2d4chan - User contributions [en]

Gue'vesa

2017-12-11T20:08:32Z

2600:1006:B10C:1CE2:B49C:FF60:61E6:E26E: /* How This Happened */

{{heresy}}

[[File:Warhammer 40 000 gue vesa by mellanius-d46979b.png|thumb|right|300px|You can't see it in the picture, but the [[Imperium of Man]] is off to the right. (Not pictured: the Inquisitor, Space Marine and Commissar all lining up a headshot)]]

'''Gue'vesa''' are human auxiliaries serving in the [[Tau Empire]].

See, the [[Tau|Space Communists]] are a bit odd in that they aren't alone in their cause; unlike every other faction in the 41st millennium, the [[Tau]] are willing to allow non-Tau to serve the empire. Other races abound in the Tau empire, including [[Kroot]] and [[Vespid]]s, but the most popular (at least on /tg/) are humans that joined the Empire. Humans working for the Tau empire are called "Gue'vesa," which quite literally means "human helpers" in the Tau language; ironically, the Imperium's grunts joke it means "[[Manticore Rocket Launcher|Human Cannon Fodder]]", despite the fact the Gue'vesa are treated much better than themselves.

Most of the Gue'vesa come from [[Imperial Guard]] units abandoned in Tau space at the end of the [[Damocles Crusade]], though they are mostly garrisoned on their own worlds and rarely participate in Tau crusades. Gue'vesa in conquering armies of Tau Empire are often the traitor guard and/or PDF of the planet they currently attack, converted by propaganda (often for decades before actual attack) or (according to Imperial Narrators) captured and brainwashed.

[[Inquisitor]]s call them "[[heresy|heretics and traitors]]." [[Angry Marines]] call them "Weeaboo faggots."

==How This Happened==
The Tau had finally gone and pissed the [[Imperium of Man]] off but good, as they had established a series of trade agreements with Imperial Worlds on the frontier, near the Damocles Gulf - and had begun trading goods and technology with the humans of the frontier. Naturally, since the Imperium immediately refers to any contact with Xenos that doesn't involve killing them with fire as [[Heresy]], the Administratum flew into a rage that would make an [[Angry Marines|Angry Marine]] titter with schoolgirlish glee were they capable of such. Although, considering the mind-influencing pheromones which were likely dosed all over the Tau tradegoods and that the Imperium actually does trade with aliens it permits to exist, the Imperium being pissed may be very justified. After [[Warp|fucking around for a while]] they eventually got a hugeass fleet into the sector (actually only a little over forty ships so more like a small battlegroup than the hundreds or thousands of ships used in proper crusades) about a century later and began blowing the fuck out of everything and pushing deep into Tau Empire territory.

The Imperial rapetrain ground to an abrupt halt when they came across the Dal'yth sept, which basically decided to do a bang-up impression of the [[Imperial Guard]] and hold the fucking line. Simultaneously amazed and horrified by the prospect any race, let alone a bunch of blue-skinned unguligrade alien space communists, could have the [[Colonel "Iron Hand" Straken|mighty balls]] to stand up to the Imperium in a stand-up drag-down fight, the Imperium was momentarily given pause - before it resumed doing its usual thing and blowing the fuck out of its enemies. Turns out the Tau had been deliberately giving ground to the Imperial crusaders, evacuating what they could and [[Grimdark|sacrificing several worlds]] to buy the Empire enough time to recall their forces elsewhere to make a stand. Which doesn’t make canon sense as most of the assraping was delivered by orbital fuck-you and the Tau didn’t really have a defense against that. And titans. And the masses of tanks and artillery. And the Space Marines. You know what, the whole, tiny crusade makes no sense at all seeing as the Tau had no way to reliably counter the Imperial arsenal (at the time or..now either actually) or defend against non-flashlight weapons.

Sadly for the Imperium of Man, the Tau did not relent, and showed a balls-out stubbornness that would make any [[Commissar]] shed manly tears of pride and [[Rage|RAGE]]. Even still, with the Imperials having a mighty hard time gaining ground on the Tau - the space communists had superior firepower and were fighting defensively in their home territory, which was a fight that was not very much to the Imperials' advantage, and what originally was expected to be a fairly short affair wound up embroiling the entire sector in a lengthy, drawn-out conflict. Except it couldn’t have drawn the whole sector into it because the Tau had roughly two dozen worlds all clustered fairly close together and a sector is a thousand cubic lightyears and the whole crusade was fought in Tau territory. The Imperium was winning, slowly but surely, but at the rate they were progressing, it would be an eternity and a day before they could claim to have won the war - and likely trillions more lives. Moreover, though the Imperium had a gigantic manpower advantage (one that got bigger as the war dragged on), the war basically stalemated (Imperial Commanders blame [[Fish of Fury]] for this), with gigantic losses on both sides wearing down both the Imperials and Tau. Solely because Imperial reinforcements were delayed for many years (and showed up long after, smashed some stuff. then learned of the Black Crusade and moseyed over there to kick ass instead). If you look at the number of regiments deployed, the Guard actually was badly outnumbered yet still winning. Hunting tactics are not useless in war unless you rely on them. Like the Tau do.

After it became painfully apparent that both sides were getting absolutely nowhere this way (actually the Tau were saved solely by the arrival of a Hivefleet attacking Ultramar), the Imperium eventually relented and entered into meetings with the Tau Empire for cease-fire talks. Whilst neither side trusted the other one bit (this is the universe of [[grimdark]] after all), the meetings were basically successful, in no small part due to the then-new threat of [[Tyranid|Hive Fleet Behemoth]] moving in to [[Anal Circumference|rape]] [[Ultramar]]. This forced the Imperium to stop [[troll]]ing the Tau diplomats and agree to the fucking cease-fire in order to rush to Macragge before the Hive Fleet could get there. This represented the end of the Damocles Crusade, and the beginning of a drawn out cold war between the Tau and the Imperium, where fighting is restricted to small skirmishes and brush fire conflicts that both sides try to avoid escalating (the Imperium because they have [[Tyranid|more]] [[Ork|important]] [[Chaos|shit]] to worry about, the Tau because they do not want to get bumped to the top of the Imperium's threat list in the Ultima Segmentum and get hit with another crusade. And if they reach the top of the list, it will be a real crusade, not a battlegroup scrapped together from whatever was on hand.)

This sudden redeployment left a shitload of Imperial personnel stranded, especially those that had been captured by the Tau, and a lot of humans remained in formerly Imperial territory that was now well within Tau space. Most of these humans were offered an agreement by the Tau to join the Tau Empire, and a great many did so, as the choice was between [[grimdark|the POW camp]] or becoming Tau Empire Citizens. Like deciding between [[Dark Heresy|fine wine]] and [[FATAL|a toilet full of spoiled meat]], this was not exactly [[Derp|a difficult fucking choice]]. Which also makes no sense as against Tyranids or Orks the Imperium would need as many soldiers as it can get its hands on. Well that and because leaving humans (alive) in alien hands is probably super heretical.

Those humans who have joined the Tau empire have been provided with the [[/tg/ gets shit done|technology]] required to [[grimdark|prevail]] on the Tau frontier. They have access to their own production capabilities, allowing them to construct equipment ranging from farming and mining tools to [[Lasgun|Flashlights]]. Gue'vesa actively working for the Tau are also capable of using Pulse weapons, whilst Gue'vesa assigned to planetary defense duty generally lack these - but have access to your usual stock of [[Leman Russ Battle Tank|fuck-your-shit-up]] [[Manticore Rocket Launcher|ordnance]].

Since some of these armies are self-contained the Tau have developed terms to define the ranks of the humans, for Gue'vesa soldiers is "Gue'vesa'la," and the Tau term for their Sergeants is "Gue'vesa'ui." Similarly, high-ranking ones are "Gue'vesa'vre" and Commanders are "Gue'vesa'el." High-level Gue'vesa commanders (ones comparable to a planetary governor) are called "Gue'vesa'o."

==Gue'vesa and the Greater Good==
Depending on the source you may have very different perspectives about what is for a human to be a citizen of the Tau Empire, Imperial authorities will insist the turncoats are either sterilized, used as cannon fodder and/or live in the worst possible conditions, with stories about the Tau replacing human population from conquered worlds with their own race, indeed a grain of salt maybe required when listening to a faction which enslaves, lobotomizes, burns alive and uses as cannon fodder their own, not that this bothers the high echelons really much, neither you citizen.

On the other hand, tau centered material and even a few novels of Black Library show the integrated humans as having better life standards and liberties than those from the Imperium, with enlightened views such as the Gue'vesa being allowed to worship the Emperor (sans the most fanatical aspects), their planets receiving extensive terraforming treatment to heal the damage done by imperial industry and being allowed to access education, health and fair work treatment. It's important to notice this may actually depend on the level of stability of the planet, as tau planets in state of warfare may put restrictions and even suspicion upon the Gue'vesa and confidence may demand to be earned.

All in all we may safely conclude that while life may still be harsh for a Gue'vesa colonist and restrictions of rank within the empire hierarchy may be applied, being a human in the Tau dominions is still largely preferable to living in most imperial planets, and the Gue'vesa may show as much conviction in the Greater Good as other members of the Tau Empire ([[Rip_and_Tear|and it's a no brainer to know what their fates may be if the Imperium ever defeated the Tau]]).

==The Gue'vesa in crunch==
[[File:Imperial Tau Gatecrashing.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Unfortunately for the Tau, the Imperials are always gatecrashers to the Tau-Human cultural exchange programs.]]
The Gue'vesa are basically Imperial Guardsmen working for Tau. There are two versions of them - auxiliary troopers working for the Tau Empire (which can be fielded in a Tau army), or actual [[Imperial Guard]] regiments (made using the Guard's codex) that are just modified to look a bit more [[weeaboo|Tau-flavored]] and are used to represent Gue'vesa troops serving as colonial Planetary Defense Forces (for example). The Tau have generally kept a pretty good relationship with the humans in their territory (the Tau scenario in [[Dawn of War|Dark Crusade]] has them sterilizing rebellious humans, but this is non-canon to all true fatguys, though [[Lulz|fun to make fun of]], and given the setting, sterilization's getting off light.), and the biggest fears that most humans in Tau space have is the Imperium [[Exterminatus|getting pissed enough to come back and try to finish the fucking job]].

AS previously pointed there two options for fielding a Gue'vesa army; those maintaining self-contained armies on behalf of the Tau (those using the Imperial Guard codex), and those using human auxiliaries to Tau forces (via chapter approved rules that are now of questionable tournament legality). It is also possible to represent them by using the Tau Codex and simply replacing the Tau models with [[Awesome|human]] variants, and this ''is'' legal, but it will result in [[Rage|bricks being shat]] by other [[Faggotry|Tau players]]. As of 6th edition, you can also simply add some Imperial Guardsmen under the Allies rules; however if you're concerned with the fluff (and if you're trying to play Gue'vesa it's a safe bet to say you are), it's a little inconvenient that IG are Allies of Convenience to Tau, so they won't entirely function as a single army.

Gue'vesa auxiliaries working for the Tau are an unusual unit; mostly armed with Lasguns, they provide Tau with a combination of numbers and slightly better melee capability. One nice thing is that unlike the Kroot, the Gue'vesa aren't morons, and thus can equip specialized Tau-manufactured equipment, such as Markerlights, EMP Grenades, and pulse weapons. The fact that you get pretty good numbers per squad and the fact that they're kinda inexpensive makes them a pretty nice thing to have for a Tau army low on its numbers. Their one drawback is that they automatically are favored enemy for Imperial troops, who will hit them automatically in close-combat on a 3 or better.

In spite of this, Gue'vesa make a damned fine [[Tarpit]] unit. They are shooty enough to actually cause some damage to squads that aren't ready for them, their Gue'vesa'la can drop a Markerlight, and they cost notably less than even Kroot Carnivores. They also have an armor save (however shitty). They cannot infiltrate or use transports (which sucks), but their sheer cost and mass makes them a damned fine meat-shield unit for those who aren't terribly fond of using blobs of Kroot. Gue'vesa that do well enough are frequently given better equipment and [[PROMOTIONS|promoted]], with veteran Gue'vesa supposedly being eventually allowed to join Fire Warrior teams.

Gue'vesa armies made using the Guard codex are Imperial Guard units [[Counts as|in every way but name and appearance]].

This is basically also true of those playing Gue'vesa using the [[Tau]] codex.

==Notable Gue'vesa==
Private Jeakim Slovaz was formerly an Imperial Guardsman who served in the 19th Brimlock Dragoons. Apparently, the regiment was abandoned in Tau space following the end of the Damocles Gulf Crusade (which was a prolonged engagement between the Imperium of Man and the Tau Empire). Because all of the their [[Commissars]] had (supposedly) been *blammed* by the Tau, the regiment decided to surrender before they all got fucked up as well. The only details following this incident came from a Tau propaganda campaign (not necessarily a bad thing) involving Jeakim Slovaz who told of the humane treatment that human prisoners of war could expect to receive from the Tau Empire <strike>HERESY!</strike>. Understandably, the Imperium were not best pleased with Jeakim's involvement in the Tau propaganda campaign, and proceeded to label him has an EXCOMMUNICATE TRAITORIS due to his heretical interaction with foul [[Xenos|xenos]].

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Gue'vesa.PNG|A Gue'vesa'ui doing her/his (there is discussion as to this character's gender) best to look [[Awesome|badass]]. And coming across as entirely too [[Tau|weaboo]]. From [[Mon'Tau]].
Image:TauSympathizer.png|The [[Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer]] on the subject. Tau propaganda looks much the same but with the roles reversed; fa/tg/uys joke that the Tau version is more accurate.
image:Gue'la Humanos Tau.jpg
</gallery>

{{Template:Tau}}

==Links==
[http://web.archive.org/web/20080420071331/http://uk.games-workshop.com/tau/tau-auxiliaries/ Tau Auxiliary Article (Archived)]

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Tau]][[Category:Imperial]]

Tau

2017-12-11T19:43:59Z

2600:1006:B10C:1CE2:B49C:FF60:61E6:E26E: /* "Naive Weeaboo Space Communists" */

[[Image:TAUSYMBOL.gif|center]]
{{Infobox 40k Nations
|name= Tau Empire
|image=[[Image:Tau_Empire_Flag.jpg|300px|center]]
|bgcolor=
|fgcolor=
|Capital= T'au
|Official Languages=Tau Lexicon
|Power= Minor Power
|Size=Approximately 100 Planets
|Head of State=Ethereal Supreme
|Head of Government= Ethereal Council
|Governmental Structure=Caste-Based Authoritarian Federation
|State Religion/Ideology=[[Greater Good]]
|Demographic=[[Tau]], [[Kroot]], [[Vespid]], [[Gue'vesa|Humans]], [[Nicassar]], [[Tarellian]], Nagi, Hrenians and other minor [[Xenos]] races
|Military Force=[[Tau]] Fire Caste, Tau Air Caste, [[Kroot]] and [[Vespid]] Forces, The Deathsworn, Hrenian Light Infantry, Demiurg Forces, Nicassar Forces, Gue'vesa Forces and other minor Xenos armies
}}
[[File:9jfnqeaplhexx.jpg|right|thumb|450px|Get the fuck out of the way, [[Imperium|Oldfag]].]]

{{Topquote|Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.|[[C.S. Lewis]]}}
{{Topquote|Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?|Luke 6:41}}
{{Topquote|Ce qui constitue une République, c'est l'extermination totale de tout ce qui lui est opposé.|Louis Antoine de Saint-Just}}
{{Topquote|The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting|Sun Zhu}}

Tau (τ) is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, 300 in Greek numerals, and also the name for 2π.

However, this article is about the '''Tau''' (or "bluies", as the Valhallan 597th call them)(or "Space Communists" as anyone on /tg/ will tell you), (or "T'au" as GW copywright lawyers call them) a playable race in ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' made of weaboo mecha communists in SPEEHS. When first discovered by humanity, the Tau were a barbaric and primitive people. Their planet was then trapped in a warp storm for a few thousand years and they emerged from the other side as a unified species, led by the [[Druids|mysterious]] Ethereal caste and devoted to the concept of the "[[Greater Good]]". Their new empire currently has around 115 worlds, and was growing until recently, when the Imperium sent a large invading force to counter them. Although a dystopian society in its own right, the Tau Empire is noted for being one of the LEAST awful places in all the galaxy of 40k. It's also [[Derp|not really an empire]]; the Tau government, the Ethereal caste, is essentially an edifice of meritocracy and nepotism-Tau leaders are appointed to their position by even higher ranking leaders and/or a council of their future peers; the highest ranking Tau, the Aun'O, is selected by his future underlings, much like the Catholic pope, but is still simply considered the weightiest voice of a group (like a prime minister), not an Emperor with absolute power. While Tau civilization has the behavioral tendencies of many empires throughout history (expansionism, military conquest of weaker states, forcible integration of the conquered peoples, etc.), it is the government structure of a state that makes it an empire, not foreign policies. Essentially, they are ''imperialist,'' but not an ''empire.''

The Tau started as a classic case of successful design-based [[Troll|trolling]] on the part of [[Games Workshop]]. They were originally developed because GW felt that their setting needed an optimistic race and that their wallets needed more money, which they could get by selling shedloads of 40k to the robot-obsessed Japanese. The Tau, therefore, are the least [[grimdark]] faction in the game; [[Tau Diplomacy|they're the dudes willing to negotiate when they've beaten their enemies]], while all the others are either too [[Chaos Space Marines| murderously psychotic in ways incomprehensible to anyone who does not share the same batshit insanity]], [[Imperium|religiously overzealous]], [[Eldar|arrogantly indifferent]], [[Orks|simplemindedly violent]], [[Necron|murderously enigmatic]], [[Tyranid|more interested in eating you than anything]], or [[Dark Eldar|all of the above]] to offer such courtesies.

This began to change in the 6th edition. For all the claims that GW doesn't listen to its fans, someone seemed to have heard the incessant bitching many fa/tg/uys made over the Tau being shoehorned into the setting in the worst way possible. As a result, the Tau began to take on an Orwellian flavor, with the Ethereals being totalitarian autocrats performing acts of ruthless indifference towards their subjects in the guise of being for the Greater Good. Recent [[fluff]] (from ''[[Dawn of War]]'', supported by [[Deathwatch]] supplements describing Achillus Crusade) has them <s>arbitrarily sterilizing the rebelling humans on Kronus once they come under the rule of the Tau Empire</s> sterilizing a group of humans attempting to revolt and distract Tau forces in the middle of a planet-wide, 6-way free-for-all (to be fair though, had it been anyone else they were revolting against, including the Imperials, those humans would be dead, [[Grimdark|most likely the slow and painful way, or even suffer such a terrible fate as to wish for death]]). Except sterialization takes more time, industry, and resources and does nothing to help put down a rebellion anyway. Also, the sterialization happens if the Tau win, so it occurs after the war is over. The Tau Codex leaves ambiguous the question of just how much of their success is due to various forms of indoctrination, caste-based conditioning, and subtle mind control. This has only been exacerbated by the recent Farsight Enclaves supplement, which makes the Ethereals come off as mustache-twirling, Saturday-morning-cartoon villains. It speaks volumes about the 40k setting that in spite of all this they're ''still'' the friendliest race in the galaxy.

=="Naive Weeaboo Space Communists"==
[[Image:Tau Weeaboo.png|thumb|right|Cue hotblooded music by [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r6xYnFDoV0 JAM Project].]]
The Tau's naiveté might seem at odds with the GRIMDARK-ness of the setting (and to a degree, a lot of it is), but the thing is, Games Workshop specifically plays this straight FOR the [[grimdark]] and ''knows'' that the seeming futility of the Tau's optimism only further accentuates the general hellishness of the rest of the galaxy - and dear [[Emperor|god]] do they play this up for maximum effect. In the 41st millennium, the Tau come across as ''more'' than a little naive to the other races; the Imperium sees any contact with aliens as heretical and will shoot them with [[bolter]] rounds as soon as they look at them; the [[Ork]]s just want to kick the shit out of things; and the [[Eldar]] see the Tau as young and powerful because of their technology but also as a race in its infancy, just staggering out of its borders for the first time and wandering into a pond full of [[Saharduin|sh]][[Dark Eldar|arks]]. The Tau are implied to have been secretly uplifted by the Eldar through the creation and subtle control of the Etherals (especially the mind-influencing pheromone secreting gland at the base of Etherals’ spines) and guiding them through reverse-engineering Imperial technology from the ruined colony ships. Eventually the Eldar abandoned them because the Tau never accomplished anything notable on their own due to a crippling lack of creativity. Humans must be in physical contact with an Ethereal or perhaps subjected to heavy doses of the pheromone in other ways to be sufficiently affected but aliens are affected merely by being in the vicinity of an Ethereal.

Putting it simply, there's an ongoing joke that the Tau are some of the most successful trolling performed in the history of mankind just by ''existing''; a case of the company installing them just to mix things up whilst at the same time keeping them surprisingly on-level.

The combination of the above fluff, however, paired with their highly advanced technology, generally "Asian" feel (their Fire Caste's combat doctrine is often reminiscent of Sun Tzu's "''Art of War''" - but derived from two distinct Tau hunting methods), use of [[Mecha|battlesuits]] (just [[Imperial Knight|like]] [[Dreadnought|the]] [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Imperium]]), [[Hammerhead Gunship|heavy firepower]] which rivals that of the Imperial Guard, and one of the [[Fish of Fury|most broken tactics in tabletop 40K until it was finally fixed an edition later]] has conspired to make them very much hated (and by that we mean a source of butthurt) by a reasonable-sized population of the [[/tg/|40K fan populace]], and /tg/ has rightly dubbed the Tau [[Weeaboo]] (as much due to their Asian-ness as anything else) as a result (even when people can use the same logic to point to the Imperium's xenophobia, the fanatical worship of the God-Emperor, extensive use of Mecha and suicide attacks, use of suicide attacks as punishment for dishonour, and fondness for over-the-top dialogue in general and conclude that the Imperium of Man is the space equivalent of Holy Imperial Japan). As a dark twist on this inherent Asian-ness, a thread concerning lack of grimdark fan fluff on Tau led to the creation of [[Sept V'iet]], the Viet Cong Tau.
[[Image:Tau fire warriors.jpg|490px|thumb|left|The [[Greater Good]]: translatable as [[Deal with it|"if you want to make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs."]]]]

And again in a case of much cultural confusion, the Tau are often considered [[Communism|communists]] (despite being a rigorous, hierarchical, near-eugenicist class society that would drive Marx into [[RAGE]]) due to their central philosophy of casting aside the self in favour of the Greater Good. If anything the Tau more resemble the class system of Plato's ''Republic'' crossed with the caste system of India and [[Star_Trek#The_Federation|Star Trek's Federation]] (because they're the only ones in the entire galaxy who bother to try diplomacy with xenos rather than [[Exterminatus|exterminate]] them (partly because all but a few alien species are horrific space monsters that make the freaking Flood look normal and Xenomorphs seem bland and relatively harmless, and partly because all aliens worth not killing off are made into Imperial protectorate species (yes they exist, a few dozen, out of tens of thousands of species))). However, the portrayal of the Tau as the equivalent of the Federation might still be wrong, since the Tau, amongst their castes, adhere to a highly strict doctrine of eugenics; [[Love Can Bloom|any form of love, sex or breeding between different castes or species]] is the Tau equivalent of [[HERESY]]. As well, the Tau treat their [[Tau#Tau_Member_Races|non-Tau comrades]] as second-class citizens with no say in the Tau government, and demand them to abandon their old culture and conform to a Tau Empire, basically becoming like everyone else. Ergo, the Tau, despite not being the exterminate-all-other-species kind of racist, are still an ethnocentric, aristocratic empire hiding beneath the same type of veneer as the Federation, not unlike Britain during their 'tenure' as the rulers of India. To be fair though, if [[GW]] does decide to up the [[Grimdark#Grimderp|grimderp]] it would be more than safe to assume they would go the way of Stalin and start flaunting fancy propaganda posters everywhere—not that the Imperium doesn't already fill that part and the drawfaggots haven't already done great work in this field. What is for sure though is that, whatever part of the one-dimensional spectrum of political agenda they are on, the Tau government is mainly oligarchical, with the vast majority of political power concentrated in the Ethereal caste. This is further driven home by the fact there is a Tau splinter faction led by one of their two best generals alive, Commander [[Farsight]] of the Farsight Enclaves, whose government is a non-caste (presumedly socialist/capitalist hybrid), meritocratic semi-democracy. The problem is, until people stop dragging him out of his self-imposed exile to fight Tyranids, Orks, and other Tau, he's a dictator the way Optimus Prime is sometimes depicted. Farsight's government is one most certainly [[RAGE|NOT recognized by the Tau Empire]], who have finally gotten around to dispatching a fleet to silence them. <s>This, of course, is [[Advancing_the_Storyline|imminent plot stuff that will never happen]] because it's always the 41st millennium.</s> nope, GeeDubs ''finally'' decided to move the plot forward, thankfully. We still have yet to see the outcome of this fleet dispatch, though.

