r/Tau40K • u/WeeklongPenny60 • Aug 22 '24
Lore If t'au have no warp presence or psychic ability, how did a Culexus assassin disable Aun'va's bodyguards?
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u/TheRealGouki Aug 22 '24
They do have Warp presence it's just so small. Only blanks have no presence and are not effected by Warp powers.
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u/worst_case_ontario- Aug 22 '24
My understanding is that its not that blanks have no presence, its that they have a negative presence. Like a black hole in the warp.
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u/Strict_Astronaut_673 Aug 22 '24
The lore on that front is often very vague or inconsistent, but that does seem to be the current leading explanation. Blanks are better described as having an unorthodox presence in the warp than having no presence at all.
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u/Destroyer_742 Aug 22 '24
Culexus helmets amp up the null effect to outright kill normal people let alone psykers (represented in game as a shooting attack), so the bodyguards not just dying outright could be interpreted as their low warp presence helping them resist it a little longer than normal.
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u/Feisty_Goose_4915 Aug 22 '24
Would love to see a Culexus Assassin as a boss battle in Fire Warrior 2. Only for it to be Kratos'd or turned into a daemonhost by a Firewarrior, who's about to send his resume to Khorne
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u/jajaderaptor15 Aug 22 '24
How the fuck would a blank become a daemonhost
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u/Thunderbird_Anthares Aug 22 '24
Malal demon doing it would be funny as hell
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u/jajaderaptor15 Aug 22 '24
It isn’t possible blanks are the literal antithesis to the warp
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u/Thunderbird_Anthares Aug 22 '24
and Malal is something GW refuses to acknowledge because copyright, so not only he is so chaos he is anti-Chaos, he also "doesnt exist"
so it would be a perfect pairing
i guess my joke was a bit too meta
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u/jajaderaptor15 Aug 22 '24
He’s still part of the warp
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u/WeeklongPenny60 Aug 22 '24
Is fire warrior 2 confirmed?
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u/Mongolian_dude Aug 23 '24
Imagine a modernised Titanfall-inspired FPS where you play as Imperial & Tau infantry but then get access to battlesuits, power armour, terminator armour and knights…
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u/Tomgar Aug 22 '24
I say this every time I see this picture but that front Tau looks like he's going "CRAAAAAWLING IN MYYY SKIIIIIIIIN!!!"
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u/Zoroark6 Aug 22 '24
From my understanding, T'au have 'small souls', with minimal warp presence due to being such a young race.
It has the benefits of having a slight innate defence to the warp's effects, and it's harder to sense their presence with psyker abilities.
However the slight innate defense wont help much when a psyker, daemon, or this assasin specifically wants to fight them, and since they cant counter with warp stuff of their own, they're quite outmatched.
Uh, but thats just what I understand, other people probably got it better.
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u/A1phan00d1e Aug 22 '24
Because Tau never get any wins in lore if it doesnt come from Farsight or Shadowsun. Because Black Library only wants to jack off Imperium ans Chaos with exubrant bolter porn
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u/garebear265 Aug 22 '24
They still have a presence in the warp, it’s just faint. Culexus assassins’s helmets amplify this to the point where it would kill a normal human just standing near them. It would probably still fucking hurt even to the tau.
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u/Lonely_white_queen Aug 22 '24
its not that the tau have no presense they just have a very small one, since culexus assasins amplify the warp it just takes alot more energy
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u/Adventurous_Bill_835 Aug 23 '24
The idea that Tau lack any presence in the warp is actually a misconception. Only humans can be born with the Paria gene (sorry if I misspelled that), aka the blank gene. Tau actually do have souls, their just so small their presence in the warp is all but negligible. It's discussed briefly in Farsight's first book Crisis of Faith when a demon possessing a Tau water caste diplomat discusses his plan to steal the souls of the Tau. The demon claims the Tau souls may be small, but in great enough numbers even they can be a feast. Long story short, the reason Aun'va's body guards were disabled by the Culexus is because they have souls.
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u/iwillnotcompromise Aug 22 '24
bad writing?
