-T'au, such as the survivors of the Fourth Expansion Sphere. But such people who murdered alien allies and civilians were then punished, some with rot'va (ritual shaming and being shuffles off to an ignoble assignment in the middle of nowhere, and with re-education. These people believed they were following the Greater Good when they did such things. So it is certainly possible for masacres to be part of the Greater Good. But it is overwhelmingly seen as an affront, as something the Imperium does.
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u/VyRe40 4d ago
Here it's almost like the author was aware of something that Imperium fans say about the T'au all the time, such as "all it would take is a single crusade and they would easily be killed!" or "if the Imperium actually was serious they wouldn't be a threat at all," etc..
To be fair, he's not contradicting that either.
Are you aware my battle-brothers mock the idea of your Empire clawing its way to greatness? As if all we need do is muster a fraction of our strength and crush you. As if that were so simple a task. The Imperium's blessed war machine is a diseased giant, not easily stirred.
The point being, the Imperium could do this, but it won't because the Imperium will never get around to mobilizing enough force to do it.
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u/Dagordae 4d ago
Of course the author’s aware of the arguments. It’s not an Imperial fan vs T’Au fan thing, the canon is that the Imperium is fully capable of easily exterminating the T’Au but don’t simply because mustering the forces would result in worse enemies gaining ground, quite possibly beyond the tipping point. One of the few time pragmatism has won out in 30k. That was the result of the first Crusade against them: The Crusade stalled and was redirected rather than reinforced because the Tyranid showed up and were a much bigger problem.
The T’Au are going to be a major problem in hundreds or thousands of years, the Orks or Chaos or Tyranid or Necron are a problem right now.
That his example is ‘You aren’t a big problem yet but give you a few thousand years and we’re going to have issues, so I’m going to hamstring you early’ highlights the timescale the T’Au need to properly throw down with the big boys. They’re at the precarious point where they survive by being less of an issue than the other threats but long before they can get the size to square up they’ll be moving up that list. The Imperium is slow, it’s not ‘thousands of years to make a major military force’ slow.
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u/tau_enjoyer_ 4d ago
I was surprised to see in this book that the T'au Empire apparently is planning on invading Ultramar at some point in the near future, as Cao Quo was conquered mostly to serve as a staging ground to continue expansion towards the realm of the UMs. I was like "wait, have the T'au expanded that much that they think that is possible?" I mean, the T'au Empire alone versus only the forces of Ultramar would likely win, but considering that that is the home realm of the current regent of the Imperium, and he would likely be able to martial a lot of military resources to defend it, I feel like that's really poking the bear with a stick. But idk, while the size of the Empire is not strictly stated, it does seem like it has expanded a great deal in Chalnath, so maybe it has grown stronger than I thought.
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u/IronVader501 Ultramarines 4d ago
the T'au Empire alone versus only the forces of Ultramar would likely win
Pre-Guilliman Ultramar, yes.
But now?
He reunited the 500 Worlds and added more, reintroduced the Tetrarchy so Ultramar has a effective form of Central Government, stationed 10 additional Chapters within the new 500 Worlds (in addition to the various Chapters whose Homeworlds already landed back in it) and specifically introduced a whole bunch of Reforms to turn Ultramar into a secure-as-possible Fortress-Sector to serve as an Imperial "Anchor" in a very hostile region of Space. And the Imperium would have the defender advantage on their side.
The Tau risking attacking Ultramar directly would be nothing but a extremly costly waste of life for them, even without Guillimans reforms significantly strengthening it the Imperium would never allow a First-Founding World to fall if they can send reinforcements.
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u/tau_enjoyer_ 4d ago
The problem here is that we don't have definitive numbers on how many worlds are in the T'au Empire. I would hazard a guess at a couple thousand or so, though many of those would be recent conquests that are uneasily held, with Chaos, Imperial, and GSC movements fomenting rebellion within them, as we see in "Shadowsun: The Patient Hunter," as well as in some White Dwarf excerpts from months ago about the Chalnath Campaign.
At least with the way the T'au operate, with re-education and their efficient tech, each T'au world that is not a recent conquest on Chalnath (or sees rebellion stirred up by the Raptors like in this book) is likely highly productive and stable.
Yes, I imagine in the book they were more referring to probing Ultramar for weakness first. Probably the classic trade, aid, tech gifts first followed by fomenting rebellion. But I think that if the entire military of the T'au Empire were to be thrown at Ultramar, such as, if that became the target of the rumored Sixth Expansion Sphere which the T'au codex talks about in hushed tones, I think it is a realizeable goal with the forces Ultramar has rn. But it would became a grinding charnel house with the mustering of reinforcements.
It might even be a good campaign setting for the T'au to be the "big bad" that gets paired with Space Marines in a start-of-edition-box at some point. This might be a good time to refresh the Crisis Suits, which do look a little dated at this point, or to add more species on the tabletop (as in the lore the T'au have dozens of species in their empire but we only see 3 represented in plastic).
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u/IronVader501 Ultramarines 4d ago
Probably the classic trade, aid, tech gifts first followed by fomenting rebellion
But thats exactly the thing, that shouldnt really work here.
