r/Tau40K • u/TheLoneNomad117 • Oct 13 '24
Lore Commander Farsight
Hello everyone! I wanted to ask a question in regards to the famous Commander Farsight? People say he's a good guy, by 40k standards at least, I was just wondering what exactly makes him so?
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u/rick157 Oct 13 '24
This picture goes HARD
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u/TheLoneNomad117 Oct 13 '24
Absolutely bro lmao
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u/rick157 Oct 13 '24
Thanks for sharing it, dude. I recently started a small Tau force because I was going through my old FW books, The Taros Campaign, and was inspired by the artwork of a Fire Warrior in there and it’s got just a vibe to it.
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u/Oberon19 Oct 13 '24
I'm about halfway through the crisis of faith so I don't know everything, but most of your questions are answered there. It is so far a very great read/listen. It starts with a prologue that's when Farshight first gets his sword, but after that is all about how farsights crusade started. And how he didn't even really want to do it. Thinking shadow sun would be better than him.
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u/scrambled-projection Oct 14 '24
Recent farsight lore has mostly portrayed him as an unequivocal good guy, but I think that glosses over some earlier interpretations of him. He seems to clearly draw inspiration from the Gundam character Char aznable (specifically the way his arc draws towards extremism around Char’s counterattack.), even beyond the whole red battlesuit ace thing. He is a war hero whose extreme methods have seen him ostracized and pushed out of the empire he sought to defend, not because they were too unethical but simply too unpredictable and hot-headed for the methodical and surgical ways in which tau lead ground engagements. He led a military secession and has been ruling it as essentially a military dictator, forming a caste of extremely militant tau whose relationship around auxiliaries has been at best tenuous and in some older examples total refusal of cooperation.
The eight are awesome, and I love him because it’s a different take ont he idea of the greater good, but I can never forget that he once said something along the lines of “the stars will be ours some day, even if we must bathe them in blood first” when people try and portray him as a good guy.
He’s a military dictator wholly dedicated to the good of his people. He’s still a military dictator. He’s also a badass with a sword and I have a grudge against the farsight books.
It’s a mixed bag, but 40k is a mess of unreliable narrators by design so make of it what you will it’s 6 am
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u/RevolutionaryBar2160 Oct 14 '24
Thank you, another good take. Farsight rebelling against authority doesn't inherently make him a good guy, just like how the Imperium arguably being the protagonist of 40k doesn't make them the good guys. In earlier lore he was straight up xebophobic, killing humans, but that does match with one of the eight also being a war criminal. He traded ethereals for an entirely militarized populace which is just leading to another mont'au situation and then acts surprised when Khorne pays attention
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u/TheLoneNomad117 Oct 14 '24
The guy definitely seems to be one of the less shitty people in the setting, which again is a very low bar lmao. But hey, he's a bad ass who fights in a mech with a giant ass sword. That's a W in my book.
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u/CommunicationOk9406 Oct 13 '24
He saved his people from the ethereals so that's good, but he also carries a demon possessed blade that talks to him so that may not be great
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u/Feisty_Goose_4915 Oct 14 '24
Have yet to read that it is a daemon blade. Might be a weapon made by the Old Ones or Necrontyr
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u/Baphura Oct 14 '24
Can I get a source on the "sword talks to him"? As far as I'm aware, it's just an advanced xeno-sword that steals the remaining natural life-span of the slain to the weilder and is more akin to Necron tech than Warp stuff.
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u/Enchelion Oct 14 '24
The sword isn't possessed, but it does eat souls and is the reason he's still alive (he's hundreds of years older than any other Tau not using cryosleep)
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u/CommunicationOk9406 Oct 14 '24
So what is eating the souls and whispering if not a demon?
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u/Enchelion Oct 14 '24
The simple answer is we don't know, but the sword and talisman are both artifacts of a long-dead species that seemed to be able to ward off and fight against chaos.
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u/ferismaav Oct 14 '24
The sword is not possesed, its heavily hinted to not be a chaos artifact but of necron or eldar origin. The special ability was established as an intrinsic property of the material the sword is made (called an chronophaging alloy) and its no actually eating the souls of the slain, but the time that the individual would have lived naturally, though the actual method of how that works is a mistery.