However, the new codex has HEAVILY downplayed their naiveté, bringing back the original codex mention that the Ethereals have officially declared some species "lost causes" and that the [[Greater Good]] demands they be killed to the last.
*[[Orks]] were the first of the big players of 40k to get this treatment. They pretty much were the only serious competition Tau had before they discovered the Imperium, and it only took them a few weeks of study to realize the fact that Orks are beyond reason or sanity. They still have not realized that their encounters with Orks have merely been minute numbers of stragglers (whom still nearly destroyed the Tau anyway).
*[[Tyranids]] unsurprisingly ended up on "shoot on sight" list pretty much after the first contact. Like with Orks, the Tau are unaware of the small force of Tyranids they have experienced and that the main fleet they fought was destroyed by the Imperium.
*[[Eldar]] briefly were on the list too, owning this to the first contact being made by the Commorites, and not just any, but [[Urien Rakarth]] himself. It took some nuked Exodite world and Craftworld intervention for tau to realize that not all space-elves are insane rapists and scratch them off the list. Probably more encouraged by the Eldar effortlessly curbstomping them than actually carring that they shot the wrong Spelves.
*[[Space Marines]] seem to be entering the list as of the second Damocles war. The reason is not because it's impossible to reason with them, but because after some intense Water caste psychoanalysis and Nagi "mind-[[rape|riping]]" they pretty much declared that astartes aren't ''people'' but merely a ''weapon'' and as such have no place in Tau'Va. Since this means they ignore the artistic, scholarly, philisophical, and administrative aspects of being Astartes intended to give them purpose after the Great Crusade ended the Tau are probably just scared shitless of Space Marines and the sheer inspiration their presence brings even off the battlefield.

To sum it up, the Tau Empire is still an expansionist empire prone to using military force, but far better than almost every other polity in the setting, as it permits others to exist with rather lenient standards, and isn't dedicated to the purposeful extinction of all other life in the galaxy. On the other hand, they don’t care if you’re some primitive feral species or a peaceful member of a species they have decided to be a lost cause. Also, as a result of surviving attacks from the major factions in the galaxy yet being blissfully unaware that those were merely tiny brushes or stragglers of vastly larger forces, the Tau believe they have proven they can truly hold their own in the galaxy against all the major players. As of Eighth Edition they were corrected but since there were no survivors their empire is still unaware of how indescribably outmatched they are by every major power. They have decided to try again, ignorant they they are attempting to invade Ultramar and will encounter either the Plague Worlds or the Imperial forces and swiftly discover (in the five or so seconds they would be alive) that they truly are in over their heads. Or when the Imperium finally decides to just assassinate all the Ethereals and Killship (stealth exterminatus battleship) their homeworld.

Ironically, if their tech really is reverse-engineered Imperial tech (science-wise), it might not be heresy to...take it back.

==Military Doctrine==
[[Image:TauTyr2.jpg|right|500px|thumb|Close-quarters painting [[Drawfag|strikes again.]]]]
The Tau disdain [[Choppy|melee]] [[Rip and tear|combat]] in favour of [[Shooty|ranged combat]], which renders them instantaneously [[Matt Ward|less manly]] in the eyes of most of /tg/'s playerbase. The reasons behind this are complicated. Generally, Tau see hand to hand combat in warfare as an anachronism, which makes sense, considering their basic guns can rip apart tank side armour, and compared to almost all other major races Tau have less muscle strength and reaction speed, which makes them ineffective in melee even if they are trained. Even the last reason alone is enough to avoid close combat, seeing as [[Necrons]] use similar logic, despite their [[Necron Warrior|Warriors]] and [[Necron Immortal|Immortals]] being much stronger and tougher, and actually highly trained in close combat, but equally as slow. That said, Tau do practice martial arts, but only for ritual purposes - Fire Warrior trials and rites involve knives and swords, while Ethereals have a tradition of fighting non-lethal duels to settle disputes, using sharp bladed weapons no less, so they are often quite good with their fencing style, as [[Aun'Shi]] has shown to some unfortunate Orks.

Logistically, Tau military doctrine has been hit hard with the same [[grimdark|stupidity]] nerf bat as every other fieldable army, but is the only faction for which this violates their own fluff; every other faction has some reason for their material to be as limited as they would be in a fantasy setting, but the Tau have widespread education, unlike Men and Orks; reasonable access to production facilities relative to their population, unlike Necrons and Eldar; and are capable of coherent research and development, unlike Tyranids and Daemons. For fluff reasons which have never been explained (the crunch reason is obvious), they have the same motif as every other army of equipment often being more valuable than the person wielding it, leading to most personnel being fielded with inferior equipment. The most obvious example of this is that they always, under whatever circumstance, field infantry in simple combat armour rather than some sort of battlesuit - its only advantage is having less bulk, as the Tau have a reason not to build larger transports to cope with the shitloads of battlesuits they could deploy instead. This argument is analogous to saying that real-world militaries should only use armored vehicles and not have infantry. The Tau likely practice economy of force, which has consequences both on and off the battlefield. Sending excessive amounts of force at a target is wasteful, as the excess firepower would be more useful elsewhere. If one only has a XV8 Battlesuits and no infantry, but a swarm of grots in a nearby pass needs to be taken out, they have no choice but to commit a very valuable unit to a task far beneath its worth. This is also an economic matter, as lower power units are cheaper. One could easily field a number of fire warriors for far less than the cost of a single battlesuit, and considering many foes will fall beneath "mere" infantry, any cost-aware faction would prefer the infantry's use over an expensive battlesuit. In other words, they are the army who most resemble modern forces in terms of strategy, and mixed armies of infantry, armor and support elements are a good combination. And who the fuck can with a straight face call a pulse rifle and carapace grade armour "inferior equipment"?

The Tau's superior [[Dakka|firepower]] is similar to that of the [[Imperial Guard]], but their strategy is different in that they tend to rely less on mass warfare and more on sophisticated technical support (drones, stealth technology, railguns), with an emphasis on tactical precision, mobility, and the initiative of individual squads of units, much like how modern warfare is waged (apparently if the Imperial Guard learned from Tau tacticians and fought with modern tactics instead of zergrushing everything then they would have been the most powerful army in the galaxy, but no, that ain't GRIMDARK and AWESOME enough [unless you're [[Lord Solar Macharius|Macharius]]]). Their military doctrine is not based on winning by attrition and/or throwing out quality tactics in favour of absorbing and dishing out heavy shocks in bloody epic clusterfucks like the Imperials, Orks and early World War II-era Soviet Russia. (Unless you count the later war "deep warfare", which is actually the combat doctrine the Tau ripped off. 40k really seems to like the Russians...) Rather, they use infiltration and their sophisticated battlesuits to [[Anal Circumference|bypass enemy strong points and launch deep into their rear]], cutting supply lines and logistics, destroying headquarters and support units, leaving enemies cut off and functionally helpless. There are numerous examples of Tau literally starving and/or thirsting entire armies to death by cutting out their supply lines, while simultaneously harassing them with night raids, ambushes and air strikes to the point the survivors are leaderless, demoralized, out of ammo and fuel, and can barely stand due to exhaustion. The [[Imperial_Armour_Volume_Three:_The_Taros_Campaign#Volume_Three_-_The_Taros_Campaign|Taros]] campaign is a prime example of these tactics (and of the Imperium's strategic stupidity).

Of course, these kinds of tactics only work fine against more convenient armies like the Imperial Guard or Orks. When it comes to Space Marines and Eldar, who sport mostly aerial/warp/webway supply lines, operate as elite armies without obvious weak spots to exploit, have similar or superior tactical mobility and badass officers that can survive most assassination attempts, Tau lose huge parts of their usual advantages (but get the numerical superiority in return). Against utterly unconventional foes, like Tyranids, Daemons or Necrons... well, all times they faced such foes, Tau either devised some entirely new strategies, or lost horribly.
[[File:TauTyr.jpg|thumb|left|300px|90% of Tau [[dakka]] comes in the form of [[Plasma|pretty blue lights.]]]]
The Tau, again, boast some of the most powerful ranged weaponry on the tabletop game, and can crank out more concentrated firepower than any other faction with the lone exception of the Imperial Guard and maybe the orks if you only count number of bullets in the air, and even then, the Tau's weapons hit quite a bit harder. They have pathetic hand-to-hand combat skills, however, and so the Tau bolster this by using several inducted races (the [[Kroot]], Vespid, and even some [[Gue'vesa|humans cut off from the Imperium during the Damocles Crusade]]) to act as buffers against assault troops to allow Tau Fire Warrior teams and their heavy, long-ranged firepower to tear enemies apart. The most pivotal, and perhaps most infamous, part of the Tau army are their [[Battlesuit|Battlesuits]], which can mount multiple heavy weapon systems and provide excellent mobility to their pilots, all on a fairly durable unit. They also have an extremely powerful navy, though not quite as formidable as the Imperium's, if largely because of number differences. Tau air units are among the best in the game, with aircraft superior or equal to Imperial Guard equivalents, including a stealth fighter, multipurpose heavy fighter, a superheavy fighter with guns that can one-shot a Titan, and their own [[Manta|Titan-equivalent]] (which is a small starship). Unlike the Imperium, they usually deploy swarms upon swarms of flyers, with only Orks and Necrons able to rival them in numbers when things come to dogfights—kind of the way the Imperial fleets' atmospheric support craft were supposed to work if fleet officers weren't a bunch of assholes who do everything they can to provide as little air support as possible.

On defense, the Tau are a bit unusual: they leave only token garrisons at their colonies to protect them. These garrisons are intended for scouting rather than combat, avoiding engagement in order to observe and report on invaders using Pathfinders, scanning towers, and drones. Because the Tau have fairly powerful spacefleets and usually keep their forces within reasoned distance of potential hotspots, any potential threat can be quickly dealt with by organizing a hunter cadre to be sent to deal with the situation. For those of you who don't get it, it's Frederick the Great's "he who tries to protect everything protects nothing" strategy. Of course, this strategy means Tau must have some worlds actually being heavily defended - and in fact they do. Sept worlds tend to be guarded by some nasty space stations and garrisoned by an unreasonable amounts of hunter cadres and auxiliary troops, which allows them to act as major defensive nodes from which response fleets are dispatched and to which evacuation fleets rally (think feudal Japan style castles from which commanders would send trained garrisons out to protect the lands around it from encroaching armies), and in case some really scary shit like an Imperial crusade or a Tyranid hive-fleet comes into the sept, it is on the sept world where the decisive battle is fought (See the First Damocles Crusade for an example of this tactic in action). This has, however, backfired on occasion, since it does mean that the Tau garrisons are very vulnerable in the initial stages of an attack.

A rare advantage the Tau have is their willingness to change military strategy. As examples, look at how they changed tactics in reaction to the [[Damocles Crusade]] by the Imperium of Man, and even built an entirely new space fleet to match humans in straight-on space fights, or their unusual but effective choice of switching to older weapons when dealing with [[Hive Fleet Behemoth|Hive Fleet Gorgon]].

==Fleet==
In the old fluff, Tau used to have a reverse-engineered imperial warp drives, tuned to only skim the surface of the warp and bounce back to materium after a short while. New fluff on the other hand retconned that, by giving them what is called "slingshot drive" for their FTL, and from what little fluff we have on it, it looks like the actual warp drive (in the modern physics meaning, i.e. warped time-space bubble). The practical applications, however, are the same in both new and old fluff - Tau FTL is much slower than the Imperium's, but is predictable, reliable, and not affected by warp storms (a big deal, given Tau spent half of their history inside one). As a result, Tau are capable of building proper interstellar logistics lines, ones the Administratum can only dream of, but their strategic mobility is <s>lacking functionally superior to</s>...different compared to pretty much every other faction (save Tyranids and Necrons, who also use non-Warp related FTL). Additionally, Slingshot drives are rather big, heavy and power-hungry, even compared to the Warp drive (which takes up a 1/3rd of a smaller imperial ships). As a result, escort-class Tau spacecraft are built without FTL drives and are hooked to bigger ships for the purpose of interstellar travel, which basically make them equivalents of the Imperium's system monitor ships, with the same benefits (cheap, compact and too fast, powerful or durable for their size) without their major downside (being incapable of FTL flight). The Tau also have to concentrate their forces on an interplanetary scale; they can't throw a bunch of ships into a warzone from halfway across the galaxy as orks and humans can.
Tau empire have two fleets:
*Kor'Vatra, or "merchant fleet", is made of older modular ships that double as merchant and colony vessels (hence the name). One of their main shticks is huge arcs of fire for most gun batteries, with side batteries easily covering front arc, and nose batteries covering all but the stern - as a result, while Kor'vatra Ships may not have as much firepower as Imperial or Ork ones, they can focus more of it on one target. On the flip side, merchant ships while decently fast at sub-light, are not very agile, and must rely on escort wings and auxiliary fleets against more maneuverable foes. Even after the founding of Kor'Or'Vesh, Kor'Vatra still see a lot of military use, especially against the Imperium, precisely because it's regarded as non-military fleet, so Tau diplomats could tell their imperial colleagues "What battle cruisers on your orbit are you talking about? It's just our merchant vessels, moving goods to and from our trade missions".
*Kor'Or'Vesh, or "combat fleet" is a newer fleet, made for battling Imperium's fleet in straight up battle, after Kor'Vatra get run over during Damocles crusade. Made out of more compact, maneuverable and better armored ships, it may lack Kor'Vatra's wide arks of fire, but is superior in every other regard, and as Taros and second Damocles campaigns showed it is more then capable of fighting off humans even if outnumbered.
Both fleets use largely the same technologies - railguns as (by tau standard) short-ranged high damage gun batteries, ion cannons as long range beams (lance equivalent), and above all, their brokenly-powerful ordinance second only to Eldar ones (and available in far greater numbers) - Mantas, Barracudas and EMP drone-torpedoes reign supreme at extreme ranges, gaining Tau navy the same reputation their ground armies have. Because their ordinance is so powerful, most Tau ships tend towards carrier and torpedo boat archetype, and suffer horribly if enemy comes within macro-cannon or god-forbid boarding range (that is IF they manage to come that close).

==Non-combat Fluff==
[[File:Tau city.jpg|450px|thumb|right|Contrary to what [[Imperium of Man|some]] believe, what this picture shows might just be the future for the entire galaxy if the Tau [[Great Crusade|get their way.]]]]
The Tau were a new race/culture found by the Imperium of Man during their "slash and burn" exploration of their galactic neighborhood. The Tau were still pastoral, had just discovered flint tools and charcoal, and the Imperium had them scheduled for "[[Grimdark|routine cleansing]]" (which is Imperiumese for ruthless genocide) to make sure they never got off-world and developed into an entity capable of threatening humanity. Needless to say, that plan was promptly [[derp|fucked up]]. By an unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your feelings towards a species' right to not be mercilessly exterminated for no reason whatsoever) coincidence which almost certainly involved the dickery of [[Tzeentch]] or [[Cegorach]] or [[The Deceiver|something]], a warp storm occluded the Tau homeworld, so nobody could get in or out. Since the Tau were virtually invisible in the warp, the warp storm didn't have much of an effect on them as they were immune to the influences of Chaos. [[FAIL|The sector was labeled "lost to Chaos,"]] and cleansing was [[What|deferred indefinitely]]. Then [[Age of Apostasy|this shit]] happened, and almost all records about Tau were lost in the ensuring [[Rape|clusterfuck]] of civil war. Only the Adeptus Mechanicus still had records of this first contact when the storm died down 6,000 years later. The Damocles Crusade relocated the Tau, who were completely untouched by the warp storm and now using interstellar colony ships and pulse rifles. The extermination order still stood—it was just going to be much more difficult than the Imperium expected, seeing as the Tau, instead of [[C.S. Goto|throwing spears and rocks at their tanks]] and Space Marines, were now throwing [[ion cannon|ion charges]], [[plasma|plasma blasts]], and [[railgun|electromagnetically-accelerated hypervelocity projectiles]] at their tanks and Space Marines.

Tau history is pretty typical up through the iron-age: a knack for engineering, warfare between "urban" farmers and "barbarian" nomads, and unrestrained growth causing a series of plagues, leading to a dark age. Here's where things go sideways, though the Tau see it as the start of their endless Golden Age: the arrival of the Ethereals. Legend tells of a five-year siege at the castle of Fio'taun, with both sides starving and succumbing to disease, when two foreign Tau entered the battlefield. One went to the castle, the other to the barbarian tribes. Each of these Tau had a quiet grace and irresistible authority. In just a few hours, the castle was persuaded to open their gates, and the barbarians laid down their weapons, and both parties met to parley a truce. These strange Tau called themselves "Ethereals," and stressed the importance of peace and understanding between all Tau. They described a "Greater Good" that each Tau must strive towards. Soon after, soon enough to seem simultaneous, more of these strange new Tau emerged across the continent with their message of peace and co-operation for all Tau. Their quiet authority was always respected, and their message of harmony was universally embraced. Wait a minute, [[God-Emperor of Mankind|I've seen this]] [[Great Crusade|historical pattern before]]....

Perhaps uniquely for the setting, Tau-human interactions bear the whiff of realpolitik. On the one hand, the Imperium wants to exterminate them ''eventually'', but the upper management generally realizes that the Tau are going to be a giant drain of resources and manpower to get rid of, given the stiff resistance they put up in [[Damocles Crusade|previous campaigns]] and their [[Riptide|uniformly]] [[railgun|advanced]] [[battlesuit|technology]]. Furthermore, they serve as a useful buffer state against various threats on the Eastern Fringe, from Orks and Chaos raiders to Tyranid hive fleets to alien forces the Imperium hasn't had (recorded) contact with. Their existence deflects danger from Imperial space, and in a place and time when the Imperium is [[Time of Ending|coming under attack from all sides]], that's more important than dogma.

This strategy is not unique to the Tau only though, as the Imperium allows countless other (much more dangerous) xeno empires to prosper in the Eastern Fringe to serve as an ablative shield against much nastier shit. Amongst those is (for example) the Charadon ork empire, which is older than the Imperium and spawns a Waaagh! or two per millennium (even with the routine warboss assasination raids that the Ultramarines make). Even after the emergence of the genius warboss Snagrod and his Waagh on Rynn no one cared to issue a crusade against them. So yeah, the Tau empire is not even close to being spotted by the High Lords, not to mention recognized as a threat dangerous enough to actually do something about.

Conversely, the Tau have realized just how massive an undertaking expanding through the entire universe would really be, and are taking it slow. They mostly absorb Imperial buffer worlds stripped of manpower and armament in the face of massive redeployments to face other threats, offering the Empire's protection in return for annexation and outright conquering the places that don't take the deal. The Tau have claimed that they are engaging in this sort of aggressive behavior because ''someone's'' going to [[Tyranids|gobble]] those settlements up sooner or later, and if ''they'' don't do it, then whoever does won't be [[Exterminatus|nearly as nice about it]]. While baldly self-serving, that logic is...well, mostly correct, really.

There's no lost love between the Imperium and the Tau, but open full-scale war is probably unlikely in the near-future.

And then the Second Damocles Crusade happened.... even the imperium isn't that stupid, so this almost certainly involves that tricky dick Tzeench trying to stop the greater good from ruining all his plans. ...Or nurgle...or, well any of the ruinous powers really.

Looking at the new galactic map, where the Tau are now sandwiched between their own eye of terror and a Necron dynasty, they are soon to be fucked.

=== Castes ===
[[File:Commander HawkEye.jpg|thumb|290px|left|<s>Join the Greater Good, lose your virginity to a hot alien babe!</s> The codex space communism does not support this action ]]

Tau society after the arrival of Ethereals was organized into castes; everyone with a place, and a place for everyone. Interbreeding between castes has been outlawed by the [[Ethereal]]s presumably to preserve the biological differences between castes, and as part of this effort they have taken over the practice of sex entirely. Tau society has been manipulated so that Tau do not form romantic bonds of a long-lasting nature and do not even consider sex to be anything other than a state-mandated act meant only, like everything else, to serve society and the Greater Good. In essence, Tau are conditioned to never have sex until and unless their superiors say they are worth breeding. Their superiors pick their breeding partners (the Tau get NO input into this) and the couple basically spends a few days off from work screwing around before going their separate ways to never see each other again. If a Tau did somehow get over their social conditioning and thought of sex as something more than a mandated duty, they'd be punished for illegal activities/perversion. An Imperial genetor's report in the fourth edition Tau codex observes the presence of synthetic proteins in Tau internal organs and suggests them as evidence that their evolution has been accelerated, though he might have been confused by synthetic proteins that the Tau were given. [[/tg/]] seems to be under the strong impression that they are mammals, as you can see in the picture further down the page, despite the complete implausibility of this theory.

==== {{anchor|Fire|Fire Caste}} Shas (Fire) ====
The '''Fire Caste''' consists of the various [[Fire Warrior|warriors]] of the Tau Empire. The miniatures of a Tau army in a [[Warhammer 40,000]] game are almost exclusively Fire Caste. Other castes think Shas are overly-aggressive hotheads due to their tendency to solve all problems by applying more plasma (when Tau encountered other sentient species, Fire Caste representatives immediately voted to hunt down and exterminate them, just like they hunted down dangerous local life forms on the other world they colonized), although from the perspective of humans or eldar, who know better how "[[Khorne Berserker|aggressive]] [[Blood Angels|hotheads]]" actually look like, fire warriors are seen more like a cold-blooded killers, even when they are enraged by the death of their Ethereal, which just shows how calm and disciplined other castes are. They are taller than Earth Caste Tau, and physically stronger than the Air and Water Castes, though still shorter and weaker than a typical Human. They pretty much compensate for this by giving their basic Fire Warrior a [[pulse rifle]], which is sort of like an automatic sniper-[[plasma]] gun, and employ heavily armed and sophisticated battlesuits for their elite infantry. Oh yeah, and [[Railgun]]s. Company -sized Tau forces are called "Hunter Cadres".

==== {{anchor|Earth|Earth Caste}} Fio (Earth) ====
The '''Earth Caste''' are the laborers and engineers; they are the "civilians" of Tau society. Their appearance can vary widely, though other Tau would describe them as "plain." They all have a stoic outlook, with little ambition other than to excel in their career of choice and work for the Greater Good. Unlike the Imperial worker classes, whose quality of life generally ''starts'' at working 14-hour days seven days a week while living off of dried, recycled dung chips and goes [[Such is life on Volg|''downhill from there'']], the Earth caste is mostly concerned with technological planning and engineering. They have robots to do the grunt work. The Farsight Enclaves field some Earth Caste pilots for their battlesuits, demonstrating their more flexible caste systems and/or their desperation for manpower. Doing so makes them ''even worse'' in close-combat than Tau already are, but they make up for it with technical training and tweaks to the suits' software and mechanics, re-rolling missed shots and equipment failures.

==== {{anchor|Air|Air Caste}} Kor (Air) ====
The '''Air Caste''' are the intermediaries between Tau. In more primitive times they served as messengers and couriers, and sometimes scouts/explorers, gliding on membranous anatomical surfaces through T'au's atmosphere. When the Tau started exploring offworld, it was the Air Caste that took charge of the vessels traveling between the stars. Now the Air Caste are the Tau stellar navy/airforce/mailmen, piloting the Empire's various carriers, warships, and emissary cruisers. Air caste Tau tend to be tall and slender like runners or dancers, and this is frequently exaggerated by the years the Tau navy spends in low-gravity. They are much less likely to be eaten by [[daemon]]s due to a faulty Geller Field than their Imperial equivalents, but only because their ships are much slower, using a "slingshot drive" to temporarily enter the Warp and bounce back into real space. Despite their slender stature and lack of muscle mass, Air caste pilots are extremely resistant to G-force, making them excellent void and atmospheric fighter pilots (simultaneously, as small Tau voidcraft also double as atmospheric craft).

==== {{anchor|Water|Water Caste}} Por (Water) ====
The '''Water Caste''' are the emissaries to non-Tau. They are diplomats, merchants, civil servants. The most open-minded Tau can be found among the Water caste, with some even showing individual ambition (but still for the greater good of the Tau Empire). When a new culture is encountered, the Water caste are sent in first to negotiate. If talks break down, the Water caste are withdrawn from the area and it's time for the Fire Caste to then start negotiating with pulse weapon fire. Also, unlike their Imperial equivalents in bureaucracy, the [[Administratum]], they are brisk, efficient, and very good at their jobs. No dumping valuable ammo on an uninhabited dust world because no one signed the paperwork not to. It's a less known fact that Pors also run the Tau intelligence and espionage network, and Por'Os and Por'Els from this branch are pretty much Tau Inquisitors except more competent, much saner, and not nearly as good at kicking asses personally. As of the second Damocles Crusade the Imperium has designated the Water caste as a primary threat above any other Tau caste, as their subterfuge, diplomacy and propaganda has cost the Imperium more worlds and manpower than the Fire and Air caste's military prowess combined, and they even managed to totally outplay the Inquisition on its own field, which royally pissed them off.