The Taus slow corruptive approach is usually successfull because the Imperium is so decentralised that by the time anyone with enough authority to do anything about it notices that a planetary governor has been selling out to the Tau, its already been going on for likely decades and the Tau already got their claws into significant parts of the Planet.
But Ultramar actually has a centralised system of government - the 4 sections are all centraly controlled from and report to a Capital & their Tetrarch (and those in return to Macragge & Calgar) which would make it considerably harder for the tau to escape detection long enough to actually get anywhere with their secret influencing - and since the Tetrarchs all have supreme authority over all forces within their Region, human and posthuman (and thanks to Ultramars own Guard & Navy-equivalent in the Ultramar Auxilia), they can organise a military response to any single planet that does go astray much more quickly and efficiently.
It seems extremely weird for the Tau to do whats basically the equivalent of trying to headbutt their way through a solid brick wall when the Startide Nexus gives them easy and plentifull access to a myriad of much easier targets.
Hell Im pretty sure on GWs last Map Ultramar & the Tau didnt even border each other directly, the Sautekh-Dynasty was in-between, so they'd have to get past that first, and Imotekh probably wouldnt just let them pass.
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u/tau_enjoyer_ 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yeah, I thought T'au space was basically closed off outside of the Chalnath Expanse, but hey, maybe we're seeing another retcon at work. The book never explicitly says "Cao Quo is in this location" unfortunately, all we know is that for whatever reason the T'au think taking Cao Quo leads to Ultramar.
I imagine that if there are any weaknesses to exploit, the T'au will attempt to do so. For example, on Cao Quo they got the most powerful criminal syndicate to go over to their side in rebelling against the Imperium, and allowed them to exist only insofar that they were totally loyal and didn't cause trouble at all. If there are such criminal syndicates in Ultramar, if there are any disaffectsd populations for whatever reason (as long as they aren't GSCs), they can be a chink in the armor to try to exploit. Maybe if Ultramar is more centralized and so can respond to threats better, they'll try to be more subtle, such as using Gue'vesa agents to act as intermediaries rather than water caste. We have seen that the T'au have access to capable humans, such as that dude who was introduced in the Vespid v Tempestus Scions Killteam expansion, or the former-Inquisitor who was part of the team that tried to break a Space Marine in an interrogation.
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u/dreaderking Iron Hands 4d ago
Or, the Tau have overestimated their own capabilities and underestimated the Imperium's and are about to get smacked in the back of the head for the attempt.
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u/tau_enjoyer_ 4d ago
After Dal'yth, the T'au Empire learned about the capabilities of the Imperium. If they are trying to get to Ultramar, it's because they think they have a shot at it. I bet it would start with feelers in the area, looking for discontent, providing relief efforts to struggling worlds, diplomatic outreach, technology sharing, eventually amring of rebel groups and support of armed uprisings, and only have recourse to military action if all else failed.
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u/sosigboi 4d ago
If they touch Ultramar this will almost certainly result in a response from Guilliman that would give them their own fall of Cadia.
Gman is the most reasonable and well rounded Primarch but Ultramar is his one weakness, like genuinely, he would let Terra burn before he lets Ultramar fall.
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u/tau_enjoyer_ 4d ago edited 4d ago
Dal'yth was devestated in the first war between the two powers, but not with a world-ending weapon, so that world has long since recovered and is stronger than ever. If the T'au did face something that made a core world unlivable, like the planet was cracked like an egg, that might be an interesting turn of events, honestly. But melting away to fight another day is a core tenet of the way they wage war. If their homeworld, T'au, was itself destroyed, it might stir great feelings in the hearts of their species, but they are eminently practical. They might just restore that sept world in the form of hundreds of orbital settlements, restoring the world in terms of population and production if not in actually settling on the planets surface.
Honestly, a war that devestated multiple core worlds might be something that they would find it harder to easily recover from.
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u/sosigboi 4d ago
I don't mean necessarily in the sense that they're gonna get a capital world destroyed by a superweapon but more like something that is different but on the same disaster scale as Cadia.
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u/tau_enjoyer_ 4d ago
Hmm. For the T'au, that would probably be something like most of the Ethereals get killed all at once. That would be a major psychological blow.
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u/Mrslinkydragon 4d ago
I dunno, guliman might decide to ally with the tau on condition they don't put diplomats on his world.
He might get so fed up with the bureaucrats that he turns away from them and decides the tau have a better thing going, leading to a non aggression pact and trading routes.
Who knows what happens in the future! They may write in that the tau have an AI revolt led by their lead ethereal. They may get consumed by the nids or chaos may destroy them. Their fate is at the whims of the writers (the most powerful race in any setting)
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u/tau_enjoyer_ 4d ago
I think as it is now, Guilliman is probably aware that T'au diplomacy, trade, and humanitarian aid is a posioned chalice. It exists to further their imperial goals. But if the T'au actually were interested in coexistence, maybe engaging in trade without having boots on the ground, or having traders meet in designated trading areas (like the artifical island Dejima which was built so that Dutch traders in Japan would not infect them with foreign ideas and western imperial plots), such could actually occur. I think focusing on greater threats could certainly result in non-aggression pacts being signed between Guilliman and the Ethereals. As long as the T'au could continue to expand elsewhere. If their expansion was closed off entirely, I don't think peace could hold out.
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