Kroot

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Kroot are a vassal species to the Tau Empire. Rather bitey. Basically carnivorous space chickens (in Tau Empire, chicken eats YOU!) who look like a cross between Amerindians, the dreadlocked aliens from Predator, and ancient Terran terror birds. They steal genetic traits of things they eat, and secretly work for people who aren't the Tau. Which means they are cool.

Kroot don't use tanks or much in the way of tech (aside from long rifle-like guns with blades on both ends), instead using native animals derived from the kroot genus. They have attack dogs, gorillas with elephant guns, riding beasts like allosaurs, and really big riding beasts like t-rexes. Think the Gungans from Star Wars Episode 1, only not totally lame.

Kroot also moonlight as mercenaries for races other than the Tau, thus dicking over their employers even more. Mercenary bands eat lots of different stuff, and so can have various genetic traits. Thus, Kroot can use Weeaboo Fightan Magiks, be cunnin' but fighty, or have balls of steel, depending on who they've eaten, but not as well as the originals. Eating chaos-types causes Bad Things™ to happen. They also refuse to eat the Nids, because the Shapers fear becoming slaves to the Hive Mind.They also get paid in weapons, allowing them to use Imperial and Tau special weapons together, and nearly their entire army can infiltrate, and get 1st turn assault if they're lucky.

They also have a rather dark sense of humor for example offering human meat to human diplomats because they think seeing their reactions are funny. This is also shown in the second Last Chancers book "Kill Team", where Kage is forced to eat a human brain (while he goes into horrific detail about the taste and texture). After this, the Kroot reveals that this was a secret test of character, but also that it was good for shits and giggles. In general, the kroot sense of humor revolves around making other people profoundly uncomfortable. For example, a kroot might walk into the same elevator as a Water caste diplomat, turn up her pungent pheromones to full blast, and silently laugh her bird-woman ass off as the increasingly-uncomfortable fellow passenger tries to ignore it with less and less success.

For some reason, the fluff likes to point out how revolting the Kroot are for their carnivorous practices, even though, when you really stop and think about it, the Kroot are one of the more morally upright races around - they're explicitly not xenophobic racists, they have to eat dead sapients to stay intelligent (unlike, say, Space Marines and Tyranids who also eat people's brains to gain knowledge, or the fucking Dark Eldar), and they're not notably more cruel than anyone else but the Tau, who seem to be the only people in the universe who more-or-less tolerate them. Although this may have to do with the POV of who's viewing the Kroot, most of the time its Tau or Imperial Guard, who would fine eating the dead both friend and foe grows. Tyranids are viewed as mindless animals so eating things isn't seem as "wrong" and most people forgot Space Marines can gain knowledge by eating brains. Also since most who do send there time around Kroot generally seem to like them the "revolting" part may be more of a "knee jerk reaction" form people not use to seeing bird people eating dudes.

Kroot have little support from GW or players in general, likely due to the fact that their odd stats, high frailty despite being billed as a melee force, and lack of wargear in the Tau list make them less than effective, and their mercenary codex is from Chapter Approved (and thus no longer legal). And as we all know, GW will just make reams of space marine variant codices rather than give them an update.

For those interested, there's a high-quality and mostly balanced 5th-ed Fan-Dex. Most people will let you use it in a friendly game.

Kroot: Shoot like tau with bolters. Move and hit like Eldar. Die like guardsmen.(And have an amour save like a loaf of bread)

Gallery

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  Yes, this is how Kroot fuck.

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