==== {{anchor|Ethereal|Ethereal Caste}} Aun (Ethereal) ====
The '''Ethereal Caste''' are basically the philosopher-kings described by Plato in "The Republic". They are selfless and always focused on what is best for the Greater Good ("Tau'va") for all Tau and every Tau without exception. The Ethereals are inspirational to all Tau caste members, and merely being near one will inspire a Tau soldier, engineer, pilot, or diplomat to work harder. In the case of the Fire Caste, some Ethereals accompany hunter cadres in battle during important deployments so as to better lead/inspire the troops, which works because all Tau in the combat zone will fight to their bitter deaths. They also seem to have semi-magical powers (don't ask how they work, none of the Tau know themselves) that allow Tau around them to do special things, like running while shooting. The [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] theorizes that the respect the Ethereal Caste gets from all other Tau is caused by a pheromone. ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTAU......

Also, ''[[Xenology]]'' relates a story from a major, insectoid race called the [[Q'Orl]] which alleges that the [[Eldar]] stole one of their queens. Given that these queens have a magic, yellow, diamond-shaped sack that produces mind-control pheromones…well, let's just say the characters in the story figure it out quickly enough. There is a theory that the Ethereals themselves are also affected by their own pheromones, which could explain why they're so selfless and uncorrupted despite their absolute power. This can also be supported by the (old as fuck and likely retconned) novelization of [[Warhammer_40,000:_Fire_Warrior|Fire Warrior]], where the Ethereal character has a pretty level head and chipper demeanor despite having been [[Anal_Circumference|repeatedly captured and tortured by both the Inquisition and Chaos, watching his diplomatic retinue chopped up by a Chaos Lord, and mind-raped by said Chaos Lord all in the span of roughly two days.]] Either he's a stoic old motherfucker, or he's just too busy tripping his blue balls on his own pheromones to give a shit.

===Tau Names===
Tau have ridiculously long, detailed and actually meaningful names. Their names contain their caste, rank, birth sept, and one or more nicknames earned by them through the course of their lives. Fluff does say that they ''do'' have birth names, but those are only used before tau earn at least one appropriate nickname, as a name given to them by comrades is considered more valuable than one just chosen by random at their birth. The nickname part and it's importance surprisingly is actually taken from the Roman culture, which is weird, given most Tau culture tend to be based on China and Japan (except for their social and government structures which are copied almost verbatim from Plato's Republic). Also, do note the lack of last names, which is expected, since Tau society pretty much have no institute of a family, with children being raised in a centralized facilities apart from their parents. As tau grow, move through ranks and achieve respect of his comrades his name changes appropriately, switching the rank part, adding new nicknames and sometimes dropping the old and outdated ones. For example, when Farsight was still a lowly fire warrior, his name was '''Shas'La Vior'La Shoh''' (Fire Caste Private of the Hot-Blooded sept Inner Light), and at the "present days" '''Shas'O Vior'La Shovah Kais Mont'yr''' (Fire Caste Commander of the Hot-Blooded sept Farsight Skillful Blooded). How the fuck Tau bureaucracy--{{BLAM}} Space commies don't have bureaucracy. is able to keep track of their population with their names constantly changing is a mystery, but it seems they have no problem with that (probably they just assign number to each).

For the sake of convenience Tau often use shortened versions of names, almost always dropping the sept part and secondary nicknames, and if speaking within one caste the caste part too, so in the case of Farsight other fire warriors could refer to him as O'Shovah, while for example an Ethereal would call him Shas'O'Shovah. Humans and other non-Tau often get this system wrong and shorten the names in a ways that make little sense: for example, Imperium's Taros invasion force thought the Taros' chief Ethereal's name was Aun'El, which was only his caste and rank, and as the book was mostly written from the Imperium's standpoint, we still don't know what was his actual name.

One final stroke of Tau naming, is that as they abandon their true (birth) names it makes them even more resistant to sorcery and daemonic powers that often require target's true name to amplify their effect or even make the spell work at all.

===Psychic/Chaos defense===
Tau are an entire race of psychic blunts, they cannot produce psykers and have limited innate resisance to some forms of psychic powers and daemonic bullshit. People often mistake this resistance to outright invulnerability, but in truth it's more akin to camouflage - Tau souls are so dim they are indistinguishable from the spirits of non-sapients at best, and at most times they even blend in the psychic background of inanimate objects. This may have something to do with how unemotional tau are, as some of the more passionate subjects in the fluff had been slightly affected by warp shenanigans like faint whispers and slight feelings of "wrongness" in places where humans creep out and try to run away immediately, while more calm and collected tau hadn't noticed anything strange. If for example a telepath tries to mind-rape a tau or a daemon tries to posses a tau he'd find it hard to find a soul to target, but if he manages to find it there would be even less resistance than with regular humans. Sadly while this trait is often shown in the fluff, it does not affect tau crunch in any way.

This innate defense is further strengthened by the Greater Good philosophy deeply indoctrinated into each Tau from childhood and (allegedly) reinforced by a subtle mind control. Tau'Va being the antithesis of all the creeds of Chaos makes tau all but immune to it's temptations, and only a single Tau has ever actually fallen to Chaos, the Water Caste member Water Spider who was possessed by a Daemon of Tzeentch. That being said, the Tau have only just been exposed to the more material horrors of the galaxy; should they become jaded and start losing faith in the Greater Good (as inferred with giving up on indoctrinating certain species), well, that would be an entirely different situation. Their allies, including the Kroot, have been known to go all-in with Chaos worship, although Tau seldom take culture from their allied races.

==Alliances==
{{MattWard}}
[[File:Illus4.jpg|280px|right|thumb|Unfortunately for some [[Slaanesh|deviants]] [[Extra Heresy|and heretical elements on]] [[/tg/]]. [[Not as Planned|This is what an actual canon Tau Female looks like.]] No boobs, no curves, no ass, no redeeming qualities other than having a face of your grandmother and the nose of a mutilated vag. Know the alien. Hate the alien. Purge the alien. The Emperor Protects!]]
In 6th edition, Tau are notable for being one of two factions (the other being Imperial Guard) who can ally with anyone except for 'Nids. Yes, this includes both Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Daemons, although, according to the Farsight Enclaves supplement, <s>Farsight is one of the few Tau (maybe the only one ''period'') who actually understands the existence of Chaos, so the average Tau would consider them to be just another kind of alien.</s> Farsight rebelled because the Ethereals understand the existence of Chaos on some level, but keep it suppressed from the general populace so they're not entirely screwed. It still isn't going to end well though.

This leads to a few...''interesting'' alliances, to say the least.

First off, Tau ''can'' ally with [[Ork]]s, even though fluff-wise they are viewed as enemies of the Greater Good to be purged wherever encountered. Smaller Ork warbands (mostly [[Blood Axes]]) frequently act as mercenaries, of course, so the Tau might use them in that capacity. Plus, there might be fluff changes coming up (most notably, it was rumored that the [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee]] would return in the new Orks codex; they, of course, would get along quite well with the Tau).

They are also battle brothers with both the Space Marines and Eldar, which has caused a large amount of headscratching on /tg/. The Eldar make a modicum of sense; after all, the Eldar most likely had a hand in their synthetic evolution and the creation of the Ethereals, and the Eldar are well known for being expert manipulators. A Tau-Space Marine alliance, though, would be odd, to say the least, since Tau and Space Marines are always going at it in the [[fluff]]. Of course, a minor [[Space Marine Chapter|chapter]] could always find an alliance with the Tau, or even join the Greater Good, but that seems far-fetched at best. Old fluff from back in the 3rd edition codex tells a story of a Tau commander letting an Apothecary remove the aul glands from dead Marines, establishing that the Tau are honourable warriors in the minds of this particular chapter. Isn't too hard to guess that someone at GW felt the battle brothers thing was a bit of a head-desk move, so they tried to fix it.

The weirdest part, though, is that Tau ''aren't'' Battle Brothers with the Imperial Guard, despite (or maybe because of) the existence of [[Gue'vesa]] (Imperial Guard defectors).

7th edition corrected all of this for the Tau, making them only battle brothers with themselves and certain allies of convenience, like Necrons and the Eldar, while the rest are desperate allies or, in the case of daemons and 'Nids, allies of the apocalypse. This effectively "fixes" the issue from the point of view of a butthurt puritan while still allowing for those who bought Tau models to include them as allies in their games.

8th edition totally destroyed any chance of Tau having allies in matched play games. Taudar is dead, thank fuck.

==Tau Member Races==
[[File:Dynamic entry by majesticchicken.jpg|right|thumb|550px|Look up fuckers! You're invited to the latest imperial party and we're not taking "no" for an answer!]]
The Tau are the only faction that willingly accept other races into their ranks. Typically, the races are extended a hand from the Water Caste first, and if they still pose a problem or otherwise refuse to be reasoned with, the Fire Warriors are sent in. It should be noted that tau usually are not in haste of annexing the world, and if the aliens don't want to join right now but aren't immediately hostile and open to trade, Water Caste would slowly but surely convert them into a Greater Good to the point that one day they themselves would ask to join the Empire. The species, when annexed or conquered, are usually allowed to keep their planet, but must answer to the authority of the local Ethereal and possibly the local Shas'o. Most of them are fluff and don't show up on the tabletop, but it would get a little ridiculous if you could purport to play a 'single' 40k race that included, like, twelve different races.

* Demiurg - [[Squats]] reborn. They are a race of space-faring miners specializing in ionic weaponry who serve the Tau with their engineering and mining abilities. They also serve as an example of something the Imperium will never do: save dead codex races (Well, okay, they're sort of saved...). They make an appearance in Battlefleet Gothic: Armada though, so that's nice.
* Galgs - Frog/Toad People who are regularly hired as mercenaries. No other information available. Probably [[Lizardmen#Slann|Slann]] In Space.
* [[Gue'vesa]] - Humans who have not only defected to the Tau, but chosen to take up arms and fight alongside them to serve the Greater Good. Rules for them are found in [[Forge World|Forge World's]] Imperial Armour Volume 3. <s>(If the current trend goes on we may see Sisters join up with the Tau, which might be an improvement for the Sisters.)</s>{{BLAM}}{{BLAM|HERESY!}}
* Hrenian - Alien mercenaries employed for their skills as light infantry. No other information available. Probably [[Lizardmen#Skinks|Skinks]] In Space.
* Ji'atrix - A spacefaring race. No other information available. (Dammit, GW [[Writefag|writefags]].)
* [[Kroot]] - Predatory gene-assimilating avian humanoids. They are the first alien race to be actively recruited by the Tau as mercenaries, and are so regularly hired that they have officially progressed to being considered Auxiliaries of the Tau forces.
* [[Vespid|Mal'kor]] - Insectoid aliens, also known as Vespids, who are native to a gas giant planet within the Tau Empire. Serve as Auxiliaries.
* Morralian - Also known as "Deathsworn". No other information available.
* [[Nicassar]] - A voidfaring race of [[psyker]]s and the only psychically-gifted species in the Tau Empire. The Tau have carefully hidden them away from the Imperium due to their (actually justifiable) psyker-phobia. Were the second alien species to join the Greater Good.
* Ranghon - No information available.
* [[Tarellian]] - These guys are basically [[Lizardmen#Saurus|Saurus]] IIIIN SPAAAAACE!!!!!! Not really part of the Empire, but rather mercenaries who will gladly fight humans and Tyranids on the cheap since the Imperium virus-bombed their home world and the Tyranids nommed their biggest colony.
* Poctroon - The first sapient species to be found by the Tau, [[wikipedia:Siege of Fort Pitt|they were "accidentally" driven extinct by Tau smallpox]], and their planet just by coincidence was a great place to set a Sept World.
* Nagi - Brain worms that, due to their horrific appearance and inability to communicate, were attacked by the Fire Caste. They managed to sort it out, though, and now they work with the Ethereals as advisors (because having brain worms about as "advisors" isn't a bad idea or anything). They had shown in a few books so far, and were involved in a "mind-rip" (guess outright calling it "rape" was too much) of a space marine POW while being so self-righteous and smug about their mental superiority they could give Eldar a run for their money. Apparently they can also at least perceive the Warp (which they call "extra-dimensional space"), and probably manipulate it as well, and know enough about it to outright refuse to go anywhere near demonically-tainted Agrellan when Tau invaded it.
* Ji'atrices, Morralians, or Ranghons are probably other Warhammer Fantasy Races In Space, such as [[Lizardmen#Kroxigor|Kroxigors]] or Trolls, given the overall tendency of the Tau to incorporate Fantasy races missing from 40k.

The usually genocidal actions of the other races, most notably the [[Imperium]], also serve as a motivating factor for less-powerful races to join the Tau. While the Tau do seem a minor threat to the Imperium now, if the current policy continues, there will be more and more races joining up with the them if for no other reason than avoiding [[Exterminatus|extermination]]. Of course, the Tau are just coming to realize how vast and powerful the Imperium really is, and while a lot of their member races really ''are'' the victims of crazy, evil, fascist extermination protocols, there's always the chance that someone responsible for a "Hell World" or "Nightmare World" might join up, and the damage might be done before they realize their mistake...

==In a Nutshell==
;'''The Stated Reason Why People Hate Tau'''
Weeaboo space confuciunists (Asian Commies)—not grimdark enough.
;'''The ''Real'' Reason Why People Hate Tau'''
Until the edition update, this would, most assuredly, be [[Fish of Fury]]. Fuck, even most Tau players felt this was bullshit. Post-edition update, it was that certain [[Matt Ward|undesirables]] felt that they were trying to take the mantle of the 40K universe's "rightful" Imperial protagonists. And because they are not [[Choppa|choppy]] enough. And then 6th Edition codex came, and Tau became one of the shootiest armies in the shootiest edition ever, not to mention their ability to bitchslap cheesmongers, having straight counters against any of the Wardex bullshit. When the 7th edition came out they became overpowered AF and they took the title as the chedder cheese of Warhammer.
;'''A Real Reason Why People Like Tau'''
The one race that isn't being a wall of dicks. If the Tau are trolling done by Games Workshop, then the target of said trolling was any fatbeard that needs a constant supply of grimdark to stay alive. Of course, the mind-influencing pheromones they use to conquer new worlds and their psycho-indoctrination mass re-education facilities will just have to be ignored if you don't want destroy your wishful thinking for a half-way decent faction to exist in 40k. But people have always been good at ignoring shit.
;'''Another Real Reason Why People Like Tau'''
Unlike many other Races in 40k the Tau are capable of fitting into many other Sci-fi Universes without much Problems. Such as Star trek where they would be at home along side other Peaceful yet also Tyrannical Factions like the Federation. Compared to the Necrons or Eldar which would be both Roflstomps and completely different from all other groups in that Universe. (Unless it [[Doctor Who|Doctor Who]]).
;'''The Real Reason Why People Play Tau'''
Arguably have the most powerful guns in the game. Often twin-linked. Often on cool-looking robot battlesuits. [[meme|Also markerlights]]. Also [[Riptide|RAPETIDE]]. Tau players may also have a tendency towards sadism.
;'''A Solid Reason People Don't Play Tau'''
They're fucking expensive. Seriously. On a points-per-pound level, they cost more than any other (plastic) army. This is doubly true if you like battlesuits, but of course you do because you're playing Tau.
;'''Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants?'''
An often overlooked issue is that Tau have almost no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general (despite the fact that in 6E they can work with them...I just...I don't...WAAAARD!!!), just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape, stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. [[GW]] may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the [[JUST AS PLANNED]] competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Given that recent murmurs have suggested that something absolutely massive is in the works at GW, ''anything'' could be possible, though past experience has led us to believe that it will simply be a Tau wearing a silly [[hat]]. However, seeing as GW is as likely to advance the plot that far as I am to shove both my legs up my ass up to the knee, it doesn't much matter.

==TL;DR==
<s>The good guys</S>
High-tech alien race who are the ''least'' [[grimdark]] of factions. Can't melee for shit but can blow you back to the stone age with ranged weaponry if you have the misfortune of being downrange. You will either love them or hate them because of all this, and many neckbeards do feel the [[butthurt]]. Or, as the saying goes: "You can't spell TAUNT without TAU."

== Warhammer Fantasy ==
Unlike most other factions in 40k, Tau have no clear antecedent from [[Warhammer Fantasy]]. Some think the anime influences and rapid industrialization/militarization point towards Nippon; others feel the caste system might be related to the Kingdom of Ind. However, neither faction has ever been explored in great detail (or any detail at all), so it's impossible to say whether Tau are similar to those factions; instead, we must compare to the real-world equivalents of the Old World nations. Slightly more controversially, there are elements of Cathay (which is the Anglicized word for China back in the British Empire heyday, so yes) in the Tau. Cathay has been described as being technologically advanced (at least on par with the Empire), including terra-cotta automaton warriors (which the Chinese definitely used to make to pay homage to the First Chinese Emperor's over inflated ego, more than a millennia ago), although such comparison is stated by some to have [[Skub|already been implemented in the characterization of the Eldar and thus, is considered as ''seriously'' stretching up a notch.]]

More recently, some have connected the Tau and their subject races to other factions in Fantasy. The rapid evolution of the Kroot and their overall savagery is (somewhat) similar to the Gors of the Beastmen (although the Beastmen are in the 40k universe themselves). The Empire also shares the xenos-friendly viewpoint of the Tau, although they're not expansionistic, and decidedly less concerned with a unified government structure so long as everyone pays their taxes, for better or for worse. Others compare them to dwarves: dwarves don't use Chaos magic, are short, technologically advanced, kinda casty and blue (understood in many countries as "hopelessly drunk") basicly all the time. Tau don't use Chaos warp magic, are short, technologically advanced, very casty and blue all the time (in regards to skin colour). Both also get seriously grudgy and angry when you piss them off.

==Trivia==
[[File:Tau Ripoff.jpeg|thumb|right|300px|FOR THE [[Blood Ravens|GREATER THEFT]]!]]
* Some have said that Tau resemble the protagonist KYNE from the Amiga video game Brataccas, which was released in 1986. Tau were first added to Warhammer 40k in late 2001. Some would dismiss this as coincidence, but Games Workshop has a long history of ripping off designs from other games; [[Beastmen]] are [[Broo]] from [[Glorantha]], very large chunks of 40k are a little too similar to [[Judge Dredd]], and all of the Greater Daemon model designs are stolen from early [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. These properties are understandable as Games Workshop was still selling games of those IPs when Warhammer was first created, but Brataccas is an obscure game from a forgotten system that was quite forgettable even at release, even if Amiga games tended to get fantastic cover art. This being said another of GW's early products was also puzzles of of this style of '70's/'80's Sci-Fi art. The T'au cast system does resemble the Protoss caste from [[starcraft]], which presates the release of the Tau by 3 years... You have the Templar (Fire/Air Castes) Judicators (Ethereals + Water Castes) and Khalai (Earth Caste). In addition to a rogue sub-caste in the Dark Templar (Farsight Enclaves).
* Tau are technically canon to the Marvel Comics universe, as the series Venom: Space Knight repeatedly used Tau vehicles for aliens in the scenery. In fact, they have the balls to even keep the Tau Sept symbol! Also, you can see what appears to be a Eldar tank, as well as a Necron. The irony of the ripoff masters Games Workshop getting ripped off is juicy, even moreso when its realized that lawsuit-happy Games Workshop (who literally tried to copyright "pauldrons" while they plagiarized Eldar from Tolkien and had some contention between [[Malekith|two very similar Dark Elf characters of theirs]]) couldn't do shit about it because Marvel is owned by Disney, and nobody beats The Mouse™.

==Notable Tau==
===[[Canon]]===
*[[Aun'Shi]]
*[[El'Myamoto (Sub-commander Darkstrider)]]
*[[Shadowsun|O'Shaserra (Commander Shadowsun)]]
*[[Farsight|O'Shovah (Commander Farsight) and The Eight]]
*[[Commander Puretide]]
*[[Shas'o Kais]]
*[[Commander Or'es'Ka|Shas'o Or'es'Ka]]

===[[/tg/ 40,000]]===
*[[Blue]]
*[[Faptau]]
*[[O'ren I'shi'ii]]
*[[Shlicktau]]
*[[Xeno]]

==See Also==
[[File:Marvel Tau.jpg|thumb|right|250px|FOR THE GREATER GROOT!]]
* [[Nicassar]]
* [[Sept V'iet]]
* [[Tau Quest]]
* [[Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior]]
* [[Tau Dark Heresy]]
* [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Tau(8E)|Tactics/Tau]]
* [[Tau Cadre Creation Tables]]
* [[Codex_-_Tau_Auxiliary]]
* [[Tau Diplomacy]]
* [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|<strike>Love Can Bloom 3:Golden Shadowsun</strike> NON-CANON FANFICTION GARBAGE]]

==External Link==
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrHhS5IkRR0 A Typical Tau-Human conversation.]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbuPaCgdO50 Should one of your Tau actually kill anything tougher than a guardsman in melee, you are allowed to end the game in victory as long as you play this clip.]

==Gallery==
<center><gallery>
Image:Tau1.jpg|Stealth suits are :3
Image:Firewarrior.gif|Fire Warriors are :3 too
Image:Tau Chibi Fire Warrior.jpg|Chibi, but not weeby.
File:TauGuela.jpg|Gue'la.
Image:TauOrigin.jpg|Ohhh GW.
Image:Tau.gif|In 40k, everyones' guns are huge.
Image:Tau Fire Warrior.jpg|A Tau Fire Warrior, the basic infantry unit.
Image:Tau Firepower Demotivator.jpg|The sad truth of 6th edition.
Image:combine.jpg|In /tg/, tau are the bad guys.
Image:Itsyourempiretoo.png|Propaganda. [[Nazi|Sound]] [[Communism|familiar?]]
Image:Never shall the tau!.JPG|Surrender... never shall the Tau.
Image:Tauassault.jpg|Tau are vicious melee fighters, no less able than [[Space Marines]]!
Image:1234622525817.jpg|In hindsight, attempting negotiations with Orks was probably a bad idea.
Image:Tau Problem, Astartes.jpg|What's that? We're not grimdark enough for you, Neckbeard?
Image:Tau Sympathizer.jpg|The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer's entry on Tau players.
Image:Discotau.jpg|In spite of being filthy heretical xeno scum, the Tau can really break it down.
Image:Manta.jpg|Fun fact: if you have enough money to buy this, you have too much money.
Image:Tau cosplay2.jpg|Typical Tau player, engaging in typical Tau behavior. (Pretty badass cosplay, even got the hoof right)
Image:Tau Battlesuit vs Smurf.jpg|This Char Custom Battlesuit-clad Tau demonstrates his mastery of [[Weeaboo Fightan Magic]]. Also DYNAMIC ENTRY!
Image:E6abddad6c5999a1dbe6085d8614f051.jpg|Tau in close quarters combat barring some very lucky dice rolls.
</gallery></center>
{{Promotions}}
<center><gallery>
Image:TauKroot.jpg
Image:MARKERLIGHTS.png|MARKERLIGHTS!
Image:tau_firecleavage.jpg|Sweet [[Weeaboo|weeaboo]] [[Heresy|heresy]].
Image:Commissar Shadowsuns Goods by morganagod.jpg|DAT ASS.
Image:DAT_SHAS.jpg| A Fire Warrior appreciating DAT ASS.
Image:Tau ass.gif|A Greater Good we can all believe in.
Image:NOT FUCKING CANON.png| [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|THIS IS NOT FUCKING CANON!]]
Image:JoinTau.jpg|Some recruitment methodologies work better than others.
Image:Tau Chick.jpg|Few rarely seen Tau chicks. Maybe because Sisters are hotter.
Image:youtastefunny.jpg|Yeah, we all know the truth about their "greater good".
Image:Subcommander torchstar by sexual yeti-d9qal0l.png|Subcommander Torchstar, Farsight's personal fangirl.
Image:Tau_caste_nudes.jpg|Earth, Fire, Water, Air...Ethereal?!? SWEET MOTHER OF KHORNE!!! MY EYES!!!
Image:Laughing tau whores.jpg|S-shut up you filthy sluts! Among my people it is considered quite a handsome dick!
Image:Power Shopping.jpg|It's a well-known fact that the Tau Empire has some of the best shopping in the entire galaxy.
Image:Taugirlpile.jpg|Here we see Tau propaganda meant to entice men with their terrible, blasphemous, and supple soft skin, smooth curves, perky brea...er...ah...heretical alien bodies.
Image:TauHuman.jpg|Indeed, many humans have already embraced the Greater Good. (The individual with the primitive flashlight has been sent to re-education. Happiness is mandatory, Citizen.)
Image:greatertits.jpg|An attractive human female defector who for some reason has been equipped with a highly modified commander's battlesuit, perhaps as a devious ploy to compel desertion by the less loyal.
</gallery></center>

{{Tau}}
{{WH40k-Factions}}
{{40k-Governments}}

[[Category: Xenos]]

Tau

2017-12-11T19:23:58Z

2600:1006:B10C:1CE2:B49C:FF60:61E6:E26E: /* "Naive Weeaboo Space Communists" */

[[Image:TAUSYMBOL.gif|center]]
{{Infobox 40k Nations
|name= Tau Empire
|image=[[Image:Tau_Empire_Flag.jpg|300px|center]]
|bgcolor=
|fgcolor=
|Capital= T'au
|Official Languages=Tau Lexicon
|Power= Minor Power
|Size=Approximately 100 Planets
|Head of State=Ethereal Supreme
|Head of Government= Ethereal Council
|Governmental Structure=Caste-Based Authoritarian Federation
|State Religion/Ideology=[[Greater Good]]
|Demographic=[[Tau]], [[Kroot]], [[Vespid]], [[Gue'vesa|Humans]], [[Nicassar]], [[Tarellian]], Nagi, Hrenians and other minor [[Xenos]] races
|Military Force=[[Tau]] Fire Caste, Tau Air Caste, [[Kroot]] and [[Vespid]] Forces, The Deathsworn, Hrenian Light Infantry, Demiurg Forces, Nicassar Forces, Gue'vesa Forces and other minor Xenos armies
}}
[[File:9jfnqeaplhexx.jpg|right|thumb|450px|Get the fuck out of the way, [[Imperium|Oldfag]].]]

