Editing Damocles Crusade (section)

==The Second Draft==
The first re-write/retcon of what happened isn't quite as well told as it makes the Tau come off as being stupid rather than naive. For the sake of brevity the changes will be the main focus instead of just reposting the entire story.

In 6th edition the story was changed so that instead of encountering Imperials on Imperial worlds, the Tau came across free captains, pirates and lost human colonies that had regressed so far back they'd forgotten their origins and sometimes even their birth worlds. These initial contacts ranged from Rogue Trader to Tyranid levels of hostility, and somehow the Water caste was able to figure out that these were just remnants or willing outcastes of an incomprehensibly large galactic empire. The codex makes it clear that the Tau believed the Imperium would crush them like blueberries if they pissed them off, but despite this the Fire Caste wanted to pick a fight with them anyway instead of doing fucking anything else.

Thankfully Aun'Va [[Phil Kelly|(before he was retconned into being evil incarnate)]] was in charge and decided to try a different approach: integrate Water caste members into human worlds who were still fully loyal to the Imperium, insinuate them into the courts of Planetary Governors and slowly break them off from the Imperium's control. Through bad writing the Tau are not terminated on sight (remember, these are worlds completely loyal to the Imperium, not the dissident worlds that were previously in the story, of course even dissidents would hate aliens, even the freaking Chaos humans hate aliens) and their plan was successful, managing to get several Imperial worlds to even choose the Tau over each other as trading partners (ignoring the logistics of why this wasn't a thing before). Soon Tau technology flowed through the human markets yet somehow nobody on this formerly loyal planet noticed anything strange going on. Eventually the Water caste convinced the Planetary Governors to side with them over the Imperium and they announced their independence, finally drawing the Imperium's attention.

All of the Imperium's earlier battles (including the battle of Pra'yen) become a footnote while the Inquisition is more brutal on the worlds that chose to rebel, with the battle of Dal'yth also being sizably cut down. An odd note that appears in this rendition is that the Tau are mentioned as possibly being able to encircle or blockade the Imperials evacuating the planet, only choosing not to thanks to the Ethereals who presumably realized that doing so would be literally impossible, seeing as how the Tau had no air support or navy, and encircling them with land forces at a starport would do nothing.

It should also be noted that at this point the Tyranid hive fleet entering Tau space is entirely forgotten about, presumably because the cliffhanger the last story left on was too interesting to continue. This also marked the beginning of the Tyranids attacking the Tau while the Tau are in a bad spot, only to be retconned out the next time this same story comes up (so far it's happened at least three separate times in three different stories).