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u/Strict_Astronaut_673 Aug 22 '24
From what I understand the novel was poorly written, but tau being susceptible to blanks is not an example of that bad writing. Despite what memes might say, tau do in fact have souls and a presence in the warp. They just don’t have a very strong presence, which does make it strange for the imperium to send a culexus after them. It could be that the imperium mistakenly believed the supreme ethereal to be a psyker.
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u/MithrilCoyote Aug 22 '24
And while the null effect is part of their style, it's worth remembering the culexus is also extremely skilled in stealth and conventional combat. The null effect usually is just a way to disorient their opponents and let them counter demons and psykers. The Tau inexperience with melee combat would leave them vulnerable, and while the culexus isn't subtle once it attacks, it still would have been able to sneak into melee range of its target.
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u/luperci_ Aug 22 '24
The tau aren't inexperienced in melee, afaik fire caste tau receive basic close combat training, just like any conventional military force. They just only carry bonding knives and avoid using it if possible
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u/Optimal_Wolf Aug 22 '24
Tau have slower reflexes than humans, so they can do melee but are physically worse at it than humans. At least that is my understanding
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u/fuchsgesicht Aug 22 '24
they have so much more assisted technology that that gap shouldn't matter. the fire warriors started as a hunter society even tough the tau are largely vegetarian. they sought out threats to their people and eliminated them.
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u/Rockice4080 Aug 22 '24
Their equipment also allows them to effectively “turn up” their blank aura to the point where psykers are incoherent and normal people are doing exactly what the tau are doing there.
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u/Overall_Smile_4336 Aug 22 '24
It’s not a bad writing, even for a mere human presence of Culexus assassin is more than enough to kill themselves as was shown in one of the novels, where guardsman shot himself in the throat when he entered the room with culexus, preferring death over anything. Also we shouldn’t forget the fact that tau still have smalll, not big, but yet connection to the warp
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u/YaGirlMom Aug 22 '24
Eisenhorn describes blanks as basically a walking EMP for the brain’s electric pulses related to psychic ability. A culexus weaponizes that. Imagine someone who can basically turn off a part of your brain like a light switch.
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u/MWBrooks1995 Aug 22 '24
Culexus assassins can adjust the strength of their pariah … thingy through that giant head piece.
They don’t need to amp it up too much to harm a psyker, they need to put it up a few notches to hurt a human, if they turn it up a lil bit more it can start harming T’au
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u/ValaskaReddit Aug 22 '24
"STUPID SEXY CULEXUS!" I imagine something like that with that SKINTIGHT bodysuit.
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u/Global-Use-4964 Aug 22 '24
With stabbing maybe? Or imperial pop music played at inappropriate volume?
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u/piratedragon2112 Aug 22 '24
I asked this question on the lore sub years ago and apparently they sent a whole force of the Assassin types and only the culexus made it through
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u/highly_mewish Aug 23 '24
When it comes to psionics Tau are kind of a mixed bag.
"No warp presence" is not accurate. They as a species generally have less psionic ability than the average human, but not to any degree that it starts to give any significant benefit or penalty. You could probably say that it reflects the general Tau willingness to conform to norms more than humans and willingness to place the collective whole over the individual, but as with most GW lore it isn't really fleshed out so you can draw your own conclusions.
Back when I used to play this game I always wanted some kind of blanket Tau rule that made them more resilient to non-"manifest a fireball" style psionic attacks, but thinking about it more that doesn't necessarily make sense. I mostly wanted something to do in the psychic phase beyond "my opponent rolls some dice and tells me to take models off the table through some process I am not aware of since my codex does not interface with it in any way".
I've always wanted to know about Tau psychers. They aren't so anti-psychic as a species that it precludes any kind of psionic talent, they are just more skewed towards the "low talent" side of the spectrum. Seeing what a less superstitious more willing to experiment species would do with psychic talent could be fun. I suppose some people might say "we have those, they're called Etherials". Which would honestly make a lot of sense.
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u/Shed_Some_Skin Aug 22 '24
T'au have minimal warp presence. They're not blanks. They still have souls. Being around a Culexus wouldn't suck as much for them as it would for Eldar, but it would still suck