{{Topquote|Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.|[[C.S. Lewis]]}}
{{Topquote|Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?|Luke 6:41}}
{{Topquote|Ce qui constitue une République, c'est l'extermination totale de tout ce qui lui est opposé.|Louis Antoine de Saint-Just}}
{{Topquote|The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting|Sun Zhu}}

Tau (τ) is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, 300 in Greek numerals, and also the name for 2π.

However, this article is about the '''Tau''' (or "bluies", as the Valhallan 597th call them)(or "Space Communists" as anyone on /tg/ will tell you), (or "T'au" as GW copywright lawyers call them) a playable race in ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' made of weaboo mecha communists in SPEEHS. When first discovered by humanity, the Tau were a barbaric and primitive people. Their planet was then trapped in a warp storm for a few thousand years and they emerged from the other side as a unified species, led by the [[Druids|mysterious]] Ethereal caste and devoted to the concept of the "[[Greater Good]]". Their new empire currently has around 115 worlds, and was growing until recently, when the Imperium sent a large invading force to counter them. Although a dystopian society in its own right, the Tau Empire is noted for being one of the LEAST awful places in all the galaxy of 40k. It's also [[Derp|not really an empire]]; the Tau government, the Ethereal caste, is essentially an edifice of meritocracy and nepotism-Tau leaders are appointed to their position by even higher ranking leaders and/or a council of their future peers; the highest ranking Tau, the Aun'O, is selected by his future underlings, much like the Catholic pope, but is still simply considered the weightiest voice of a group (like a prime minister), not an Emperor with absolute power. While Tau civilization has the behavioral tendencies of many empires throughout history (expansionism, military conquest of weaker states, forcible integration of the conquered peoples, etc.), it is the government structure of a state that makes it an empire, not foreign policies. Essentially, they are ''imperialist,'' but not an ''empire.''

The Tau started as a classic case of successful design-based [[Troll|trolling]] on the part of [[Games Workshop]]. They were originally developed because GW felt that their setting needed an optimistic race and that their wallets needed more money, which they could get by selling shedloads of 40k to the robot-obsessed Japanese. The Tau, therefore, are the least [[grimdark]] faction in the game; [[Tau Diplomacy|they're the dudes willing to negotiate when they've beaten their enemies]], while all the others are either too [[Chaos Space Marines| murderously psychotic in ways incomprehensible to anyone who does not share the same batshit insanity]], [[Imperium|religiously overzealous]], [[Eldar|arrogantly indifferent]], [[Orks|simplemindedly violent]], [[Necron|murderously enigmatic]], [[Tyranid|more interested in eating you than anything]], or [[Dark Eldar|all of the above]] to offer such courtesies.

This began to change in the 6th edition. For all the claims that GW doesn't listen to its fans, someone seemed to have heard the incessant bitching many fa/tg/uys made over the Tau being shoehorned into the setting in the worst way possible. As a result, the Tau began to take on an Orwellian flavor, with the Ethereals being totalitarian autocrats performing acts of ruthless indifference towards their subjects in the guise of being for the Greater Good. Recent [[fluff]] (from ''[[Dawn of War]]'', supported by [[Deathwatch]] supplements describing Achillus Crusade) has them <s>arbitrarily sterilizing the rebelling humans on Kronus once they come under the rule of the Tau Empire</s> sterilizing a group of humans attempting to revolt and distract Tau forces in the middle of a planet-wide, 6-way free-for-all (to be fair though, had it been anyone else they were revolting against, including the Imperials, those humans would be dead, [[Grimdark|most likely the slow and painful way, or even suffer such a terrible fate as to wish for death]]). Except sterialization takes more time, industry, and resources and does nothing to help put down a rebellion anyway. Also, the sterialization happens if the Tau win, so it occurs after the war is over. The Tau Codex leaves ambiguous the question of just how much of their success is due to various forms of indoctrination, caste-based conditioning, and subtle mind control. This has only been exacerbated by the recent Farsight Enclaves supplement, which makes the Ethereals come off as mustache-twirling, Saturday-morning-cartoon villains. It speaks volumes about the 40k setting that in spite of all this they're ''still'' the friendliest race in the galaxy.

=="Naive Weeaboo Space Communists"==
[[Image:Tau Weeaboo.png|thumb|right|Cue hotblooded music by [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r6xYnFDoV0 JAM Project].]]
The Tau's naiveté might seem at odds with the GRIMDARK-ness of the setting (and to a degree, a lot of it is), but the thing is, Games Workshop specifically plays this straight FOR the [[grimdark]] and ''knows'' that the seeming futility of the Tau's optimism only further accentuates the general hellishness of the rest of the galaxy - and dear [[Emperor|god]] do they play this up for maximum effect. In the 41st millennium, the Tau come across as ''more'' than a little naive to the other races; the Imperium sees any contact with aliens as heretical and will shoot them with [[bolter]] rounds as soon as they look at them; the [[Ork]]s just want to kick the shit out of things; and the [[Eldar]] see the Tau as young and powerful because of their technology but also as a race in its infancy, just staggering out of its borders for the first time and wandering into a pond full of [[Saharduin|sh]][[Dark Eldar|arks]]. The Tau are implied to have been secretly uplifted by the Eldar through the creation and subtle control of the Etherals (especially the mind-influencing pheromone secreting gland at the base of Etherals’ spines) and guiding them through reverse-engineering Imperial technology from the ruined colony ships. Eventually the Eldar abandoned them because the Tau never accomplished anything notable on their own due to a crippling lack of creativity. Humans must be in physical contact with an Ethereal or perhaps subjected to heavy doses of the pheromone in other ways to be sufficiently affected but aliens are affected merely by being in the vicinity of an Ethereal.

Putting it simply, there's an ongoing joke that the Tau are some of the most successful trolling performed in the history of mankind just by ''existing''; a case of the company installing them just to mix things up whilst at the same time keeping them surprisingly on-level.

The combination of the above fluff, however, paired with their highly advanced technology, generally "Asian" feel (their Fire Caste's combat doctrine is often reminiscent of Sun Tzu's "''Art of War''" - but derived from two distinct Tau hunting methods), use of [[Mecha|battlesuits]] (just [[Imperial Knight|like]] [[Dreadnought|the]] [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Imperium]]), [[Hammerhead Gunship|heavy firepower]] which rivals that of the Imperial Guard, and one of the [[Fish of Fury|most broken tactics in tabletop 40K until it was finally fixed an edition later]] has conspired to make them very much hated (and by that we mean a source of butthurt) by a reasonable-sized population of the [[/tg/|40K fan populace]], and /tg/ has rightly dubbed the Tau [[Weeaboo]] (as much due to their Asian-ness as anything else) as a result (even when people can use the same logic to point to the Imperium's xenophobia, the fanatical worship of the God-Emperor, extensive use of Mecha and suicide attacks, use of suicide attacks as punishment for dishonour, and fondness for over-the-top dialogue in general and conclude that the Imperium of Man is the space equivalent of Holy Imperial Japan). As a dark twist on this inherent Asian-ness, a thread concerning lack of grimdark fan fluff on Tau led to the creation of [[Sept V'iet]], the Viet Cong Tau.
[[Image:Tau fire warriors.jpg|490px|thumb|left|The [[Greater Good]]: translatable as [[Deal with it|"if you want to make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs."]]]]

And again in a case of much cultural confusion, the Tau are often considered [[Communism|communists]] (despite being a rigorous, hierarchical, near-eugenicist class society that would drive Marx into [[RAGE]]) due to their central philosophy of casting aside the self in favour of the Greater Good. If anything the Tau more resemble the class system of Plato's ''Republic'' crossed with the caste system of India and [[Star_Trek#The_Federation|Star Trek's Federation]] (because they're the only ones in the entire galaxy who bother to try diplomacy with xenos rather than [[Exterminatus|exterminate]] them (partly because all but a few alien species are horrific space monsters that make the freaking Flood look normal and Xenomorphs seem bland and relatively harmless, and partly because all aliens worth not killing off are made into Imperial protectorate species (yes they exist, a few dozen, out of tens of thousands of species))). However, the portrayal of the Tau as the equivalent of the Federation might still be wrong, since the Tau, amongst their castes, adhere to a highly strict doctrine of eugenics; [[Love Can Bloom|any form of love, sex or breeding between different castes or species]] is the Tau equivalent of [[HERESY]]. As well, the Tau treat their [[Tau#Tau_Member_Races|non-Tau comrades]] as second-class citizens with no say in the Tau government, and demand them to abandon their old culture and conform to a Tau Empire, basically becoming like everyone else. Ergo, the Tau, despite not being the exterminate-all-other-species kind of racist, are still an ethnocentric, aristocratic empire hiding beneath the same type of veneer as the Federation, not unlike Britain during their 'tenure' as the rulers of India. To be fair though, if [[GW]] does decide to up the [[Grimdark#Grimderp|grimderp]] it would be more than safe to assume they would go the way of Stalin and start flaunting fancy propaganda posters everywhere—not that the Imperium doesn't already fill that part and the drawfaggots haven't already done great work in this field. What is for sure though is that, whatever part of the one-dimensional spectrum of political agenda they are on, the Tau government is mainly oligarchical, with the vast majority of political power concentrated in the Ethereal caste. This is further driven home by the fact there is a Tau splinter faction led by one of their two best generals alive, Commander [[Farsight]] of the Farsight Enclaves, whose government is a non-caste (presumedly socialist/capitalist hybrid), meritocratic semi-democracy. The problem is, until people stop dragging him out of his self-imposed exile to fight Tyranids, Orks, and other Tau, he's a dictator the way Optimus Prime is sometimes depicted. Farsight's government is one most certainly [[RAGE|NOT recognized by the Tau Empire]], who have finally gotten around to dispatching a fleet to silence them. <s>This, of course, is [[Advancing_the_Storyline|imminent plot stuff that will never happen]] because it's always the 41st millennium.</s> nope, GeeDubs ''finally'' decided to move the plot forward, thankfully. We still have yet to see the outcome of this fleet dispatch, though.

However, the new codex has HEAVILY downplayed their naiveté, bringing back the original codex mention that the Ethereals have officially declared some species "lost causes" and that the [[Greater Good]] demands they be killed to the last.
*[[Orks]] were the first of the big players of 40k to get this treatment. They pretty much were the only serious competition Tau had before they discovered the Imperium, and it only took them a few weeks of study to realize the fact that Orks are beyond reason or sanity.
*[[Tyranids]] unsurprisingly ended up on "shoot on sight" list pretty much after the first contact.
*[[Eldar]] briefly were on the list too, owning this to the first contact being made by the Commorites, and not just any, but [[Urien Rakarth]] himself. It took some nuked Exodite world and Craftworld intervention for tau to realize that not all space-elves are insane rapists and scratch them off the list.
*[[Space Marines]] seem to be entering the list as of the second Damocles war. The reason is not because it's impossible to reason with them, but because after some intense Water caste psychoanalysis and Nagi "mind-[[rape|riping]]" they pretty much declared that astartes aren't ''people'' but merely a ''weapon'' and as such have no place in Tau'Va.

To sum it up, the Tau Empire is still an expansionist empire prone to using military force, but far better than almost every other polity in the setting, as it permits others to exist with rather lenient standards, and isn't dedicated to the purposeful extinction of all other life in the galaxy.

==Military Doctrine==
[[Image:TauTyr2.jpg|right|500px|thumb|Close-quarters painting [[Drawfag|strikes again.]]]]
The Tau disdain [[Choppy|melee]] [[Rip and tear|combat]] in favour of [[Shooty|ranged combat]], which renders them instantaneously [[Matt Ward|less manly]] in the eyes of most of /tg/'s playerbase. The reasons behind this are complicated. Generally, Tau see hand to hand combat in warfare as an anachronism, which makes sense, considering their basic guns can rip apart tank side armour, and compared to almost all other major races Tau have less muscle strength and reaction speed, which makes them ineffective in melee even if they are trained. Even the last reason alone is enough to avoid close combat, seeing as [[Necrons]] use similar logic, despite their [[Necron Warrior|Warriors]] and [[Necron Immortal|Immortals]] being much stronger and tougher, and actually highly trained in close combat, but equally as slow. That said, Tau do practice martial arts, but only for ritual purposes - Fire Warrior trials and rites involve knives and swords, while Ethereals have a tradition of fighting non-lethal duels to settle disputes, using sharp bladed weapons no less, so they are often quite good with their fencing style, as [[Aun'Shi]] has shown to some unfortunate Orks.

Logistically, Tau military doctrine has been hit hard with the same [[grimdark|stupidity]] nerf bat as every other fieldable army, but is the only faction for which this violates their own fluff; every other faction has some reason for their material to be as limited as they would be in a fantasy setting, but the Tau have widespread education, unlike Men and Orks; reasonable access to production facilities relative to their population, unlike Necrons and Eldar; and are capable of coherent research and development, unlike Tyranids and Daemons. For fluff reasons which have never been explained (the crunch reason is obvious), they have the same motif as every other army of equipment often being more valuable than the person wielding it, leading to most personnel being fielded with inferior equipment. The most obvious example of this is that they always, under whatever circumstance, field infantry in simple combat armour rather than some sort of battlesuit - its only advantage is having less bulk, as the Tau have a reason not to build larger transports to cope with the shitloads of battlesuits they could deploy instead. This argument is analogous to saying that real-world militaries should only use armored vehicles and not have infantry. The Tau likely practice economy of force, which has consequences both on and off the battlefield. Sending excessive amounts of force at a target is wasteful, as the excess firepower would be more useful elsewhere. If one only has a XV8 Battlesuits and no infantry, but a swarm of grots in a nearby pass needs to be taken out, they have no choice but to commit a very valuable unit to a task far beneath its worth. This is also an economic matter, as lower power units are cheaper. One could easily field a number of fire warriors for far less than the cost of a single battlesuit, and considering many foes will fall beneath "mere" infantry, any cost-aware faction would prefer the infantry's use over an expensive battlesuit. In other words, they are the army who most resemble modern forces in terms of strategy, and mixed armies of infantry, armor and support elements are a good combination. And who the fuck can with a straight face call a pulse rifle and carapace grade armour "inferior equipment"?

The Tau's superior [[Dakka|firepower]] is similar to that of the [[Imperial Guard]], but their strategy is different in that they tend to rely less on mass warfare and more on sophisticated technical support (drones, stealth technology, railguns), with an emphasis on tactical precision, mobility, and the initiative of individual squads of units, much like how modern warfare is waged (apparently if the Imperial Guard learned from Tau tacticians and fought with modern tactics instead of zergrushing everything then they would have been the most powerful army in the galaxy, but no, that ain't GRIMDARK and AWESOME enough [unless you're [[Lord Solar Macharius|Macharius]]]). Their military doctrine is not based on winning by attrition and/or throwing out quality tactics in favour of absorbing and dishing out heavy shocks in bloody epic clusterfucks like the Imperials, Orks and early World War II-era Soviet Russia. (Unless you count the later war "deep warfare", which is actually the combat doctrine the Tau ripped off. 40k really seems to like the Russians...) Rather, they use infiltration and their sophisticated battlesuits to [[Anal Circumference|bypass enemy strong points and launch deep into their rear]], cutting supply lines and logistics, destroying headquarters and support units, leaving enemies cut off and functionally helpless. There are numerous examples of Tau literally starving and/or thirsting entire armies to death by cutting out their supply lines, while simultaneously harassing them with night raids, ambushes and air strikes to the point the survivors are leaderless, demoralized, out of ammo and fuel, and can barely stand due to exhaustion. The [[Imperial_Armour_Volume_Three:_The_Taros_Campaign#Volume_Three_-_The_Taros_Campaign|Taros]] campaign is a prime example of these tactics (and of the Imperium's strategic stupidity).

Of course, these kinds of tactics only work fine against more convenient armies like the Imperial Guard or Orks. When it comes to Space Marines and Eldar, who sport mostly aerial/warp/webway supply lines, operate as elite armies without obvious weak spots to exploit, have similar or superior tactical mobility and badass officers that can survive most assassination attempts, Tau lose huge parts of their usual advantages (but get the numerical superiority in return). Against utterly unconventional foes, like Tyranids, Daemons or Necrons... well, all times they faced such foes, Tau either devised some entirely new strategies, or lost horribly.
[[File:TauTyr.jpg|thumb|left|300px|90% of Tau [[dakka]] comes in the form of [[Plasma|pretty blue lights.]]]]
The Tau, again, boast some of the most powerful ranged weaponry on the tabletop game, and can crank out more concentrated firepower than any other faction with the lone exception of the Imperial Guard and maybe the orks if you only count number of bullets in the air, and even then, the Tau's weapons hit quite a bit harder. They have pathetic hand-to-hand combat skills, however, and so the Tau bolster this by using several inducted races (the [[Kroot]], Vespid, and even some [[Gue'vesa|humans cut off from the Imperium during the Damocles Crusade]]) to act as buffers against assault troops to allow Tau Fire Warrior teams and their heavy, long-ranged firepower to tear enemies apart. The most pivotal, and perhaps most infamous, part of the Tau army are their [[Battlesuit|Battlesuits]], which can mount multiple heavy weapon systems and provide excellent mobility to their pilots, all on a fairly durable unit. They also have an extremely powerful navy, though not quite as formidable as the Imperium's, if largely because of number differences. Tau air units are among the best in the game, with aircraft superior or equal to Imperial Guard equivalents, including a stealth fighter, multipurpose heavy fighter, a superheavy fighter with guns that can one-shot a Titan, and their own [[Manta|Titan-equivalent]] (which is a small starship). Unlike the Imperium, they usually deploy swarms upon swarms of flyers, with only Orks and Necrons able to rival them in numbers when things come to dogfights—kind of the way the Imperial fleets' atmospheric support craft were supposed to work if fleet officers weren't a bunch of assholes who do everything they can to provide as little air support as possible.

On defense, the Tau are a bit unusual: they leave only token garrisons at their colonies to protect them. These garrisons are intended for scouting rather than combat, avoiding engagement in order to observe and report on invaders using Pathfinders, scanning towers, and drones. Because the Tau have fairly powerful spacefleets and usually keep their forces within reasoned distance of potential hotspots, any potential threat can be quickly dealt with by organizing a hunter cadre to be sent to deal with the situation. For those of you who don't get it, it's Frederick the Great's "he who tries to protect everything protects nothing" strategy. Of course, this strategy means Tau must have some worlds actually being heavily defended - and in fact they do. Sept worlds tend to be guarded by some nasty space stations and garrisoned by an unreasonable amounts of hunter cadres and auxiliary troops, which allows them to act as major defensive nodes from which response fleets are dispatched and to which evacuation fleets rally (think feudal Japan style castles from which commanders would send trained garrisons out to protect the lands around it from encroaching armies), and in case some really scary shit like an Imperial crusade or a Tyranid hive-fleet comes into the sept, it is on the sept world where the decisive battle is fought (See the First Damocles Crusade for an example of this tactic in action). This has, however, backfired on occasion, since it does mean that the Tau garrisons are very vulnerable in the initial stages of an attack.

A rare advantage the Tau have is their willingness to change military strategy. As examples, look at how they changed tactics in reaction to the [[Damocles Crusade]] by the Imperium of Man, and even built an entirely new space fleet to match humans in straight-on space fights, or their unusual but effective choice of switching to older weapons when dealing with [[Hive Fleet Behemoth|Hive Fleet Gorgon]].

==Fleet==
In the old fluff, Tau used to have a reverse-engineered imperial warp drives, tuned to only skim the surface of the warp and bounce back to materium after a short while. New fluff on the other hand retconned that, by giving them what is called "slingshot drive" for their FTL, and from what little fluff we have on it, it looks like the actual warp drive (in the modern physics meaning, i.e. warped time-space bubble). The practical applications, however, are the same in both new and old fluff - Tau FTL is much slower than the Imperium's, but is predictable, reliable, and not affected by warp storms (a big deal, given Tau spent half of their history inside one). As a result, Tau are capable of building proper interstellar logistics lines, ones the Administratum can only dream of, but their strategic mobility is <s>lacking functionally superior to</s>...different compared to pretty much every other faction (save Tyranids and Necrons, who also use non-Warp related FTL). Additionally, Slingshot drives are rather big, heavy and power-hungry, even compared to the Warp drive (which takes up a 1/3rd of a smaller imperial ships). As a result, escort-class Tau spacecraft are built without FTL drives and are hooked to bigger ships for the purpose of interstellar travel, which basically make them equivalents of the Imperium's system monitor ships, with the same benefits (cheap, compact and too fast, powerful or durable for their size) without their major downside (being incapable of FTL flight). The Tau also have to concentrate their forces on an interplanetary scale; they can't throw a bunch of ships into a warzone from halfway across the galaxy as orks and humans can.
Tau empire have two fleets:
*Kor'Vatra, or "merchant fleet", is made of older modular ships that double as merchant and colony vessels (hence the name). One of their main shticks is huge arcs of fire for most gun batteries, with side batteries easily covering front arc, and nose batteries covering all but the stern - as a result, while Kor'vatra Ships may not have as much firepower as Imperial or Ork ones, they can focus more of it on one target. On the flip side, merchant ships while decently fast at sub-light, are not very agile, and must rely on escort wings and auxiliary fleets against more maneuverable foes. Even after the founding of Kor'Or'Vesh, Kor'Vatra still see a lot of military use, especially against the Imperium, precisely because it's regarded as non-military fleet, so Tau diplomats could tell their imperial colleagues "What battle cruisers on your orbit are you talking about? It's just our merchant vessels, moving goods to and from our trade missions".
*Kor'Or'Vesh, or "combat fleet" is a newer fleet, made for battling Imperium's fleet in straight up battle, after Kor'Vatra get run over during Damocles crusade. Made out of more compact, maneuverable and better armored ships, it may lack Kor'Vatra's wide arks of fire, but is superior in every other regard, and as Taros and second Damocles campaigns showed it is more then capable of fighting off humans even if outnumbered.
Both fleets use largely the same technologies - railguns as (by tau standard) short-ranged high damage gun batteries, ion cannons as long range beams (lance equivalent), and above all, their brokenly-powerful ordinance second only to Eldar ones (and available in far greater numbers) - Mantas, Barracudas and EMP drone-torpedoes reign supreme at extreme ranges, gaining Tau navy the same reputation their ground armies have. Because their ordinance is so powerful, most Tau ships tend towards carrier and torpedo boat archetype, and suffer horribly if enemy comes within macro-cannon or god-forbid boarding range (that is IF they manage to come that close).