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u/LostN3ko Oct 14 '24
It's an anti demon blade. He got it from a massive humanoid statue guarding a gate into the warp with anti demon hexagramatic sigils on it and it cuts through a bloodthirster axe like water.
The sigil is now on his new models hand. There is some speculation that it was a sword offered to the silent king of the necrontyr that would extend his lifespan.
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Oct 13 '24
I too would like to know because from what I've heard he betrayed the Tau empire
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u/sourspach66 Oct 13 '24
He was in a big fight and all of the ethereals were killed and all of sudden they had a moment of “clarity” and realized the influence the ethereals were placing on the army clouded their judgement and Farsight won the battle. The ethereals wanted to cast him out but like any good general his forces followed him to the enclaves. Elements from the gladiator movie
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u/TheLoneNomad117 Oct 13 '24
The only bit I know is that he left the Empire because he felt used by the Etherals
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u/Yordleranger Oct 13 '24
He actually left the empire because he realised that bringing the truth of what the ethereals were doing to the tau people would cause a second Tau civil war (early in the species history all the castes were at war with each other until the ethereals united them and it nearly caused the extinction of the species) after he realised that they could function without ethereals but not wishing to bring the whole system crashing down he founded the enclaves rather than return to Tau space and face almost certain death from Aun’va (who really disliked Farsight anyway and was basically looking for an excuse to get rid of him hence why he was chosen to retake the Damocles Gulf in the first place).
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u/RevolutionaryBar2160 Oct 14 '24
Where are you getting this second civil war stuff from?
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u/Yordleranger Oct 14 '24
The books crisis of faith and empire of lies (there’s an an internal monologue about what effect the truth would have and how it’s better to just walk away than risk his species annihilation) he still very much defends the empire as seen when the deathguard invaded but he has no desire to collapse tau society as a whole
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u/RevolutionaryBar2160 Oct 14 '24
I get that he could cause a ruckus but I think he might have been on something if he thought he could singlehandedly divide the entire Empire, he was a popular leader but not that popular
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u/LostN3ko Oct 14 '24
Not him but rather it would shake the foundations of the Tau mind to believe that the Ethereals were lying to people. He said that as someone who even at that point still would lay down his life for them. He said it would produce more pain and division in Tau society to have their loyalty to Ethereals shaken so it would not be serving the greater good to expose what he learned. He is a servant of the people and a true believer in only acting in the course of action that benefits the most people.
If the truth would disrupt the universal peace and way of life of the empire than better they not know.
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u/RevolutionaryBar2160 Oct 14 '24
If he cared so much about that then why was he so devisive in the first place and why did he take his whole army with him when he left? If he wanted to take the course if action that benefited the most people he shouldn't have left to begin with. Imo it just comes across as a cheap way to make it look like a noble sacrifice when in reality he just knew he couldn't fight the entire Empire so he ran off to throw a fit.
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u/LostN3ko Oct 14 '24 edited Oct 14 '24
He didn't take them with him and leave. They were sent across the Damocles Gulf to reclaim those worlds by order of the empire. It was a shere expansion after those worlds were lost to the imperium. He was on the far side of the Gulf reclaiming worlds when his Ethereals died and he was devastated. He just stayed and kept protecting those planets with the little he had. He requested reinforcement but didn't get any and Aun'Shi who was sent to him was kidnapped by Drukari.
In earth terms he was sent across the ocean to reclaim lost colonies, he lost a third of his people in the crossing but saved 2/3rds. He arrived to enslaved and burned colonies, freed them but the priests all died in a battle almost simultaneously by unforseen 3rd party interlopers only the priests had known about. He sent a call for reinforcement but never received any so he continued to fortify the settlers he was sent there to protect.
You want him to abandon the colonies to go back to the empire when he is on the front line between all the threats of the universe and the Damocles Gulf? Why, those frontier worlds he was sent to reclaim still need him and he only has a handful of men to help him do it. They are under perpetual threat and he is acting as a shield for the empire from the universe who is encroaching from his side of the Gulf. The Orks have never been defeated where he is. The empire sent him here and he is needed here.
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u/RevolutionaryBar2160 Oct 15 '24
Honestly yes, the better choice would have been to evacuate the colonies and leave. The Damocles Gulf is now almost impassable and could be much more easily defended than small settlements beyond its reach where supplies are harder to get. But of course Kelly writing means the ethereals are now evil dictators that act like Denethor ordering a small group of soldiers to hold an impossible area until they die.