==Non-combat Fluff==
[[File:Tau city.jpg|450px|thumb|right|Contrary to what [[Imperium of Man|some]] believe, what this picture shows might just be the future for the entire galaxy if the Tau [[Great Crusade|get their way.]]]]
The Tau were a new race/culture found by the Imperium of Man during their "slash and burn" exploration of their galactic neighborhood. The Tau were still pastoral, had just discovered flint tools and charcoal, and the Imperium had them scheduled for "[[Grimdark|routine cleansing]]" (which is Imperiumese for ruthless genocide) to make sure they never got off-world and developed into an entity capable of threatening humanity. Needless to say, that plan was promptly [[derp|fucked up]]. By an unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your feelings towards a species' right to not be mercilessly exterminated for no reason whatsoever) coincidence which almost certainly involved the dickery of [[Tzeentch]] or [[Cegorach]] or [[The Deceiver|something]], a warp storm occluded the Tau homeworld, so nobody could get in or out. Since the Tau were virtually invisible in the warp, the warp storm didn't have much of an effect on them as they were immune to the influences of Chaos. [[FAIL|The sector was labeled "lost to Chaos,"]] and cleansing was [[What|deferred indefinitely]]. Then [[Age of Apostasy|this shit]] happened, and almost all records about Tau were lost in the ensuring [[Rape|clusterfuck]] of civil war. Only the Adeptus Mechanicus still had records of this first contact when the storm died down 6,000 years later. The Damocles Crusade relocated the Tau, who were completely untouched by the warp storm and now using interstellar colony ships and pulse rifles. The extermination order still stood—it was just going to be much more difficult than the Imperium expected, seeing as the Tau, instead of [[C.S. Goto|throwing spears and rocks at their tanks]] and Space Marines, were now throwing [[ion cannon|ion charges]], [[plasma|plasma blasts]], and [[railgun|electromagnetically-accelerated hypervelocity projectiles]] at their tanks and Space Marines.

Tau history is pretty typical up through the iron-age: a knack for engineering, warfare between "urban" farmers and "barbarian" nomads, and unrestrained growth causing a series of plagues, leading to a dark age. Here's where things go sideways, though the Tau see it as the start of their endless Golden Age: the arrival of the Ethereals. Legend tells of a five-year siege at the castle of Fio'taun, with both sides starving and succumbing to disease, when two foreign Tau entered the battlefield. One went to the castle, the other to the barbarian tribes. Each of these Tau had a quiet grace and irresistible authority. In just a few hours, the castle was persuaded to open their gates, and the barbarians laid down their weapons, and both parties met to parley a truce. These strange Tau called themselves "Ethereals," and stressed the importance of peace and understanding between all Tau. They described a "Greater Good" that each Tau must strive towards. Soon after, soon enough to seem simultaneous, more of these strange new Tau emerged across the continent with their message of peace and co-operation for all Tau. Their quiet authority was always respected, and their message of harmony was universally embraced. Wait a minute, [[God-Emperor of Mankind|I've seen this]] [[Great Crusade|historical pattern before]]....

Perhaps uniquely for the setting, Tau-human interactions bear the whiff of realpolitik. On the one hand, the Imperium wants to exterminate them ''eventually'', but the upper management generally realizes that the Tau are going to be a giant drain of resources and manpower to get rid of, given the stiff resistance they put up in [[Damocles Crusade|previous campaigns]] and their [[Riptide|uniformly]] [[railgun|advanced]] [[battlesuit|technology]]. Furthermore, they serve as a useful buffer state against various threats on the Eastern Fringe, from Orks and Chaos raiders to Tyranid hive fleets to alien forces the Imperium hasn't had (recorded) contact with. Their existence deflects danger from Imperial space, and in a place and time when the Imperium is [[Time of Ending|coming under attack from all sides]], that's more important than dogma.

This strategy is not unique to the Tau only though, as the Imperium allows countless other (much more dangerous) xeno empires to prosper in the Eastern Fringe to serve as an ablative shield against much nastier shit. Amongst those is (for example) the Charadon ork empire, which is older than the Imperium and spawns a Waaagh! or two per millennium (even with the routine warboss assasination raids that the Ultramarines make). Even after the emergence of the genius warboss Snagrod and his Waagh on Rynn no one cared to issue a crusade against them. So yeah, the Tau empire is not even close to being spotted by the High Lords, not to mention recognized as a threat dangerous enough to actually do something about.

Conversely, the Tau have realized just how massive an undertaking expanding through the entire universe would really be, and are taking it slow. They mostly absorb Imperial buffer worlds stripped of manpower and armament in the face of massive redeployments to face other threats, offering the Empire's protection in return for annexation and outright conquering the places that don't take the deal. The Tau have claimed that they are engaging in this sort of aggressive behavior because ''someone's'' going to [[Tyranids|gobble]] those settlements up sooner or later, and if ''they'' don't do it, then whoever does won't be [[Exterminatus|nearly as nice about it]]. While baldly self-serving, that logic is...well, mostly correct, really.

There's no lost love between the Imperium and the Tau, but open full-scale war is probably unlikely in the near-future.

And then the Second Damocles Crusade happened.... even the imperium isn't that stupid, so this almost certainly involves that tricky dick Tzeench trying to stop the greater good from ruining all his plans. ...Or nurgle...or, well any of the ruinous powers really.

Looking at the new galactic map, where the Tau are now sandwiched between their own eye of terror and a Necron dynasty, they are soon to be fucked.

=== Castes ===
[[File:Commander HawkEye.jpg|thumb|290px|left|<s>Join the Greater Good, lose your virginity to a hot alien babe!</s> The codex space communism does not support this action ]]

Tau society after the arrival of Ethereals was organized into castes; everyone with a place, and a place for everyone. Interbreeding between castes has been outlawed by the [[Ethereal]]s presumably to preserve the biological differences between castes, and as part of this effort they have taken over the practice of sex entirely. Tau society has been manipulated so that Tau do not form romantic bonds of a long-lasting nature and do not even consider sex to be anything other than a state-mandated act meant only, like everything else, to serve society and the Greater Good. In essence, Tau are conditioned to never have sex until and unless their superiors say they are worth breeding. Their superiors pick their breeding partners (the Tau get NO input into this) and the couple basically spends a few days off from work screwing around before going their separate ways to never see each other again. If a Tau did somehow get over their social conditioning and thought of sex as something more than a mandated duty, they'd be punished for illegal activities/perversion. An Imperial genetor's report in the fourth edition Tau codex observes the presence of synthetic proteins in Tau internal organs and suggests them as evidence that their evolution has been accelerated, though he might have been confused by synthetic proteins that the Tau were given. [[/tg/]] seems to be under the strong impression that they are mammals, as you can see in the picture further down the page, despite the complete implausibility of this theory.

==== {{anchor|Fire|Fire Caste}} Shas (Fire) ====
The '''Fire Caste''' consists of the various [[Fire Warrior|warriors]] of the Tau Empire. The miniatures of a Tau army in a [[Warhammer 40,000]] game are almost exclusively Fire Caste. Other castes think Shas are overly-aggressive hotheads due to their tendency to solve all problems by applying more plasma (when Tau encountered other sentient species, Fire Caste representatives immediately voted to hunt down and exterminate them, just like they hunted down dangerous local life forms on the other world they colonized), although from the perspective of humans or eldar, who know better how "[[Khorne Berserker|aggressive]] [[Blood Angels|hotheads]]" actually look like, fire warriors are seen more like a cold-blooded killers, even when they are enraged by the death of their Ethereal, which just shows how calm and disciplined other castes are. They are taller than Earth Caste Tau, and physically stronger than the Air and Water Castes, though still shorter and weaker than a typical Human. They pretty much compensate for this by giving their basic Fire Warrior a [[pulse rifle]], which is sort of like an automatic sniper-[[plasma]] gun, and employ heavily armed and sophisticated battlesuits for their elite infantry. Oh yeah, and [[Railgun]]s. Company -sized Tau forces are called "Hunter Cadres".

==== {{anchor|Earth|Earth Caste}} Fio (Earth) ====
The '''Earth Caste''' are the laborers and engineers; they are the "civilians" of Tau society. Their appearance can vary widely, though other Tau would describe them as "plain." They all have a stoic outlook, with little ambition other than to excel in their career of choice and work for the Greater Good. Unlike the Imperial worker classes, whose quality of life generally ''starts'' at working 14-hour days seven days a week while living off of dried, recycled dung chips and goes [[Such is life on Volg|''downhill from there'']], the Earth caste is mostly concerned with technological planning and engineering. They have robots to do the grunt work. The Farsight Enclaves field some Earth Caste pilots for their battlesuits, demonstrating their more flexible caste systems and/or their desperation for manpower. Doing so makes them ''even worse'' in close-combat than Tau already are, but they make up for it with technical training and tweaks to the suits' software and mechanics, re-rolling missed shots and equipment failures.

==== {{anchor|Air|Air Caste}} Kor (Air) ====
The '''Air Caste''' are the intermediaries between Tau. In more primitive times they served as messengers and couriers, and sometimes scouts/explorers, gliding on membranous anatomical surfaces through T'au's atmosphere. When the Tau started exploring offworld, it was the Air Caste that took charge of the vessels traveling between the stars. Now the Air Caste are the Tau stellar navy/airforce/mailmen, piloting the Empire's various carriers, warships, and emissary cruisers. Air caste Tau tend to be tall and slender like runners or dancers, and this is frequently exaggerated by the years the Tau navy spends in low-gravity. They are much less likely to be eaten by [[daemon]]s due to a faulty Geller Field than their Imperial equivalents, but only because their ships are much slower, using a "slingshot drive" to temporarily enter the Warp and bounce back into real space. Despite their slender stature and lack of muscle mass, Air caste pilots are extremely resistant to G-force, making them excellent void and atmospheric fighter pilots (simultaneously, as small Tau voidcraft also double as atmospheric craft).

==== {{anchor|Water|Water Caste}} Por (Water) ====
The '''Water Caste''' are the emissaries to non-Tau. They are diplomats, merchants, civil servants. The most open-minded Tau can be found among the Water caste, with some even showing individual ambition (but still for the greater good of the Tau Empire). When a new culture is encountered, the Water caste are sent in first to negotiate. If talks break down, the Water caste are withdrawn from the area and it's time for the Fire Caste to then start negotiating with pulse weapon fire. Also, unlike their Imperial equivalents in bureaucracy, the [[Administratum]], they are brisk, efficient, and very good at their jobs. No dumping valuable ammo on an uninhabited dust world because no one signed the paperwork not to. It's a less known fact that Pors also run the Tau intelligence and espionage network, and Por'Os and Por'Els from this branch are pretty much Tau Inquisitors except more competent, much saner, and not nearly as good at kicking asses personally. As of the second Damocles Crusade the Imperium has designated the Water caste as a primary threat above any other Tau caste, as their subterfuge, diplomacy and propaganda has cost the Imperium more worlds and manpower than the Fire and Air caste's military prowess combined, and they even managed to totally outplay the Inquisition on its own field, which royally pissed them off.

==== {{anchor|Ethereal|Ethereal Caste}} Aun (Ethereal) ====
The '''Ethereal Caste''' are basically the philosopher-kings described by Plato in "The Republic". They are selfless and always focused on what is best for the Greater Good ("Tau'va") for all Tau and every Tau without exception. The Ethereals are inspirational to all Tau caste members, and merely being near one will inspire a Tau soldier, engineer, pilot, or diplomat to work harder. In the case of the Fire Caste, some Ethereals accompany hunter cadres in battle during important deployments so as to better lead/inspire the troops, which works because all Tau in the combat zone will fight to their bitter deaths. They also seem to have semi-magical powers (don't ask how they work, none of the Tau know themselves) that allow Tau around them to do special things, like running while shooting. The [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] theorizes that the respect the Ethereal Caste gets from all other Tau is caused by a pheromone. ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTAU......

Also, ''[[Xenology]]'' relates a story from a major, insectoid race called the [[Q'Orl]] which alleges that the [[Eldar]] stole one of their queens. Given that these queens have a magic, yellow, diamond-shaped sack that produces mind-control pheromones…well, let's just say the characters in the story figure it out quickly enough. There is a theory that the Ethereals themselves are also affected by their own pheromones, which could explain why they're so selfless and uncorrupted despite their absolute power. This can also be supported by the (old as fuck and likely retconned) novelization of [[Warhammer_40,000:_Fire_Warrior|Fire Warrior]], where the Ethereal character has a pretty level head and chipper demeanor despite having been [[Anal_Circumference|repeatedly captured and tortured by both the Inquisition and Chaos, watching his diplomatic retinue chopped up by a Chaos Lord, and mind-raped by said Chaos Lord all in the span of roughly two days.]] Either he's a stoic old motherfucker, or he's just too busy tripping his blue balls on his own pheromones to give a shit.

===Tau Names===
Tau have ridiculously long, detailed and actually meaningful names. Their names contain their caste, rank, birth sept, and one or more nicknames earned by them through the course of their lives. Fluff does say that they ''do'' have birth names, but those are only used before tau earn at least one appropriate nickname, as a name given to them by comrades is considered more valuable than one just chosen by random at their birth. The nickname part and it's importance surprisingly is actually taken from the Roman culture, which is weird, given most Tau culture tend to be based on China and Japan (except for their social and government structures which are copied almost verbatim from Plato's Republic). Also, do note the lack of last names, which is expected, since Tau society pretty much have no institute of a family, with children being raised in a centralized facilities apart from their parents. As tau grow, move through ranks and achieve respect of his comrades his name changes appropriately, switching the rank part, adding new nicknames and sometimes dropping the old and outdated ones. For example, when Farsight was still a lowly fire warrior, his name was '''Shas'La Vior'La Shoh''' (Fire Caste Private of the Hot-Blooded sept Inner Light), and at the "present days" '''Shas'O Vior'La Shovah Kais Mont'yr''' (Fire Caste Commander of the Hot-Blooded sept Farsight Skillful Blooded). How the fuck Tau bureaucracy--{{BLAM}} Space commies don't have bureaucracy. is able to keep track of their population with their names constantly changing is a mystery, but it seems they have no problem with that (probably they just assign number to each).

For the sake of convenience Tau often use shortened versions of names, almost always dropping the sept part and secondary nicknames, and if speaking within one caste the caste part too, so in the case of Farsight other fire warriors could refer to him as O'Shovah, while for example an Ethereal would call him Shas'O'Shovah. Humans and other non-Tau often get this system wrong and shorten the names in a ways that make little sense: for example, Imperium's Taros invasion force thought the Taros' chief Ethereal's name was Aun'El, which was only his caste and rank, and as the book was mostly written from the Imperium's standpoint, we still don't know what was his actual name.

One final stroke of Tau naming, is that as they abandon their true (birth) names it makes them even more resistant to sorcery and daemonic powers that often require target's true name to amplify their effect or even make the spell work at all.

===Psychic/Chaos defense===
Tau are an entire race of psychic blunts, they cannot produce psykers and have limited innate resisance to some forms of psychic powers and daemonic bullshit. People often mistake this resistance to outright invulnerability, but in truth it's more akin to camouflage - Tau souls are so dim they are indistinguishable from the spirits of non-sapients at best, and at most times they even blend in the psychic background of inanimate objects. This may have something to do with how unemotional tau are, as some of the more passionate subjects in the fluff had been slightly affected by warp shenanigans like faint whispers and slight feelings of "wrongness" in places where humans creep out and try to run away immediately, while more calm and collected tau hadn't noticed anything strange. If for example a telepath tries to mind-rape a tau or a daemon tries to posses a tau he'd find it hard to find a soul to target, but if he manages to find it there would be even less resistance than with regular humans. Sadly while this trait is often shown in the fluff, it does not affect tau crunch in any way.

This innate defense is further strengthened by the Greater Good philosophy deeply indoctrinated into each Tau from childhood and (allegedly) reinforced by a subtle mind control. Tau'Va being the antithesis of all the creeds of Chaos makes tau all but immune to it's temptations, and only a single Tau has ever actually fallen to Chaos, the Water Caste member Water Spider who was possessed by a Daemon of Tzeentch. That being said, the Tau have only just been exposed to the more material horrors of the galaxy; should they become jaded and start losing faith in the Greater Good (as inferred with giving up on indoctrinating certain species), well, that would be an entirely different situation. Their allies, including the Kroot, have been known to go all-in with Chaos worship, although Tau seldom take culture from their allied races.

==Alliances==
{{MattWard}}
[[File:Illus4.jpg|280px|right|thumb|Unfortunately for some [[Slaanesh|deviants]] [[Extra Heresy|and heretical elements on]] [[/tg/]]. [[Not as Planned|This is what an actual canon Tau Female looks like.]] No boobs, no curves, no ass, no redeeming qualities other than having a face of your grandmother and the nose of a mutilated vag. Know the alien. Hate the alien. Purge the alien. The Emperor Protects!]]
In 6th edition, Tau are notable for being one of two factions (the other being Imperial Guard) who can ally with anyone except for 'Nids. Yes, this includes both Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Daemons, although, according to the Farsight Enclaves supplement, <s>Farsight is one of the few Tau (maybe the only one ''period'') who actually understands the existence of Chaos, so the average Tau would consider them to be just another kind of alien.</s> Farsight rebelled because the Ethereals understand the existence of Chaos on some level, but keep it suppressed from the general populace so they're not entirely screwed. It still isn't going to end well though.

This leads to a few...''interesting'' alliances, to say the least.

First off, Tau ''can'' ally with [[Ork]]s, even though fluff-wise they are viewed as enemies of the Greater Good to be purged wherever encountered. Smaller Ork warbands (mostly [[Blood Axes]]) frequently act as mercenaries, of course, so the Tau might use them in that capacity. Plus, there might be fluff changes coming up (most notably, it was rumored that the [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee]] would return in the new Orks codex; they, of course, would get along quite well with the Tau).

They are also battle brothers with both the Space Marines and Eldar, which has caused a large amount of headscratching on /tg/. The Eldar make a modicum of sense; after all, the Eldar most likely had a hand in their synthetic evolution and the creation of the Ethereals, and the Eldar are well known for being expert manipulators. A Tau-Space Marine alliance, though, would be odd, to say the least, since Tau and Space Marines are always going at it in the [[fluff]]. Of course, a minor [[Space Marine Chapter|chapter]] could always find an alliance with the Tau, or even join the Greater Good, but that seems far-fetched at best. Old fluff from back in the 3rd edition codex tells a story of a Tau commander letting an Apothecary remove the aul glands from dead Marines, establishing that the Tau are honourable warriors in the minds of this particular chapter. Isn't too hard to guess that someone at GW felt the battle brothers thing was a bit of a head-desk move, so they tried to fix it.

The weirdest part, though, is that Tau ''aren't'' Battle Brothers with the Imperial Guard, despite (or maybe because of) the existence of [[Gue'vesa]] (Imperial Guard defectors).

7th edition corrected all of this for the Tau, making them only battle brothers with themselves and certain allies of convenience, like Necrons and the Eldar, while the rest are desperate allies or, in the case of daemons and 'Nids, allies of the apocalypse. This effectively "fixes" the issue from the point of view of a butthurt puritan while still allowing for those who bought Tau models to include them as allies in their games.

8th edition totally destroyed any chance of Tau having allies in matched play games. Taudar is dead, thank fuck.

==Tau Member Races==
[[File:Dynamic entry by majesticchicken.jpg|right|thumb|550px|Look up fuckers! You're invited to the latest imperial party and we're not taking "no" for an answer!]]
The Tau are the only faction that willingly accept other races into their ranks. Typically, the races are extended a hand from the Water Caste first, and if they still pose a problem or otherwise refuse to be reasoned with, the Fire Warriors are sent in. It should be noted that tau usually are not in haste of annexing the world, and if the aliens don't want to join right now but aren't immediately hostile and open to trade, Water Caste would slowly but surely convert them into a Greater Good to the point that one day they themselves would ask to join the Empire. The species, when annexed or conquered, are usually allowed to keep their planet, but must answer to the authority of the local Ethereal and possibly the local Shas'o. Most of them are fluff and don't show up on the tabletop, but it would get a little ridiculous if you could purport to play a 'single' 40k race that included, like, twelve different races.

* Demiurg - [[Squats]] reborn. They are a race of space-faring miners specializing in ionic weaponry who serve the Tau with their engineering and mining abilities. They also serve as an example of something the Imperium will never do: save dead codex races (Well, okay, they're sort of saved...). They make an appearance in Battlefleet Gothic: Armada though, so that's nice.
* Galgs - Frog/Toad People who are regularly hired as mercenaries. No other information available. Probably [[Lizardmen#Slann|Slann]] In Space.
* [[Gue'vesa]] - Humans who have not only defected to the Tau, but chosen to take up arms and fight alongside them to serve the Greater Good. Rules for them are found in [[Forge World|Forge World's]] Imperial Armour Volume 3. <s>(If the current trend goes on we may see Sisters join up with the Tau, which might be an improvement for the Sisters.)</s>{{BLAM}}{{BLAM|HERESY!}}
* Hrenian - Alien mercenaries employed for their skills as light infantry. No other information available. Probably [[Lizardmen#Skinks|Skinks]] In Space.
* Ji'atrix - A spacefaring race. No other information available. (Dammit, GW [[Writefag|writefags]].)
* [[Kroot]] - Predatory gene-assimilating avian humanoids. They are the first alien race to be actively recruited by the Tau as mercenaries, and are so regularly hired that they have officially progressed to being considered Auxiliaries of the Tau forces.
* [[Vespid|Mal'kor]] - Insectoid aliens, also known as Vespids, who are native to a gas giant planet within the Tau Empire. Serve as Auxiliaries.
* Morralian - Also known as "Deathsworn". No other information available.
* [[Nicassar]] - A voidfaring race of [[psyker]]s and the only psychically-gifted species in the Tau Empire. The Tau have carefully hidden them away from the Imperium due to their (actually justifiable) psyker-phobia. Were the second alien species to join the Greater Good.
* Ranghon - No information available.
* [[Tarellian]] - These guys are basically [[Lizardmen#Saurus|Saurus]] IIIIN SPAAAAACE!!!!!! Not really part of the Empire, but rather mercenaries who will gladly fight humans and Tyranids on the cheap since the Imperium virus-bombed their home world and the Tyranids nommed their biggest colony.
* Poctroon - The first sapient species to be found by the Tau, [[wikipedia:Siege of Fort Pitt|they were "accidentally" driven extinct by Tau smallpox]], and their planet just by coincidence was a great place to set a Sept World.
* Nagi - Brain worms that, due to their horrific appearance and inability to communicate, were attacked by the Fire Caste. They managed to sort it out, though, and now they work with the Ethereals as advisors (because having brain worms about as "advisors" isn't a bad idea or anything). They had shown in a few books so far, and were involved in a "mind-rip" (guess outright calling it "rape" was too much) of a space marine POW while being so self-righteous and smug about their mental superiority they could give Eldar a run for their money. Apparently they can also at least perceive the Warp (which they call "extra-dimensional space"), and probably manipulate it as well, and know enough about it to outright refuse to go anywhere near demonically-tainted Agrellan when Tau invaded it.
* Ji'atrices, Morralians, or Ranghons are probably other Warhammer Fantasy Races In Space, such as [[Lizardmen#Kroxigor|Kroxigors]] or Trolls, given the overall tendency of the Tau to incorporate Fantasy races missing from 40k.

The usually genocidal actions of the other races, most notably the [[Imperium]], also serve as a motivating factor for less-powerful races to join the Tau. While the Tau do seem a minor threat to the Imperium now, if the current policy continues, there will be more and more races joining up with the them if for no other reason than avoiding [[Exterminatus|extermination]]. Of course, the Tau are just coming to realize how vast and powerful the Imperium really is, and while a lot of their member races really ''are'' the victims of crazy, evil, fascist extermination protocols, there's always the chance that someone responsible for a "Hell World" or "Nightmare World" might join up, and the damage might be done before they realize their mistake...

==In a Nutshell==
;'''The Stated Reason Why People Hate Tau'''
Weeaboo space confuciunists (Asian Commies)—not grimdark enough.
;'''The ''Real'' Reason Why People Hate Tau'''
Until the edition update, this would, most assuredly, be [[Fish of Fury]]. Fuck, even most Tau players felt this was bullshit. Post-edition update, it was that certain [[Matt Ward|undesirables]] felt that they were trying to take the mantle of the 40K universe's "rightful" Imperial protagonists. And because they are not [[Choppa|choppy]] enough. And then 6th Edition codex came, and Tau became one of the shootiest armies in the shootiest edition ever, not to mention their ability to bitchslap cheesmongers, having straight counters against any of the Wardex bullshit. When the 7th edition came out they became overpowered AF and they took the title as the chedder cheese of Warhammer.
;'''A Real Reason Why People Like Tau'''
The one race that isn't being a wall of dicks. If the Tau are trolling done by Games Workshop, then the target of said trolling was any fatbeard that needs a constant supply of grimdark to stay alive. Of course, the mind-influencing pheromones they use to conquer new worlds and their psycho-indoctrination mass re-education facilities will just have to be ignored if you don't want destroy your wishful thinking for a half-way decent faction to exist in 40k. But people have always been good at ignoring shit.
;'''Another Real Reason Why People Like Tau'''
Unlike many other Races in 40k the Tau are capable of fitting into many other Sci-fi Universes without much Problems. Such as Star trek where they would be at home along side other Peaceful yet also Tyrannical Factions like the Federation. Compared to the Necrons or Eldar which would be both Roflstomps and completely different from all other groups in that Universe. (Unless it [[Doctor Who|Doctor Who]]).
;'''The Real Reason Why People Play Tau'''
Arguably have the most powerful guns in the game. Often twin-linked. Often on cool-looking robot battlesuits. [[meme|Also markerlights]]. Also [[Riptide|RAPETIDE]]. Tau players may also have a tendency towards sadism.
;'''A Solid Reason People Don't Play Tau'''
They're fucking expensive. Seriously. On a points-per-pound level, they cost more than any other (plastic) army. This is doubly true if you like battlesuits, but of course you do because you're playing Tau.
;'''Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants?'''
An often overlooked issue is that Tau have almost no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general (despite the fact that in 6E they can work with them...I just...I don't...WAAAARD!!!), just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape, stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. [[GW]] may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the [[JUST AS PLANNED]] competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Given that recent murmurs have suggested that something absolutely massive is in the works at GW, ''anything'' could be possible, though past experience has led us to believe that it will simply be a Tau wearing a silly [[hat]]. However, seeing as GW is as likely to advance the plot that far as I am to shove both my legs up my ass up to the knee, it doesn't much matter.

==TL;DR==
<s>The good guys</S>
High-tech alien race who are the ''least'' [[grimdark]] of factions. Can't melee for shit but can blow you back to the stone age with ranged weaponry if you have the misfortune of being downrange. You will either love them or hate them because of all this, and many neckbeards do feel the [[butthurt]]. Or, as the saying goes: "You can't spell TAUNT without TAU."

== Warhammer Fantasy ==
Unlike most other factions in 40k, Tau have no clear antecedent from [[Warhammer Fantasy]]. Some think the anime influences and rapid industrialization/militarization point towards Nippon; others feel the caste system might be related to the Kingdom of Ind. However, neither faction has ever been explored in great detail (or any detail at all), so it's impossible to say whether Tau are similar to those factions; instead, we must compare to the real-world equivalents of the Old World nations. Slightly more controversially, there are elements of Cathay (which is the Anglicized word for China back in the British Empire heyday, so yes) in the Tau. Cathay has been described as being technologically advanced (at least on par with the Empire), including terra-cotta automaton warriors (which the Chinese definitely used to make to pay homage to the First Chinese Emperor's over inflated ego, more than a millennia ago), although such comparison is stated by some to have [[Skub|already been implemented in the characterization of the Eldar and thus, is considered as ''seriously'' stretching up a notch.]]

More recently, some have connected the Tau and their subject races to other factions in Fantasy. The rapid evolution of the Kroot and their overall savagery is (somewhat) similar to the Gors of the Beastmen (although the Beastmen are in the 40k universe themselves). The Empire also shares the xenos-friendly viewpoint of the Tau, although they're not expansionistic, and decidedly less concerned with a unified government structure so long as everyone pays their taxes, for better or for worse. Others compare them to dwarves: dwarves don't use Chaos magic, are short, technologically advanced, kinda casty and blue (understood in many countries as "hopelessly drunk") basicly all the time. Tau don't use Chaos warp magic, are short, technologically advanced, very casty and blue all the time (in regards to skin colour). Both also get seriously grudgy and angry when you piss them off.

==Trivia==
[[File:Tau Ripoff.jpeg|thumb|right|300px|FOR THE [[Blood Ravens|GREATER THEFT]]!]]
* Some have said that Tau resemble the protagonist KYNE from the Amiga video game Brataccas, which was released in 1986. Tau were first added to Warhammer 40k in late 2001. Some would dismiss this as coincidence, but Games Workshop has a long history of ripping off designs from other games; [[Beastmen]] are [[Broo]] from [[Glorantha]], very large chunks of 40k are a little too similar to [[Judge Dredd]], and all of the Greater Daemon model designs are stolen from early [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. These properties are understandable as Games Workshop was still selling games of those IPs when Warhammer was first created, but Brataccas is an obscure game from a forgotten system that was quite forgettable even at release, even if Amiga games tended to get fantastic cover art. This being said another of GW's early products was also puzzles of of this style of '70's/'80's Sci-Fi art. The T'au cast system does resemble the Protoss caste from [[starcraft]], which presates the release of the Tau by 3 years... You have the Templar (Fire/Air Castes) Judicators (Ethereals + Water Castes) and Khalai (Earth Caste). In addition to a rogue sub-caste in the Dark Templar (Farsight Enclaves).
* Tau are technically canon to the Marvel Comics universe, as the series Venom: Space Knight repeatedly used Tau vehicles for aliens in the scenery. In fact, they have the balls to even keep the Tau Sept symbol! Also, you can see what appears to be a Eldar tank, as well as a Necron. The irony of the ripoff masters Games Workshop getting ripped off is juicy, even moreso when its realized that lawsuit-happy Games Workshop (who literally tried to copyright "pauldrons" while they plagiarized Eldar from Tolkien and had some contention between [[Malekith|two very similar Dark Elf characters of theirs]]) couldn't do shit about it because Marvel is owned by Disney, and nobody beats The Mouse™.

==Notable Tau==
===[[Canon]]===
*[[Aun'Shi]]
*[[El'Myamoto (Sub-commander Darkstrider)]]
*[[Shadowsun|O'Shaserra (Commander Shadowsun)]]
*[[Farsight|O'Shovah (Commander Farsight) and The Eight]]
*[[Commander Puretide]]
*[[Shas'o Kais]]
*[[Commander Or'es'Ka|Shas'o Or'es'Ka]]

===[[/tg/ 40,000]]===
*[[Blue]]
*[[Faptau]]
*[[O'ren I'shi'ii]]
*[[Shlicktau]]
*[[Xeno]]

==See Also==
[[File:Marvel Tau.jpg|thumb|right|250px|FOR THE GREATER GROOT!]]
* [[Nicassar]]
* [[Sept V'iet]]
* [[Tau Quest]]
* [[Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior]]
* [[Tau Dark Heresy]]
* [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Tau(8E)|Tactics/Tau]]
* [[Tau Cadre Creation Tables]]
* [[Codex_-_Tau_Auxiliary]]
* [[Tau Diplomacy]]
* [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|<strike>Love Can Bloom 3:Golden Shadowsun</strike> NON-CANON FANFICTION GARBAGE]]

==External Link==
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrHhS5IkRR0 A Typical Tau-Human conversation.]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbuPaCgdO50 Should one of your Tau actually kill anything tougher than a guardsman in melee, you are allowed to end the game in victory as long as you play this clip.]

==Gallery==
<center><gallery>
Image:Tau1.jpg|Stealth suits are :3
Image:Firewarrior.gif|Fire Warriors are :3 too
Image:Tau Chibi Fire Warrior.jpg|Chibi, but not weeby.
File:TauGuela.jpg|Gue'la.
Image:TauOrigin.jpg|Ohhh GW.
Image:Tau.gif|In 40k, everyones' guns are huge.
Image:Tau Fire Warrior.jpg|A Tau Fire Warrior, the basic infantry unit.
Image:Tau Firepower Demotivator.jpg|The sad truth of 6th edition.
Image:combine.jpg|In /tg/, tau are the bad guys.
Image:Itsyourempiretoo.png|Propaganda. [[Nazi|Sound]] [[Communism|familiar?]]
Image:Never shall the tau!.JPG|Surrender... never shall the Tau.
Image:Tauassault.jpg|Tau are vicious melee fighters, no less able than [[Space Marines]]!
Image:1234622525817.jpg|In hindsight, attempting negotiations with Orks was probably a bad idea.
Image:Tau Problem, Astartes.jpg|What's that? We're not grimdark enough for you, Neckbeard?
Image:Tau Sympathizer.jpg|The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer's entry on Tau players.
Image:Discotau.jpg|In spite of being filthy heretical xeno scum, the Tau can really break it down.
Image:Manta.jpg|Fun fact: if you have enough money to buy this, you have too much money.
Image:Tau cosplay2.jpg|Typical Tau player, engaging in typical Tau behavior. (Pretty badass cosplay, even got the hoof right)
Image:Tau Battlesuit vs Smurf.jpg|This Char Custom Battlesuit-clad Tau demonstrates his mastery of [[Weeaboo Fightan Magic]]. Also DYNAMIC ENTRY!
Image:E6abddad6c5999a1dbe6085d8614f051.jpg|Tau in close quarters combat barring some very lucky dice rolls.
</gallery></center>
{{Promotions}}
<center><gallery>
Image:TauKroot.jpg
Image:MARKERLIGHTS.png|MARKERLIGHTS!
Image:tau_firecleavage.jpg|Sweet [[Weeaboo|weeaboo]] [[Heresy|heresy]].
Image:Commissar Shadowsuns Goods by morganagod.jpg|DAT ASS.
Image:DAT_SHAS.jpg| A Fire Warrior appreciating DAT ASS.
Image:Tau ass.gif|A Greater Good we can all believe in.
Image:NOT FUCKING CANON.png| [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|THIS IS NOT FUCKING CANON!]]
Image:JoinTau.jpg|Some recruitment methodologies work better than others.
Image:Tau Chick.jpg|Few rarely seen Tau chicks. Maybe because Sisters are hotter.
Image:youtastefunny.jpg|Yeah, we all know the truth about their "greater good".
Image:Subcommander torchstar by sexual yeti-d9qal0l.png|Subcommander Torchstar, Farsight's personal fangirl.
Image:Tau_caste_nudes.jpg|Earth, Fire, Water, Air...Ethereal?!? SWEET MOTHER OF KHORNE!!! MY EYES!!!
Image:Laughing tau whores.jpg|S-shut up you filthy sluts! Among my people it is considered quite a handsome dick!
Image:Power Shopping.jpg|It's a well-known fact that the Tau Empire has some of the best shopping in the entire galaxy.
Image:Taugirlpile.jpg|Here we see Tau propaganda meant to entice men with their terrible, blasphemous, and supple soft skin, smooth curves, perky brea...er...ah...heretical alien bodies.
Image:TauHuman.jpg|Indeed, many humans have already embraced the Greater Good. (The individual with the primitive flashlight has been sent to re-education. Happiness is mandatory, Citizen.)
Image:greatertits.jpg|An attractive human female defector who for some reason has been equipped with a highly modified commander's battlesuit, perhaps as a devious ploy to compel desertion by the less loyal.
</gallery></center>

{{Tau}}
{{WH40k-Factions}}
{{40k-Governments}}

[[Category: Xenos]]

Tau

2017-12-11T19:22:48Z

2600:1006:B10C:1CE2:B49C:FF60:61E6:E26E: /* "Naive Weeaboo Space Communists" */

[[Image:TAUSYMBOL.gif|center]]
{{Infobox 40k Nations
|name= Tau Empire
|image=[[Image:Tau_Empire_Flag.jpg|300px|center]]
|bgcolor=
|fgcolor=
|Capital= T'au
|Official Languages=Tau Lexicon
|Power= Minor Power
|Size=Approximately 100 Planets
|Head of State=Ethereal Supreme
|Head of Government= Ethereal Council
|Governmental Structure=Caste-Based Authoritarian Federation
|State Religion/Ideology=[[Greater Good]]
|Demographic=[[Tau]], [[Kroot]], [[Vespid]], [[Gue'vesa|Humans]], [[Nicassar]], [[Tarellian]], Nagi, Hrenians and other minor [[Xenos]] races
|Military Force=[[Tau]] Fire Caste, Tau Air Caste, [[Kroot]] and [[Vespid]] Forces, The Deathsworn, Hrenian Light Infantry, Demiurg Forces, Nicassar Forces, Gue'vesa Forces and other minor Xenos armies
}}
[[File:9jfnqeaplhexx.jpg|right|thumb|450px|Get the fuck out of the way, [[Imperium|Oldfag]].]]

{{Topquote|Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.|[[C.S. Lewis]]}}
{{Topquote|Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?|Luke 6:41}}
{{Topquote|Ce qui constitue une République, c'est l'extermination totale de tout ce qui lui est opposé.|Louis Antoine de Saint-Just}}
{{Topquote|The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting|Sun Zhu}}

Tau (τ) is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, 300 in Greek numerals, and also the name for 2π.

However, this article is about the '''Tau''' (or "bluies", as the Valhallan 597th call them)(or "Space Communists" as anyone on /tg/ will tell you), (or "T'au" as GW copywright lawyers call them) a playable race in ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' made of weaboo mecha communists in SPEEHS. When first discovered by humanity, the Tau were a barbaric and primitive people. Their planet was then trapped in a warp storm for a few thousand years and they emerged from the other side as a unified species, led by the [[Druids|mysterious]] Ethereal caste and devoted to the concept of the "[[Greater Good]]". Their new empire currently has around 115 worlds, and was growing until recently, when the Imperium sent a large invading force to counter them. Although a dystopian society in its own right, the Tau Empire is noted for being one of the LEAST awful places in all the galaxy of 40k. It's also [[Derp|not really an empire]]; the Tau government, the Ethereal caste, is essentially an edifice of meritocracy and nepotism-Tau leaders are appointed to their position by even higher ranking leaders and/or a council of their future peers; the highest ranking Tau, the Aun'O, is selected by his future underlings, much like the Catholic pope, but is still simply considered the weightiest voice of a group (like a prime minister), not an Emperor with absolute power. While Tau civilization has the behavioral tendencies of many empires throughout history (expansionism, military conquest of weaker states, forcible integration of the conquered peoples, etc.), it is the government structure of a state that makes it an empire, not foreign policies. Essentially, they are ''imperialist,'' but not an ''empire.''

The Tau started as a classic case of successful design-based [[Troll|trolling]] on the part of [[Games Workshop]]. They were originally developed because GW felt that their setting needed an optimistic race and that their wallets needed more money, which they could get by selling shedloads of 40k to the robot-obsessed Japanese. The Tau, therefore, are the least [[grimdark]] faction in the game; [[Tau Diplomacy|they're the dudes willing to negotiate when they've beaten their enemies]], while all the others are either too [[Chaos Space Marines| murderously psychotic in ways incomprehensible to anyone who does not share the same batshit insanity]], [[Imperium|religiously overzealous]], [[Eldar|arrogantly indifferent]], [[Orks|simplemindedly violent]], [[Necron|murderously enigmatic]], [[Tyranid|more interested in eating you than anything]], or [[Dark Eldar|all of the above]] to offer such courtesies.

This began to change in the 6th edition. For all the claims that GW doesn't listen to its fans, someone seemed to have heard the incessant bitching many fa/tg/uys made over the Tau being shoehorned into the setting in the worst way possible. As a result, the Tau began to take on an Orwellian flavor, with the Ethereals being totalitarian autocrats performing acts of ruthless indifference towards their subjects in the guise of being for the Greater Good. Recent [[fluff]] (from ''[[Dawn of War]]'', supported by [[Deathwatch]] supplements describing Achillus Crusade) has them <s>arbitrarily sterilizing the rebelling humans on Kronus once they come under the rule of the Tau Empire</s> sterilizing a group of humans attempting to revolt and distract Tau forces in the middle of a planet-wide, 6-way free-for-all (to be fair though, had it been anyone else they were revolting against, including the Imperials, those humans would be dead, [[Grimdark|most likely the slow and painful way, or even suffer such a terrible fate as to wish for death]]). Except sterialization takes more time, industry, and resources and does nothing to help put down a rebellion anyway. Also, the sterialization happens if the Tau win, so it occurs after the war is over. The Tau Codex leaves ambiguous the question of just how much of their success is due to various forms of indoctrination, caste-based conditioning, and subtle mind control. This has only been exacerbated by the recent Farsight Enclaves supplement, which makes the Ethereals come off as mustache-twirling, Saturday-morning-cartoon villains. It speaks volumes about the 40k setting that in spite of all this they're ''still'' the friendliest race in the galaxy.

=="Naive Weeaboo Space Communists"==
[[Image:Tau Weeaboo.png|thumb|right|Cue hotblooded music by [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r6xYnFDoV0 JAM Project].]]
The Tau's naiveté might seem at odds with the GRIMDARK-ness of the setting (and to a degree, a lot of it is), but the thing is, Games Workshop specifically plays this straight FOR the [[grimdark]] and ''knows'' that the seeming futility of the Tau's optimism only further accentuates the general hellishness of the rest of the galaxy - and dear [[Emperor|god]] do they play this up for maximum effect. In the 41st millennium, the Tau come across as ''more'' than a little naive to the other races; the Imperium sees any contact with aliens as heretical and will shoot them with [[bolter]] rounds as soon as they look at them; the [[Ork]]s just want to kick the shit out of things; and the [[Eldar]] see the Tau as young and powerful because of their technology but also as a race in its infancy, just staggering out of its borders for the first time and wandering into a pond full of [[Saharduin|sh]][[Dark Eldar|arks]]. The Tau are implied to have been secretly uplifted by the Eldar through the creation and subtle control of the Etherals (especially the mind-influencing pheromone secreting gland at the base of Etherals’ spines) and guiding them through reverse-engineering Imperial technology from the ruined colony ships. Eventually the Eldar abandoned them because the Tau never accomplished anything notable on their own due to a crippling lack of creativity. Humans must be in physical contact with an Ethereal or perhaps subjected to heavy doses of the lheromone in other ways to be sufficiently affected but aliens are affected merely by being in the vicinity of an Ethereal.

Putting it simply, there's an ongoing joke that the Tau are some of the most successful trolling performed in the history of mankind just by ''existing''; a case of the company installing them just to mix things up whilst at the same time keeping them surprisingly on-level.

The combination of the above fluff, however, paired with their highly advanced technology, generally "Asian" feel (their Fire Caste's combat doctrine is often reminiscent of Sun Tzu's "''Art of War''" - but derived from two distinct Tau hunting methods), use of [[Mecha|battlesuits]] (just [[Imperial Knight|like]] [[Dreadnought|the]] [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Imperium]]), [[Hammerhead Gunship|heavy firepower]] which rivals that of the Imperial Guard, and one of the [[Fish of Fury|most broken tactics in tabletop 40K until it was finally fixed an edition later]] has conspired to make them very much hated (and by that we mean a source of butthurt) by a reasonable-sized population of the [[/tg/|40K fan populace]], and /tg/ has rightly dubbed the Tau [[Weeaboo]] (as much due to their Asian-ness as anything else) as a result (even when people can use the same logic to point to the Imperium's xenophobia, the fanatical worship of the God-Emperor, extensive use of Mecha and suicide attacks, use of suicide attacks as punishment for dishonour, and fondness for over-the-top dialogue in general and conclude that the Imperium of Man is the space equivalent of Holy Imperial Japan). As a dark twist on this inherent Asian-ness, a thread concerning lack of grimdark fan fluff on Tau led to the creation of [[Sept V'iet]], the Viet Cong Tau.
[[Image:Tau fire warriors.jpg|490px|thumb|left|The [[Greater Good]]: translatable as [[Deal with it|"if you want to make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs."]]]]

And again in a case of much cultural confusion, the Tau are often considered [[Communism|communists]] (despite being a rigorous, hierarchical, near-eugenicist class society that would drive Marx into [[RAGE]]) due to their central philosophy of casting aside the self in favour of the Greater Good. If anything the Tau more resemble the class system of Plato's ''Republic'' crossed with the caste system of India and [[Star_Trek#The_Federation|Star Trek's Federation]] (because they're the only ones in the entire galaxy who bother to try diplomacy with xenos rather than [[Exterminatus|exterminate]] them (partly because all but a few alien species are horrific space monsters that make the freaking Flood look normal and Xenomorphs seem bland and relatively harmless, and partly because all aliens worth not killing off are made into Imperial protectorate species (yes they exist, a few dozen, out of tens of thousands of species))). However, the portrayal of the Tau as the equivalent of the Federation might still be wrong, since the Tau, amongst their castes, adhere to a highly strict doctrine of eugenics; [[Love Can Bloom|any form of love, sex or breeding between different castes or species]] is the Tau equivalent of [[HERESY]]. As well, the Tau treat their [[Tau#Tau_Member_Races|non-Tau comrades]] as second-class citizens with no say in the Tau government, and demand them to abandon their old culture and conform to a Tau Empire, basically becoming like everyone else. Ergo, the Tau, despite not being the exterminate-all-other-species kind of racist, are still an ethnocentric, aristocratic empire hiding beneath the same type of veneer as the Federation, not unlike Britain during their 'tenure' as the rulers of India. To be fair though, if [[GW]] does decide to up the [[Grimdark#Grimderp|grimderp]] it would be more than safe to assume they would go the way of Stalin and start flaunting fancy propaganda posters everywhere—not that the Imperium doesn't already fill that part and the drawfaggots haven't already done great work in this field. What is for sure though is that, whatever part of the one-dimensional spectrum of political agenda they are on, the Tau government is mainly oligarchical, with the vast majority of political power concentrated in the Ethereal caste. This is further driven home by the fact there is a Tau splinter faction led by one of their two best generals alive, Commander [[Farsight]] of the Farsight Enclaves, whose government is a non-caste (presumedly socialist/capitalist hybrid), meritocratic semi-democracy. The problem is, until people stop dragging him out of his self-imposed exile to fight Tyranids, Orks, and other Tau, he's a dictator the way Optimus Prime is sometimes depicted. Farsight's government is one most certainly [[RAGE|NOT recognized by the Tau Empire]], who have finally gotten around to dispatching a fleet to silence them. <s>This, of course, is [[Advancing_the_Storyline|imminent plot stuff that will never happen]] because it's always the 41st millennium.</s> nope, GeeDubs ''finally'' decided to move the plot forward, thankfully. We still have yet to see the outcome of this fleet dispatch, though.

However, the new codex has HEAVILY downplayed their naiveté, bringing back the original codex mention that the Ethereals have officially declared some species "lost causes" and that the [[Greater Good]] demands they be killed to the last.
*[[Orks]] were the first of the big players of 40k to get this treatment. They pretty much were the only serious competition Tau had before they discovered the Imperium, and it only took them a few weeks of study to realize the fact that Orks are beyond reason or sanity.
*[[Tyranids]] unsurprisingly ended up on "shoot on sight" list pretty much after the first contact.
*[[Eldar]] briefly were on the list too, owning this to the first contact being made by the Commorites, and not just any, but [[Urien Rakarth]] himself. It took some nuked Exodite world and Craftworld intervention for tau to realize that not all space-elves are insane rapists and scratch them off the list.
*[[Space Marines]] seem to be entering the list as of the second Damocles war. The reason is not because it's impossible to reason with them, but because after some intense Water caste psychoanalysis and Nagi "mind-[[rape|riping]]" they pretty much declared that astartes aren't ''people'' but merely a ''weapon'' and as such have no place in Tau'Va.

To sum it up, the Tau Empire is still an expansionist empire prone to using military force, but far better than almost every other polity in the setting, as it permits others to exist with rather lenient standards, and isn't dedicated to the purposeful extinction of all other life in the galaxy.

==Military Doctrine==
[[Image:TauTyr2.jpg|right|500px|thumb|Close-quarters painting [[Drawfag|strikes again.]]]]
The Tau disdain [[Choppy|melee]] [[Rip and tear|combat]] in favour of [[Shooty|ranged combat]], which renders them instantaneously [[Matt Ward|less manly]] in the eyes of most of /tg/'s playerbase. The reasons behind this are complicated. Generally, Tau see hand to hand combat in warfare as an anachronism, which makes sense, considering their basic guns can rip apart tank side armour, and compared to almost all other major races Tau have less muscle strength and reaction speed, which makes them ineffective in melee even if they are trained. Even the last reason alone is enough to avoid close combat, seeing as [[Necrons]] use similar logic, despite their [[Necron Warrior|Warriors]] and [[Necron Immortal|Immortals]] being much stronger and tougher, and actually highly trained in close combat, but equally as slow. That said, Tau do practice martial arts, but only for ritual purposes - Fire Warrior trials and rites involve knives and swords, while Ethereals have a tradition of fighting non-lethal duels to settle disputes, using sharp bladed weapons no less, so they are often quite good with their fencing style, as [[Aun'Shi]] has shown to some unfortunate Orks.

Logistically, Tau military doctrine has been hit hard with the same [[grimdark|stupidity]] nerf bat as every other fieldable army, but is the only faction for which this violates their own fluff; every other faction has some reason for their material to be as limited as they would be in a fantasy setting, but the Tau have widespread education, unlike Men and Orks; reasonable access to production facilities relative to their population, unlike Necrons and Eldar; and are capable of coherent research and development, unlike Tyranids and Daemons. For fluff reasons which have never been explained (the crunch reason is obvious), they have the same motif as every other army of equipment often being more valuable than the person wielding it, leading to most personnel being fielded with inferior equipment. The most obvious example of this is that they always, under whatever circumstance, field infantry in simple combat armour rather than some sort of battlesuit - its only advantage is having less bulk, as the Tau have a reason not to build larger transports to cope with the shitloads of battlesuits they could deploy instead. This argument is analogous to saying that real-world militaries should only use armored vehicles and not have infantry. The Tau likely practice economy of force, which has consequences both on and off the battlefield. Sending excessive amounts of force at a target is wasteful, as the excess firepower would be more useful elsewhere. If one only has a XV8 Battlesuits and no infantry, but a swarm of grots in a nearby pass needs to be taken out, they have no choice but to commit a very valuable unit to a task far beneath its worth. This is also an economic matter, as lower power units are cheaper. One could easily field a number of fire warriors for far less than the cost of a single battlesuit, and considering many foes will fall beneath "mere" infantry, any cost-aware faction would prefer the infantry's use over an expensive battlesuit. In other words, they are the army who most resemble modern forces in terms of strategy, and mixed armies of infantry, armor and support elements are a good combination. And who the fuck can with a straight face call a pulse rifle and carapace grade armour "inferior equipment"?