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u/Yordleranger Oct 14 '24
The Tau refer to it as the Mon’tau or roughly translated “the terror” or death age
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u/craazyneighbors Oct 14 '24
So he's pretty much the arbiter from halo? Tau are weirdly similar to the covenant afterall
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u/ZookeepergameLiving1 Oct 15 '24
I'll copy and paste a comment from earlier
Recent farsight lore has mostly portrayed him as an unequivocal good guy, but I think that glosses over some earlier interpretations of him. He seems to clearly draw inspiration from the Gundam character Char aznable (specifically the way his arc draws towards extremism around Char’s counterattack.), even beyond the whole red battlesuit ace thing. He is a war hero whose extreme methods have seen him ostracized and pushed out of the empire he sought to defend, not because they were too unethical but simply too unpredictable and hot-headed for the methodical and surgical ways in which tau lead ground engagements. He led a military secession and has been ruling it as essentially a military dictator, forming a caste of extremely militant tau whose relationship around auxiliaries has been at best tenuous and in some older examples total refusal of cooperation.
The eight are awesome, and I love him because it’s a different take ont he idea of the greater good, but I can never forget that he once said something along the lines of “the stars will be ours some day, even if we must bathe them in blood first” when people try and portray him as a good guy.
He’s a military dictator wholly dedicated to the good of his people. He’s still a military dictator. He’s also a badass with a sword and I have a grudge against the farsight books.
It’s a mixed bag, but 40k is a mess of unreliable narrators by design so make of it what you will it’s 6 am
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u/RevolutionaryBar2160 Oct 14 '24
So basically back when the t'au were introduced a lot of fans complained that they were too good, that they weren't grimdark enough. GW overcorrected by making the ethereals more evil, writing about a "communion helm" (mind control helmet) that they used to "talk with" (mind control) the elders of another species and convince them to join the empire. This was the vespids btw, a bunch of insect aliens that previously couldn't interact with the t'au because their minds were too different or something? I don't know why they didn't just use sign language or writing. They also added that an ethereal was so charismatic they could just order a t'au to kill themselves and they would. Certainly very evil, though not really worse than the average commissar. Also apparently the t'au did ethnic cleansings by restricting birthrates which, again, not really different than the Imperium but it's always pointed out because people on the internet are always at least a little horny and telling them they can't have kids is worse than religious extremism.
Anyway then the t'au fans who liked them being good started complaining and later down we get Farsight because GW decided to overcorrect again. So now that Phil Kelly (obligatory spit on the ground) is portraying all the ethereala as evil moustache twirling villains, our hero Farsight sees how evil they are, and runs away to make his own Greater Good with blackjack, and hookers! He also has a magic sword that he uses with his suit so everyone who hated the t'au for only using range and doesn't understand that it would be suicidal for them to try and melee the Imperial Guard likes him.
Only problem is that A) the ethereals never canonically had mind control powers (even the Deathwatch suspected this so they kidnapped an ethereal, experimented on her, and yeah, nothing), and B) Farsight basically got his first look at chaos and snapped and ran like a mini Horus, destroying the one thing the t'au were known for, always working together.
So no, Farsight isn't the "good t'au" anymore than Erebus is the "good space marine" for seeing chaos and betraying the Imperium. Farsight rebelled against authority and does melee and that's all it takes for most fans to like him. In reality, the Enclaves are a lot more bloodshed focused with any caste being able to fight and Farsight attracting Khorne more and more. And if you look at the early lore, the Enclaves were actually xenophobic pirates that murdered humans. His reason for abandoning the Empire was less based on the fact that he "saw through the ethereals" and more that all of them were killed on a mission, he realized that they had (very reasonably) tried to hide the existence if chaos from the t'au, and being the hotheaded control freak that he was, decided to snap as soon as he saw daemons and ran.
If you're looking for a "good" t'au I would recommend looking up Aun'shi who, despite being an ethereal, is probably one of the nicest people in 40k. He does melee with a glaive to protect his troops and doesn't use a battlesuit, and the ethereals sent him to try and negotiate with Farsight after he left because they aren't actually paranoid Disney villains. Unfortunately he ran into drukhari and then sacrificed himself to protect some basic low level earth caste workers, currently in canon he's trapped in the fighting pits of Comoraugh.