The Tau's superior [[Dakka|firepower]] is similar to that of the [[Imperial Guard]], but their strategy is different in that they tend to rely less on mass warfare and more on sophisticated technical support (drones, stealth technology, railguns), with an emphasis on tactical precision, mobility, and the initiative of individual squads of units, much like how modern warfare is waged (apparently if the Imperial Guard learned from Tau tacticians and fought with modern tactics instead of zergrushing everything then they would have been the most powerful army in the galaxy, but no, that ain't GRIMDARK and AWESOME enough [unless you're [[Lord Solar Macharius|Macharius]]]). Their military doctrine is not based on winning by attrition and/or throwing out quality tactics in favour of absorbing and dishing out heavy shocks in bloody epic clusterfucks like the Imperials, Orks and early World War II-era Soviet Russia. (Unless you count the later war "deep warfare", which is actually the combat doctrine the Tau ripped off. 40k really seems to like the Russians...) Rather, they use infiltration and their sophisticated battlesuits to [[Anal Circumference|bypass enemy strong points and launch deep into their rear]], cutting supply lines and logistics, destroying headquarters and support units, leaving enemies cut off and functionally helpless. There are numerous examples of Tau literally starving and/or thirsting entire armies to death by cutting out their supply lines, while simultaneously harassing them with night raids, ambushes and air strikes to the point the survivors are leaderless, demoralized, out of ammo and fuel, and can barely stand due to exhaustion. The [[Imperial_Armour_Volume_Three:_The_Taros_Campaign#Volume_Three_-_The_Taros_Campaign|Taros]] campaign is a prime example of these tactics (and of the Imperium's strategic stupidity).

Of course, these kinds of tactics only work fine against more convenient armies like the Imperial Guard or Orks. When it comes to Space Marines and Eldar, who sport mostly aerial/warp/webway supply lines, operate as elite armies without obvious weak spots to exploit, have similar or superior tactical mobility and badass officers that can survive most assassination attempts, Tau lose huge parts of their usual advantages (but get the numerical superiority in return). Against utterly unconventional foes, like Tyranids, Daemons or Necrons... well, all times they faced such foes, Tau either devised some entirely new strategies, or lost horribly.
[[File:TauTyr.jpg|thumb|left|300px|90% of Tau [[dakka]] comes in the form of [[Plasma|pretty blue lights.]]]]
The Tau, again, boast some of the most powerful ranged weaponry on the tabletop game, and can crank out more concentrated firepower than any other faction with the lone exception of the Imperial Guard and maybe the orks if you only count number of bullets in the air, and even then, the Tau's weapons hit quite a bit harder. They have pathetic hand-to-hand combat skills, however, and so the Tau bolster this by using several inducted races (the [[Kroot]], Vespid, and even some [[Gue'vesa|humans cut off from the Imperium during the Damocles Crusade]]) to act as buffers against assault troops to allow Tau Fire Warrior teams and their heavy, long-ranged firepower to tear enemies apart. The most pivotal, and perhaps most infamous, part of the Tau army are their [[Battlesuit|Battlesuits]], which can mount multiple heavy weapon systems and provide excellent mobility to their pilots, all on a fairly durable unit. They also have an extremely powerful navy, though not quite as formidable as the Imperium's, if largely because of number differences. Tau air units are among the best in the game, with aircraft superior or equal to Imperial Guard equivalents, including a stealth fighter, multipurpose heavy fighter, a superheavy fighter with guns that can one-shot a Titan, and their own [[Manta|Titan-equivalent]] (which is a small starship). Unlike the Imperium, they usually deploy swarms upon swarms of flyers, with only Orks and Necrons able to rival them in numbers when things come to dogfights—kind of the way the Imperial fleets' atmospheric support craft were supposed to work if fleet officers weren't a bunch of assholes who do everything they can to provide as little air support as possible.

On defense, the Tau are a bit unusual: they leave only token garrisons at their colonies to protect them. These garrisons are intended for scouting rather than combat, avoiding engagement in order to observe and report on invaders using Pathfinders, scanning towers, and drones. Because the Tau have fairly powerful spacefleets and usually keep their forces within reasoned distance of potential hotspots, any potential threat can be quickly dealt with by organizing a hunter cadre to be sent to deal with the situation. For those of you who don't get it, it's Frederick the Great's "he who tries to protect everything protects nothing" strategy. Of course, this strategy means Tau must have some worlds actually being heavily defended - and in fact they do. Sept worlds tend to be guarded by some nasty space stations and garrisoned by an unreasonable amounts of hunter cadres and auxiliary troops, which allows them to act as major defensive nodes from which response fleets are dispatched and to which evacuation fleets rally (think feudal Japan style castles from which commanders would send trained garrisons out to protect the lands around it from encroaching armies), and in case some really scary shit like an Imperial crusade or a Tyranid hive-fleet comes into the sept, it is on the sept world where the decisive battle is fought (See the First Damocles Crusade for an example of this tactic in action). This has, however, backfired on occasion, since it does mean that the Tau garrisons are very vulnerable in the initial stages of an attack.

A rare advantage the Tau have is their willingness to change military strategy. As examples, look at how they changed tactics in reaction to the [[Damocles Crusade]] by the Imperium of Man, and even built an entirely new space fleet to match humans in straight-on space fights, or their unusual but effective choice of switching to older weapons when dealing with [[Hive Fleet Behemoth|Hive Fleet Gorgon]].

==Fleet==
In the old fluff, Tau used to have a reverse-engineered imperial warp drives, tuned to only skim the surface of the warp and bounce back to materium after a short while. New fluff on the other hand retconned that, by giving them what is called "slingshot drive" for their FTL, and from what little fluff we have on it, it looks like the actual warp drive (in the modern physics meaning, i.e. warped time-space bubble). The practical applications, however, are the same in both new and old fluff - Tau FTL is much slower than the Imperium's, but is predictable, reliable, and not affected by warp storms (a big deal, given Tau spent half of their history inside one). As a result, Tau are capable of building proper interstellar logistics lines, ones the Administratum can only dream of, but their strategic mobility is <s>lacking functionally superior to</s>...different compared to pretty much every other faction (save Tyranids and Necrons, who also use non-Warp related FTL). Additionally, Slingshot drives are rather big, heavy and power-hungry, even compared to the Warp drive (which takes up a 1/3rd of a smaller imperial ships). As a result, escort-class Tau spacecraft are built without FTL drives and are hooked to bigger ships for the purpose of interstellar travel, which basically make them equivalents of the Imperium's system monitor ships, with the same benefits (cheap, compact and too fast, powerful or durable for their size) without their major downside (being incapable of FTL flight). The Tau also have to concentrate their forces on an interplanetary scale; they can't throw a bunch of ships into a warzone from halfway across the galaxy as orks and humans can.
Tau empire have two fleets:
*Kor'Vatra, or "merchant fleet", is made of older modular ships that double as merchant and colony vessels (hence the name). One of their main shticks is huge arcs of fire for most gun batteries, with side batteries easily covering front arc, and nose batteries covering all but the stern - as a result, while Kor'vatra Ships may not have as much firepower as Imperial or Ork ones, they can focus more of it on one target. On the flip side, merchant ships while decently fast at sub-light, are not very agile, and must rely on escort wings and auxiliary fleets against more maneuverable foes. Even after the founding of Kor'Or'Vesh, Kor'Vatra still see a lot of military use, especially against the Imperium, precisely because it's regarded as non-military fleet, so Tau diplomats could tell their imperial colleagues "What battle cruisers on your orbit are you talking about? It's just our merchant vessels, moving goods to and from our trade missions".
*Kor'Or'Vesh, or "combat fleet" is a newer fleet, made for battling Imperium's fleet in straight up battle, after Kor'Vatra get run over during Damocles crusade. Made out of more compact, maneuverable and better armored ships, it may lack Kor'Vatra's wide arks of fire, but is superior in every other regard, and as Taros and second Damocles campaigns showed it is more then capable of fighting off humans even if outnumbered.
Both fleets use largely the same technologies - railguns as (by tau standard) short-ranged high damage gun batteries, ion cannons as long range beams (lance equivalent), and above all, their brokenly-powerful ordinance second only to Eldar ones (and available in far greater numbers) - Mantas, Barracudas and EMP drone-torpedoes reign supreme at extreme ranges, gaining Tau navy the same reputation their ground armies have. Because their ordinance is so powerful, most Tau ships tend towards carrier and torpedo boat archetype, and suffer horribly if enemy comes within macro-cannon or god-forbid boarding range (that is IF they manage to come that close).

==Non-combat Fluff==
[[File:Tau city.jpg|450px|thumb|right|Contrary to what [[Imperium of Man|some]] believe, what this picture shows might just be the future for the entire galaxy if the Tau [[Great Crusade|get their way.]]]]
The Tau were a new race/culture found by the Imperium of Man during their "slash and burn" exploration of their galactic neighborhood. The Tau were still pastoral, had just discovered flint tools and charcoal, and the Imperium had them scheduled for "[[Grimdark|routine cleansing]]" (which is Imperiumese for ruthless genocide) to make sure they never got off-world and developed into an entity capable of threatening humanity. Needless to say, that plan was promptly [[derp|fucked up]]. By an unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your feelings towards a species' right to not be mercilessly exterminated for no reason whatsoever) coincidence which almost certainly involved the dickery of [[Tzeentch]] or [[Cegorach]] or [[The Deceiver|something]], a warp storm occluded the Tau homeworld, so nobody could get in or out. Since the Tau were virtually invisible in the warp, the warp storm didn't have much of an effect on them as they were immune to the influences of Chaos. [[FAIL|The sector was labeled "lost to Chaos,"]] and cleansing was [[What|deferred indefinitely]]. Then [[Age of Apostasy|this shit]] happened, and almost all records about Tau were lost in the ensuring [[Rape|clusterfuck]] of civil war. Only the Adeptus Mechanicus still had records of this first contact when the storm died down 6,000 years later. The Damocles Crusade relocated the Tau, who were completely untouched by the warp storm and now using interstellar colony ships and pulse rifles. The extermination order still stood—it was just going to be much more difficult than the Imperium expected, seeing as the Tau, instead of [[C.S. Goto|throwing spears and rocks at their tanks]] and Space Marines, were now throwing [[ion cannon|ion charges]], [[plasma|plasma blasts]], and [[railgun|electromagnetically-accelerated hypervelocity projectiles]] at their tanks and Space Marines.

Tau history is pretty typical up through the iron-age: a knack for engineering, warfare between "urban" farmers and "barbarian" nomads, and unrestrained growth causing a series of plagues, leading to a dark age. Here's where things go sideways, though the Tau see it as the start of their endless Golden Age: the arrival of the Ethereals. Legend tells of a five-year siege at the castle of Fio'taun, with both sides starving and succumbing to disease, when two foreign Tau entered the battlefield. One went to the castle, the other to the barbarian tribes. Each of these Tau had a quiet grace and irresistible authority. In just a few hours, the castle was persuaded to open their gates, and the barbarians laid down their weapons, and both parties met to parley a truce. These strange Tau called themselves "Ethereals," and stressed the importance of peace and understanding between all Tau. They described a "Greater Good" that each Tau must strive towards. Soon after, soon enough to seem simultaneous, more of these strange new Tau emerged across the continent with their message of peace and co-operation for all Tau. Their quiet authority was always respected, and their message of harmony was universally embraced. Wait a minute, [[God-Emperor of Mankind|I've seen this]] [[Great Crusade|historical pattern before]]....

Perhaps uniquely for the setting, Tau-human interactions bear the whiff of realpolitik. On the one hand, the Imperium wants to exterminate them ''eventually'', but the upper management generally realizes that the Tau are going to be a giant drain of resources and manpower to get rid of, given the stiff resistance they put up in [[Damocles Crusade|previous campaigns]] and their [[Riptide|uniformly]] [[railgun|advanced]] [[battlesuit|technology]]. Furthermore, they serve as a useful buffer state against various threats on the Eastern Fringe, from Orks and Chaos raiders to Tyranid hive fleets to alien forces the Imperium hasn't had (recorded) contact with. Their existence deflects danger from Imperial space, and in a place and time when the Imperium is [[Time of Ending|coming under attack from all sides]], that's more important than dogma.

This strategy is not unique to the Tau only though, as the Imperium allows countless other (much more dangerous) xeno empires to prosper in the Eastern Fringe to serve as an ablative shield against much nastier shit. Amongst those is (for example) the Charadon ork empire, which is older than the Imperium and spawns a Waaagh! or two per millennium (even with the routine warboss assasination raids that the Ultramarines make). Even after the emergence of the genius warboss Snagrod and his Waagh on Rynn no one cared to issue a crusade against them. So yeah, the Tau empire is not even close to being spotted by the High Lords, not to mention recognized as a threat dangerous enough to actually do something about.

Conversely, the Tau have realized just how massive an undertaking expanding through the entire universe would really be, and are taking it slow. They mostly absorb Imperial buffer worlds stripped of manpower and armament in the face of massive redeployments to face other threats, offering the Empire's protection in return for annexation and outright conquering the places that don't take the deal. The Tau have claimed that they are engaging in this sort of aggressive behavior because ''someone's'' going to [[Tyranids|gobble]] those settlements up sooner or later, and if ''they'' don't do it, then whoever does won't be [[Exterminatus|nearly as nice about it]]. While baldly self-serving, that logic is...well, mostly correct, really.

There's no lost love between the Imperium and the Tau, but open full-scale war is probably unlikely in the near-future.

And then the Second Damocles Crusade happened.... even the imperium isn't that stupid, so this almost certainly involves that tricky dick Tzeench trying to stop the greater good from ruining all his plans. ...Or nurgle...or, well any of the ruinous powers really.

Looking at the new galactic map, where the Tau are now sandwiched between their own eye of terror and a Necron dynasty, they are soon to be fucked.

=== Castes ===
[[File:Commander HawkEye.jpg|thumb|290px|left|<s>Join the Greater Good, lose your virginity to a hot alien babe!</s> The codex space communism does not support this action ]]

Tau society after the arrival of Ethereals was organized into castes; everyone with a place, and a place for everyone. Interbreeding between castes has been outlawed by the [[Ethereal]]s presumably to preserve the biological differences between castes, and as part of this effort they have taken over the practice of sex entirely. Tau society has been manipulated so that Tau do not form romantic bonds of a long-lasting nature and do not even consider sex to be anything other than a state-mandated act meant only, like everything else, to serve society and the Greater Good. In essence, Tau are conditioned to never have sex until and unless their superiors say they are worth breeding. Their superiors pick their breeding partners (the Tau get NO input into this) and the couple basically spends a few days off from work screwing around before going their separate ways to never see each other again. If a Tau did somehow get over their social conditioning and thought of sex as something more than a mandated duty, they'd be punished for illegal activities/perversion. An Imperial genetor's report in the fourth edition Tau codex observes the presence of synthetic proteins in Tau internal organs and suggests them as evidence that their evolution has been accelerated, though he might have been confused by synthetic proteins that the Tau were given. [[/tg/]] seems to be under the strong impression that they are mammals, as you can see in the picture further down the page, despite the complete implausibility of this theory.

==== {{anchor|Fire|Fire Caste}} Shas (Fire) ====
The '''Fire Caste''' consists of the various [[Fire Warrior|warriors]] of the Tau Empire. The miniatures of a Tau army in a [[Warhammer 40,000]] game are almost exclusively Fire Caste. Other castes think Shas are overly-aggressive hotheads due to their tendency to solve all problems by applying more plasma (when Tau encountered other sentient species, Fire Caste representatives immediately voted to hunt down and exterminate them, just like they hunted down dangerous local life forms on the other world they colonized), although from the perspective of humans or eldar, who know better how "[[Khorne Berserker|aggressive]] [[Blood Angels|hotheads]]" actually look like, fire warriors are seen more like a cold-blooded killers, even when they are enraged by the death of their Ethereal, which just shows how calm and disciplined other castes are. They are taller than Earth Caste Tau, and physically stronger than the Air and Water Castes, though still shorter and weaker than a typical Human. They pretty much compensate for this by giving their basic Fire Warrior a [[pulse rifle]], which is sort of like an automatic sniper-[[plasma]] gun, and employ heavily armed and sophisticated battlesuits for their elite infantry. Oh yeah, and [[Railgun]]s. Company -sized Tau forces are called "Hunter Cadres".

==== {{anchor|Earth|Earth Caste}} Fio (Earth) ====
The '''Earth Caste''' are the laborers and engineers; they are the "civilians" of Tau society. Their appearance can vary widely, though other Tau would describe them as "plain." They all have a stoic outlook, with little ambition other than to excel in their career of choice and work for the Greater Good. Unlike the Imperial worker classes, whose quality of life generally ''starts'' at working 14-hour days seven days a week while living off of dried, recycled dung chips and goes [[Such is life on Volg|''downhill from there'']], the Earth caste is mostly concerned with technological planning and engineering. They have robots to do the grunt work. The Farsight Enclaves field some Earth Caste pilots for their battlesuits, demonstrating their more flexible caste systems and/or their desperation for manpower. Doing so makes them ''even worse'' in close-combat than Tau already are, but they make up for it with technical training and tweaks to the suits' software and mechanics, re-rolling missed shots and equipment failures.

==== {{anchor|Air|Air Caste}} Kor (Air) ====
The '''Air Caste''' are the intermediaries between Tau. In more primitive times they served as messengers and couriers, and sometimes scouts/explorers, gliding on membranous anatomical surfaces through T'au's atmosphere. When the Tau started exploring offworld, it was the Air Caste that took charge of the vessels traveling between the stars. Now the Air Caste are the Tau stellar navy/airforce/mailmen, piloting the Empire's various carriers, warships, and emissary cruisers. Air caste Tau tend to be tall and slender like runners or dancers, and this is frequently exaggerated by the years the Tau navy spends in low-gravity. They are much less likely to be eaten by [[daemon]]s due to a faulty Geller Field than their Imperial equivalents, but only because their ships are much slower, using a "slingshot drive" to temporarily enter the Warp and bounce back into real space. Despite their slender stature and lack of muscle mass, Air caste pilots are extremely resistant to G-force, making them excellent void and atmospheric fighter pilots (simultaneously, as small Tau voidcraft also double as atmospheric craft).

==== {{anchor|Water|Water Caste}} Por (Water) ====
The '''Water Caste''' are the emissaries to non-Tau. They are diplomats, merchants, civil servants. The most open-minded Tau can be found among the Water caste, with some even showing individual ambition (but still for the greater good of the Tau Empire). When a new culture is encountered, the Water caste are sent in first to negotiate. If talks break down, the Water caste are withdrawn from the area and it's time for the Fire Caste to then start negotiating with pulse weapon fire. Also, unlike their Imperial equivalents in bureaucracy, the [[Administratum]], they are brisk, efficient, and very good at their jobs. No dumping valuable ammo on an uninhabited dust world because no one signed the paperwork not to. It's a less known fact that Pors also run the Tau intelligence and espionage network, and Por'Os and Por'Els from this branch are pretty much Tau Inquisitors except more competent, much saner, and not nearly as good at kicking asses personally. As of the second Damocles Crusade the Imperium has designated the Water caste as a primary threat above any other Tau caste, as their subterfuge, diplomacy and propaganda has cost the Imperium more worlds and manpower than the Fire and Air caste's military prowess combined, and they even managed to totally outplay the Inquisition on its own field, which royally pissed them off.

==== {{anchor|Ethereal|Ethereal Caste}} Aun (Ethereal) ====
The '''Ethereal Caste''' are basically the philosopher-kings described by Plato in "The Republic". They are selfless and always focused on what is best for the Greater Good ("Tau'va") for all Tau and every Tau without exception. The Ethereals are inspirational to all Tau caste members, and merely being near one will inspire a Tau soldier, engineer, pilot, or diplomat to work harder. In the case of the Fire Caste, some Ethereals accompany hunter cadres in battle during important deployments so as to better lead/inspire the troops, which works because all Tau in the combat zone will fight to their bitter deaths. They also seem to have semi-magical powers (don't ask how they work, none of the Tau know themselves) that allow Tau around them to do special things, like running while shooting. The [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] theorizes that the respect the Ethereal Caste gets from all other Tau is caused by a pheromone. ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTAU......

Also, ''[[Xenology]]'' relates a story from a major, insectoid race called the [[Q'Orl]] which alleges that the [[Eldar]] stole one of their queens. Given that these queens have a magic, yellow, diamond-shaped sack that produces mind-control pheromones…well, let's just say the characters in the story figure it out quickly enough. There is a theory that the Ethereals themselves are also affected by their own pheromones, which could explain why they're so selfless and uncorrupted despite their absolute power. This can also be supported by the (old as fuck and likely retconned) novelization of [[Warhammer_40,000:_Fire_Warrior|Fire Warrior]], where the Ethereal character has a pretty level head and chipper demeanor despite having been [[Anal_Circumference|repeatedly captured and tortured by both the Inquisition and Chaos, watching his diplomatic retinue chopped up by a Chaos Lord, and mind-raped by said Chaos Lord all in the span of roughly two days.]] Either he's a stoic old motherfucker, or he's just too busy tripping his blue balls on his own pheromones to give a shit.

===Tau Names===
Tau have ridiculously long, detailed and actually meaningful names. Their names contain their caste, rank, birth sept, and one or more nicknames earned by them through the course of their lives. Fluff does say that they ''do'' have birth names, but those are only used before tau earn at least one appropriate nickname, as a name given to them by comrades is considered more valuable than one just chosen by random at their birth. The nickname part and it's importance surprisingly is actually taken from the Roman culture, which is weird, given most Tau culture tend to be based on China and Japan (except for their social and government structures which are copied almost verbatim from Plato's Republic). Also, do note the lack of last names, which is expected, since Tau society pretty much have no institute of a family, with children being raised in a centralized facilities apart from their parents. As tau grow, move through ranks and achieve respect of his comrades his name changes appropriately, switching the rank part, adding new nicknames and sometimes dropping the old and outdated ones. For example, when Farsight was still a lowly fire warrior, his name was '''Shas'La Vior'La Shoh''' (Fire Caste Private of the Hot-Blooded sept Inner Light), and at the "present days" '''Shas'O Vior'La Shovah Kais Mont'yr''' (Fire Caste Commander of the Hot-Blooded sept Farsight Skillful Blooded). How the fuck Tau bureaucracy--{{BLAM}} Space commies don't have bureaucracy. is able to keep track of their population with their names constantly changing is a mystery, but it seems they have no problem with that (probably they just assign number to each).

For the sake of convenience Tau often use shortened versions of names, almost always dropping the sept part and secondary nicknames, and if speaking within one caste the caste part too, so in the case of Farsight other fire warriors could refer to him as O'Shovah, while for example an Ethereal would call him Shas'O'Shovah. Humans and other non-Tau often get this system wrong and shorten the names in a ways that make little sense: for example, Imperium's Taros invasion force thought the Taros' chief Ethereal's name was Aun'El, which was only his caste and rank, and as the book was mostly written from the Imperium's standpoint, we still don't know what was his actual name.

One final stroke of Tau naming, is that as they abandon their true (birth) names it makes them even more resistant to sorcery and daemonic powers that often require target's true name to amplify their effect or even make the spell work at all.

===Psychic/Chaos defense===
Tau are an entire race of psychic blunts, they cannot produce psykers and have limited innate resisance to some forms of psychic powers and daemonic bullshit. People often mistake this resistance to outright invulnerability, but in truth it's more akin to camouflage - Tau souls are so dim they are indistinguishable from the spirits of non-sapients at best, and at most times they even blend in the psychic background of inanimate objects. This may have something to do with how unemotional tau are, as some of the more passionate subjects in the fluff had been slightly affected by warp shenanigans like faint whispers and slight feelings of "wrongness" in places where humans creep out and try to run away immediately, while more calm and collected tau hadn't noticed anything strange. If for example a telepath tries to mind-rape a tau or a daemon tries to posses a tau he'd find it hard to find a soul to target, but if he manages to find it there would be even less resistance than with regular humans. Sadly while this trait is often shown in the fluff, it does not affect tau crunch in any way.