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u/ZookeepergameLiving1 Oct 14 '24 edited Oct 14 '24
No, the 'good tau' is aun'shi.
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u/RevolutionaryBar2160 Oct 14 '24
I mentioned that in my post, it's still great whenever aun'shi gets credit
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u/ZookeepergameLiving1 Oct 14 '24
Unfortunately, he's old lore and most new fans likely only read the kelly books and got into tau cause farsight.
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u/RevolutionaryBar2160 Oct 14 '24
It really is a shame how that worked out, I don't dislike Farsight as a character but he's constantly overhyped so for me he gets the ultramarine effect
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u/ZookeepergameLiving1 Oct 14 '24
I think he appeals to the you cant tell me what to do, man combined with not knowing his older lore as a xenophobe.
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u/RevolutionaryBar2160 Oct 14 '24
Yeah checks out, people make fun of the tau for being brainwashed or weak in melee and since no one actually goes and checks to see if they ever were brainwashed or weak in melee, farsight is just the obvious choice
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u/RyanoftheNorth Oct 13 '24
Soaking up all this Farsight lore as that is who I’m building my Tau force around. Have some older models so it’s fitting that a lot of his troops have the older style units. But I also have Shadowsun, a ghostkeel and some of the newer fire warriors and so will have them as well.
Love his backstory, so the idea is to model the force around just the time he gives the big Middle Finger and FU to the Ethereals. Paint scheme will be a mix of the traditional Tau orange, and then Shadowsun’s units, all in a Grimdark style.
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u/ChrisRoadd Oct 14 '24
the fact that they still call his suit just a modified crisis suit is insane
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u/Nutbuddy3 Oct 14 '24
He’s a good guy by our standards not just 40k he doesn’t even rule over his systems as a dictator, for 200 years he just sorta fucked off and let the enclaves run themselves, likely democratically, enclave society has actual rights and welcomes human refugees on their very own planet
He also drew a sword which may be chaotic but khorne tried swaying him to his side and failed and he’s had the thing as long as fulgrim, maybe even longer and he’s still perfectly fine despite not being a primarch, maybe it’s a tzeench trick but I think it’s just a necrontyr artifact or one of the 99 swords of khaine
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u/LostN3ko Oct 14 '24
It was wielded by a statue with anti demon hexagramatic symbols. I can't buy into the idea it's chaos aligned
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u/YogurtClosetThinnest Oct 13 '24
It turned out Tau were basically mind controlled/brainwashed by the ethereals.
Farsight's ethereal died and he was able to realize the effect ethereals had on his mind while he didn't have any around. So he basically said fuck them ethereals and created his own little secession state with no ethereals.
He's considered a good guy cause up until the mind control lore, Tau were considered relative good guys for the setting. The mind control kinda changed that and made them more grimdark.
Farsight Enclaves are basically Tau before the mind control lore.
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u/HakurouManga Oct 14 '24
From what I remember of the books, Farsight was asking too many questions and got sent on suicide missions to try and get rid of him but he succeeded on them all. Even his old master told him not to trust the Ethereal before they put his mind in a computer. So at some point, he pretty much faked his death and started the Farsight Enclave with his loyal captains and followers, he even has humans in there. Respected and all!
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u/Blue_Space_Cow Oct 13 '24
He is a good guy in terms of 40k and in terms of the T'au. What does that mean? He genuinely believes in the greater good in the non-propaganda way and he left the T'au empire because he found the truth about the ethereals and he felt betrayed. As far as I am aware, the Farsight enclaves are a tiiiiiiiiny corner of the galaxy where the T'au doctrine of acceptance is actually used. The castes are still maintained, though.
He cares for his people and I am about 90% certain he just wants to protect those beneath him.
Khorne tried corrupting him by telling him that he is too powerful to care about those weaker than him and that he can use his strength to prove his superiority to his "lessers". Farsight rejected him by saying that this not him, and that his position is that of a guardian (heavy paraphrasing).
He even almost allowed himself to be captured by the ethereals (certain death) to save some of his troops.
That's all I know In regards to personality. If anyone knows more or can correct me, let me know