This innate defense is further strengthened by the Greater Good philosophy deeply indoctrinated into each Tau from childhood and (allegedly) reinforced by a subtle mind control. Tau'Va being the antithesis of all the creeds of Chaos makes tau all but immune to it's temptations, and only a single Tau has ever actually fallen to Chaos, the Water Caste member Water Spider who was possessed by a Daemon of Tzeentch. That being said, the Tau have only just been exposed to the more material horrors of the galaxy; should they become jaded and start losing faith in the Greater Good (as inferred with giving up on indoctrinating certain species), well, that would be an entirely different situation. Their allies, including the Kroot, have been known to go all-in with Chaos worship, although Tau seldom take culture from their allied races.

==Alliances==
{{MattWard}}
[[File:Illus4.jpg|280px|right|thumb|Unfortunately for some [[Slaanesh|deviants]] [[Extra Heresy|and heretical elements on]] [[/tg/]]. [[Not as Planned|This is what an actual canon Tau Female looks like.]] No boobs, no curves, no ass, no redeeming qualities other than having a face of your grandmother and the nose of a mutilated vag. Know the alien. Hate the alien. Purge the alien. The Emperor Protects!]]
In 6th edition, Tau are notable for being one of two factions (the other being Imperial Guard) who can ally with anyone except for 'Nids. Yes, this includes both Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Daemons, although, according to the Farsight Enclaves supplement, <s>Farsight is one of the few Tau (maybe the only one ''period'') who actually understands the existence of Chaos, so the average Tau would consider them to be just another kind of alien.</s> Farsight rebelled because the Ethereals understand the existence of Chaos on some level, but keep it suppressed from the general populace so they're not entirely screwed. It still isn't going to end well though.

This leads to a few...''interesting'' alliances, to say the least.

First off, Tau ''can'' ally with [[Ork]]s, even though fluff-wise they are viewed as enemies of the Greater Good to be purged wherever encountered. Smaller Ork warbands (mostly [[Blood Axes]]) frequently act as mercenaries, of course, so the Tau might use them in that capacity. Plus, there might be fluff changes coming up (most notably, it was rumored that the [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee]] would return in the new Orks codex; they, of course, would get along quite well with the Tau).

They are also battle brothers with both the Space Marines and Eldar, which has caused a large amount of headscratching on /tg/. The Eldar make a modicum of sense; after all, the Eldar most likely had a hand in their synthetic evolution and the creation of the Ethereals, and the Eldar are well known for being expert manipulators. A Tau-Space Marine alliance, though, would be odd, to say the least, since Tau and Space Marines are always going at it in the [[fluff]]. Of course, a minor [[Space Marine Chapter|chapter]] could always find an alliance with the Tau, or even join the Greater Good, but that seems far-fetched at best. Old fluff from back in the 3rd edition codex tells a story of a Tau commander letting an Apothecary remove the aul glands from dead Marines, establishing that the Tau are honourable warriors in the minds of this particular chapter. Isn't too hard to guess that someone at GW felt the battle brothers thing was a bit of a head-desk move, so they tried to fix it.

The weirdest part, though, is that Tau ''aren't'' Battle Brothers with the Imperial Guard, despite (or maybe because of) the existence of [[Gue'vesa]] (Imperial Guard defectors).

7th edition corrected all of this for the Tau, making them only battle brothers with themselves and certain allies of convenience, like Necrons and the Eldar, while the rest are desperate allies or, in the case of daemons and 'Nids, allies of the apocalypse. This effectively "fixes" the issue from the point of view of a butthurt puritan while still allowing for those who bought Tau models to include them as allies in their games.

8th edition totally destroyed any chance of Tau having allies in matched play games. Taudar is dead, thank fuck.

==Tau Member Races==
[[File:Dynamic entry by majesticchicken.jpg|right|thumb|550px|Look up fuckers! You're invited to the latest imperial party and we're not taking "no" for an answer!]]
The Tau are the only faction that willingly accept other races into their ranks. Typically, the races are extended a hand from the Water Caste first, and if they still pose a problem or otherwise refuse to be reasoned with, the Fire Warriors are sent in. It should be noted that tau usually are not in haste of annexing the world, and if the aliens don't want to join right now but aren't immediately hostile and open to trade, Water Caste would slowly but surely convert them into a Greater Good to the point that one day they themselves would ask to join the Empire. The species, when annexed or conquered, are usually allowed to keep their planet, but must answer to the authority of the local Ethereal and possibly the local Shas'o. Most of them are fluff and don't show up on the tabletop, but it would get a little ridiculous if you could purport to play a 'single' 40k race that included, like, twelve different races.

* Demiurg - [[Squats]] reborn. They are a race of space-faring miners specializing in ionic weaponry who serve the Tau with their engineering and mining abilities. They also serve as an example of something the Imperium will never do: save dead codex races (Well, okay, they're sort of saved...). They make an appearance in Battlefleet Gothic: Armada though, so that's nice.
* Galgs - Frog/Toad People who are regularly hired as mercenaries. No other information available. Probably [[Lizardmen#Slann|Slann]] In Space.
* [[Gue'vesa]] - Humans who have not only defected to the Tau, but chosen to take up arms and fight alongside them to serve the Greater Good. Rules for them are found in [[Forge World|Forge World's]] Imperial Armour Volume 3. <s>(If the current trend goes on we may see Sisters join up with the Tau, which might be an improvement for the Sisters.)</s>{{BLAM}}{{BLAM|HERESY!}}
* Hrenian - Alien mercenaries employed for their skills as light infantry. No other information available. Probably [[Lizardmen#Skinks|Skinks]] In Space.
* Ji'atrix - A spacefaring race. No other information available. (Dammit, GW [[Writefag|writefags]].)
* [[Kroot]] - Predatory gene-assimilating avian humanoids. They are the first alien race to be actively recruited by the Tau as mercenaries, and are so regularly hired that they have officially progressed to being considered Auxiliaries of the Tau forces.
* [[Vespid|Mal'kor]] - Insectoid aliens, also known as Vespids, who are native to a gas giant planet within the Tau Empire. Serve as Auxiliaries.
* Morralian - Also known as "Deathsworn". No other information available.
* [[Nicassar]] - A voidfaring race of [[psyker]]s and the only psychically-gifted species in the Tau Empire. The Tau have carefully hidden them away from the Imperium due to their (actually justifiable) psyker-phobia. Were the second alien species to join the Greater Good.
* Ranghon - No information available.
* [[Tarellian]] - These guys are basically [[Lizardmen#Saurus|Saurus]] IIIIN SPAAAAACE!!!!!! Not really part of the Empire, but rather mercenaries who will gladly fight humans and Tyranids on the cheap since the Imperium virus-bombed their home world and the Tyranids nommed their biggest colony.
* Poctroon - The first sapient species to be found by the Tau, [[wikipedia:Siege of Fort Pitt|they were "accidentally" driven extinct by Tau smallpox]], and their planet just by coincidence was a great place to set a Sept World.
* Nagi - Brain worms that, due to their horrific appearance and inability to communicate, were attacked by the Fire Caste. They managed to sort it out, though, and now they work with the Ethereals as advisors (because having brain worms about as "advisors" isn't a bad idea or anything). They had shown in a few books so far, and were involved in a "mind-rip" (guess outright calling it "rape" was too much) of a space marine POW while being so self-righteous and smug about their mental superiority they could give Eldar a run for their money. Apparently they can also at least perceive the Warp (which they call "extra-dimensional space"), and probably manipulate it as well, and know enough about it to outright refuse to go anywhere near demonically-tainted Agrellan when Tau invaded it.
* Ji'atrices, Morralians, or Ranghons are probably other Warhammer Fantasy Races In Space, such as [[Lizardmen#Kroxigor|Kroxigors]] or Trolls, given the overall tendency of the Tau to incorporate Fantasy races missing from 40k.

The usually genocidal actions of the other races, most notably the [[Imperium]], also serve as a motivating factor for less-powerful races to join the Tau. While the Tau do seem a minor threat to the Imperium now, if the current policy continues, there will be more and more races joining up with the them if for no other reason than avoiding [[Exterminatus|extermination]]. Of course, the Tau are just coming to realize how vast and powerful the Imperium really is, and while a lot of their member races really ''are'' the victims of crazy, evil, fascist extermination protocols, there's always the chance that someone responsible for a "Hell World" or "Nightmare World" might join up, and the damage might be done before they realize their mistake...

==In a Nutshell==
;'''The Stated Reason Why People Hate Tau'''
Weeaboo space confuciunists (Asian Commies)—not grimdark enough.
;'''The ''Real'' Reason Why People Hate Tau'''
Until the edition update, this would, most assuredly, be [[Fish of Fury]]. Fuck, even most Tau players felt this was bullshit. Post-edition update, it was that certain [[Matt Ward|undesirables]] felt that they were trying to take the mantle of the 40K universe's "rightful" Imperial protagonists. And because they are not [[Choppa|choppy]] enough. And then 6th Edition codex came, and Tau became one of the shootiest armies in the shootiest edition ever, not to mention their ability to bitchslap cheesmongers, having straight counters against any of the Wardex bullshit. When the 7th edition came out they became overpowered AF and they took the title as the chedder cheese of Warhammer.
;'''A Real Reason Why People Like Tau'''
The one race that isn't being a wall of dicks. If the Tau are trolling done by Games Workshop, then the target of said trolling was any fatbeard that needs a constant supply of grimdark to stay alive. Of course, the mind-influencing pheromones they use to conquer new worlds and their psycho-indoctrination mass re-education facilities will just have to be ignored if you don't want destroy your wishful thinking for a half-way decent faction to exist in 40k. But people have always been good at ignoring shit.
;'''Another Real Reason Why People Like Tau'''
Unlike many other Races in 40k the Tau are capable of fitting into many other Sci-fi Universes without much Problems. Such as Star trek where they would be at home along side other Peaceful yet also Tyrannical Factions like the Federation. Compared to the Necrons or Eldar which would be both Roflstomps and completely different from all other groups in that Universe. (Unless it [[Doctor Who|Doctor Who]]).
;'''The Real Reason Why People Play Tau'''
Arguably have the most powerful guns in the game. Often twin-linked. Often on cool-looking robot battlesuits. [[meme|Also markerlights]]. Also [[Riptide|RAPETIDE]]. Tau players may also have a tendency towards sadism.
;'''A Solid Reason People Don't Play Tau'''
They're fucking expensive. Seriously. On a points-per-pound level, they cost more than any other (plastic) army. This is doubly true if you like battlesuits, but of course you do because you're playing Tau.
;'''Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants?'''
An often overlooked issue is that Tau have almost no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general (despite the fact that in 6E they can work with them...I just...I don't...WAAAARD!!!), just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape, stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. [[GW]] may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the [[JUST AS PLANNED]] competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Given that recent murmurs have suggested that something absolutely massive is in the works at GW, ''anything'' could be possible, though past experience has led us to believe that it will simply be a Tau wearing a silly [[hat]]. However, seeing as GW is as likely to advance the plot that far as I am to shove both my legs up my ass up to the knee, it doesn't much matter.

==TL;DR==
<s>The good guys</S>
High-tech alien race who are the ''least'' [[grimdark]] of factions. Can't melee for shit but can blow you back to the stone age with ranged weaponry if you have the misfortune of being downrange. You will either love them or hate them because of all this, and many neckbeards do feel the [[butthurt]]. Or, as the saying goes: "You can't spell TAUNT without TAU."

== Warhammer Fantasy ==
Unlike most other factions in 40k, Tau have no clear antecedent from [[Warhammer Fantasy]]. Some think the anime influences and rapid industrialization/militarization point towards Nippon; others feel the caste system might be related to the Kingdom of Ind. However, neither faction has ever been explored in great detail (or any detail at all), so it's impossible to say whether Tau are similar to those factions; instead, we must compare to the real-world equivalents of the Old World nations. Slightly more controversially, there are elements of Cathay (which is the Anglicized word for China back in the British Empire heyday, so yes) in the Tau. Cathay has been described as being technologically advanced (at least on par with the Empire), including terra-cotta automaton warriors (which the Chinese definitely used to make to pay homage to the First Chinese Emperor's over inflated ego, more than a millennia ago), although such comparison is stated by some to have [[Skub|already been implemented in the characterization of the Eldar and thus, is considered as ''seriously'' stretching up a notch.]]

More recently, some have connected the Tau and their subject races to other factions in Fantasy. The rapid evolution of the Kroot and their overall savagery is (somewhat) similar to the Gors of the Beastmen (although the Beastmen are in the 40k universe themselves). The Empire also shares the xenos-friendly viewpoint of the Tau, although they're not expansionistic, and decidedly less concerned with a unified government structure so long as everyone pays their taxes, for better or for worse. Others compare them to dwarves: dwarves don't use Chaos magic, are short, technologically advanced, kinda casty and blue (understood in many countries as "hopelessly drunk") basicly all the time. Tau don't use Chaos warp magic, are short, technologically advanced, very casty and blue all the time (in regards to skin colour). Both also get seriously grudgy and angry when you piss them off.

==Trivia==
[[File:Tau Ripoff.jpeg|thumb|right|300px|FOR THE [[Blood Ravens|GREATER THEFT]]!]]
* Some have said that Tau resemble the protagonist KYNE from the Amiga video game Brataccas, which was released in 1986. Tau were first added to Warhammer 40k in late 2001. Some would dismiss this as coincidence, but Games Workshop has a long history of ripping off designs from other games; [[Beastmen]] are [[Broo]] from [[Glorantha]], very large chunks of 40k are a little too similar to [[Judge Dredd]], and all of the Greater Daemon model designs are stolen from early [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. These properties are understandable as Games Workshop was still selling games of those IPs when Warhammer was first created, but Brataccas is an obscure game from a forgotten system that was quite forgettable even at release, even if Amiga games tended to get fantastic cover art. This being said another of GW's early products was also puzzles of of this style of '70's/'80's Sci-Fi art. The T'au cast system does resemble the Protoss caste from [[starcraft]], which presates the release of the Tau by 3 years... You have the Templar (Fire/Air Castes) Judicators (Ethereals + Water Castes) and Khalai (Earth Caste). In addition to a rogue sub-caste in the Dark Templar (Farsight Enclaves).
* Tau are technically canon to the Marvel Comics universe, as the series Venom: Space Knight repeatedly used Tau vehicles for aliens in the scenery. In fact, they have the balls to even keep the Tau Sept symbol! Also, you can see what appears to be a Eldar tank, as well as a Necron. The irony of the ripoff masters Games Workshop getting ripped off is juicy, even moreso when its realized that lawsuit-happy Games Workshop (who literally tried to copyright "pauldrons" while they plagiarized Eldar from Tolkien and had some contention between [[Malekith|two very similar Dark Elf characters of theirs]]) couldn't do shit about it because Marvel is owned by Disney, and nobody beats The Mouse™.

==Notable Tau==
===[[Canon]]===
*[[Aun'Shi]]
*[[El'Myamoto (Sub-commander Darkstrider)]]
*[[Shadowsun|O'Shaserra (Commander Shadowsun)]]
*[[Farsight|O'Shovah (Commander Farsight) and The Eight]]
*[[Commander Puretide]]
*[[Shas'o Kais]]
*[[Commander Or'es'Ka|Shas'o Or'es'Ka]]

===[[/tg/ 40,000]]===
*[[Blue]]
*[[Faptau]]
*[[O'ren I'shi'ii]]
*[[Shlicktau]]
*[[Xeno]]

==See Also==
[[File:Marvel Tau.jpg|thumb|right|250px|FOR THE GREATER GROOT!]]
* [[Nicassar]]
* [[Sept V'iet]]
* [[Tau Quest]]
* [[Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior]]
* [[Tau Dark Heresy]]
* [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Tau(8E)|Tactics/Tau]]
* [[Tau Cadre Creation Tables]]
* [[Codex_-_Tau_Auxiliary]]
* [[Tau Diplomacy]]
* [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|<strike>Love Can Bloom 3:Golden Shadowsun</strike> NON-CANON FANFICTION GARBAGE]]

==External Link==
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrHhS5IkRR0 A Typical Tau-Human conversation.]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbuPaCgdO50 Should one of your Tau actually kill anything tougher than a guardsman in melee, you are allowed to end the game in victory as long as you play this clip.]

==Gallery==
<center><gallery>
Image:Tau1.jpg|Stealth suits are :3
Image:Firewarrior.gif|Fire Warriors are :3 too
Image:Tau Chibi Fire Warrior.jpg|Chibi, but not weeby.
File:TauGuela.jpg|Gue'la.
Image:TauOrigin.jpg|Ohhh GW.
Image:Tau.gif|In 40k, everyones' guns are huge.
Image:Tau Fire Warrior.jpg|A Tau Fire Warrior, the basic infantry unit.
Image:Tau Firepower Demotivator.jpg|The sad truth of 6th edition.
Image:combine.jpg|In /tg/, tau are the bad guys.
Image:Itsyourempiretoo.png|Propaganda. [[Nazi|Sound]] [[Communism|familiar?]]
Image:Never shall the tau!.JPG|Surrender... never shall the Tau.
Image:Tauassault.jpg|Tau are vicious melee fighters, no less able than [[Space Marines]]!
Image:1234622525817.jpg|In hindsight, attempting negotiations with Orks was probably a bad idea.
Image:Tau Problem, Astartes.jpg|What's that? We're not grimdark enough for you, Neckbeard?
Image:Tau Sympathizer.jpg|The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer's entry on Tau players.
Image:Discotau.jpg|In spite of being filthy heretical xeno scum, the Tau can really break it down.
Image:Manta.jpg|Fun fact: if you have enough money to buy this, you have too much money.
Image:Tau cosplay2.jpg|Typical Tau player, engaging in typical Tau behavior. (Pretty badass cosplay, even got the hoof right)
Image:Tau Battlesuit vs Smurf.jpg|This Char Custom Battlesuit-clad Tau demonstrates his mastery of [[Weeaboo Fightan Magic]]. Also DYNAMIC ENTRY!
Image:E6abddad6c5999a1dbe6085d8614f051.jpg|Tau in close quarters combat barring some very lucky dice rolls.
</gallery></center>
{{Promotions}}
<center><gallery>
Image:TauKroot.jpg
Image:MARKERLIGHTS.png|MARKERLIGHTS!
Image:tau_firecleavage.jpg|Sweet [[Weeaboo|weeaboo]] [[Heresy|heresy]].
Image:Commissar Shadowsuns Goods by morganagod.jpg|DAT ASS.
Image:DAT_SHAS.jpg| A Fire Warrior appreciating DAT ASS.
Image:Tau ass.gif|A Greater Good we can all believe in.
Image:NOT FUCKING CANON.png| [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|THIS IS NOT FUCKING CANON!]]
Image:JoinTau.jpg|Some recruitment methodologies work better than others.
Image:Tau Chick.jpg|Few rarely seen Tau chicks. Maybe because Sisters are hotter.
Image:youtastefunny.jpg|Yeah, we all know the truth about their "greater good".
Image:Subcommander torchstar by sexual yeti-d9qal0l.png|Subcommander Torchstar, Farsight's personal fangirl.
Image:Tau_caste_nudes.jpg|Earth, Fire, Water, Air...Ethereal?!? SWEET MOTHER OF KHORNE!!! MY EYES!!!
Image:Laughing tau whores.jpg|S-shut up you filthy sluts! Among my people it is considered quite a handsome dick!
Image:Power Shopping.jpg|It's a well-known fact that the Tau Empire has some of the best shopping in the entire galaxy.
Image:Taugirlpile.jpg|Here we see Tau propaganda meant to entice men with their terrible, blasphemous, and supple soft skin, smooth curves, perky brea...er...ah...heretical alien bodies.
Image:TauHuman.jpg|Indeed, many humans have already embraced the Greater Good. (The individual with the primitive flashlight has been sent to re-education. Happiness is mandatory, Citizen.)
Image:greatertits.jpg|An attractive human female defector who for some reason has been equipped with a highly modified commander's battlesuit, perhaps as a devious ploy to compel desertion by the less loyal.
</gallery></center>

{{Tau}}
{{WH40k-Factions}}
{{40k-Governments}}

[[Category: Xenos]]

Tau

2017-12-11T17:35:03Z

2600:1006:B10C:1CE2:B49C:FF60:61E6:E26E:

[[Image:TAUSYMBOL.gif|center]]
{{Infobox 40k Nations
|name= Tau Empire
|image=[[Image:Tau_Empire_Flag.jpg|300px|center]]
|bgcolor=
|fgcolor=
|Capital= T'au
|Official Languages=Tau Lexicon
|Power= Minor Power
|Size=Approximately 100 Planets
|Head of State=Ethereal Supreme
|Head of Government= Ethereal Council
|Governmental Structure=Caste-Based Authoritarian Federation
|State Religion/Ideology=[[Greater Good]]
|Demographic=[[Tau]], [[Kroot]], [[Vespid]], [[Gue'vesa|Humans]], [[Nicassar]], [[Tarellian]], Nagi, Hrenians and other minor [[Xenos]] races
|Military Force=[[Tau]] Fire Caste, Tau Air Caste, [[Kroot]] and [[Vespid]] Forces, The Deathsworn, Hrenian Light Infantry, Demiurg Forces, Nicassar Forces, Gue'vesa Forces and other minor Xenos armies
}}
[[File:9jfnqeaplhexx.jpg|right|thumb|450px|Get the fuck out of the way, [[Imperium|Oldfag]].]]

{{Topquote|Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.|[[C.S. Lewis]]}}
{{Topquote|Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?|Luke 6:41}}
{{Topquote|Ce qui constitue une République, c'est l'extermination totale de tout ce qui lui est opposé.|Louis Antoine de Saint-Just}}
{{Topquote|The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting|Sun Zhu}}

Tau (τ) is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, 300 in Greek numerals, and also the name for 2π.

However, this article is about the '''Tau''' (or "bluies", as the Valhallan 597th call them)(or "Space Communists" as anyone on /tg/ will tell you), (or "T'au" as GW copywright lawyers call them) a playable race in ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' made of weaboo mecha communists in SPEEHS. When first discovered by humanity, the Tau were a barbaric and primitive people. Their planet was then trapped in a warp storm for a few thousand years and they emerged from the other side as a unified species, led by the [[Druids|mysterious]] Ethereal caste and devoted to the concept of the "[[Greater Good]]". Their new empire currently has around 115 worlds, and was growing until recently, when the Imperium sent a large invading force to counter them. Although a dystopian society in its own right, the Tau Empire is noted for being one of the LEAST awful places in all the galaxy of 40k. It's also [[Derp|not really an empire]]; the Tau government, the Ethereal caste, is essentially an edifice of meritocracy and nepotism-Tau leaders are appointed to their position by even higher ranking leaders and/or a council of their future peers; the highest ranking Tau, the Aun'O, is selected by his future underlings, much like the Catholic pope, but is still simply considered the weightiest voice of a group (like a prime minister), not an Emperor with absolute power. While Tau civilization has the behavioral tendencies of many empires throughout history (expansionism, military conquest of weaker states, forcible integration of the conquered peoples, etc.), it is the government structure of a state that makes it an empire, not foreign policies. Essentially, they are ''imperialist,'' but not an ''empire.''

The Tau started as a classic case of successful design-based [[Troll|trolling]] on the part of [[Games Workshop]]. They were originally developed because GW felt that their setting needed an optimistic race and that their wallets needed more money, which they could get by selling shedloads of 40k to the robot-obsessed Japanese. The Tau, therefore, are the least [[grimdark]] faction in the game; [[Tau Diplomacy|they're the dudes willing to negotiate when they've beaten their enemies]], while all the others are either too [[Chaos Space Marines| murderously psychotic in ways incomprehensible to anyone who does not share the same batshit insanity]], [[Imperium|religiously overzealous]], [[Eldar|arrogantly indifferent]], [[Orks|simplemindedly violent]], [[Necron|murderously enigmatic]], [[Tyranid|more interested in eating you than anything]], or [[Dark Eldar|all of the above]] to offer such courtesies.

This began to change in the 6th edition. For all the claims that GW doesn't listen to its fans, someone seemed to have heard the incessant bitching many fa/tg/uys made over the Tau being shoehorned into the setting in the worst way possible. As a result, the Tau began to take on an Orwellian flavor, with the Ethereals being totalitarian autocrats performing acts of ruthless indifference towards their subjects in the guise of being for the Greater Good. Recent [[fluff]] (from ''[[Dawn of War]]'', supported by [[Deathwatch]] supplements describing Achillus Crusade) has them <s>arbitrarily sterilizing the rebelling humans on Kronus once they come under the rule of the Tau Empire</s> sterilizing a group of humans attempting to revolt and distract Tau forces in the middle of a planet-wide, 6-way free-for-all (to be fair though, had it been anyone else they were revolting against, including the Imperials, those humans would be dead, [[Grimdark|most likely the slow and painful way, or even suffer such a terrible fate as to wish for death]]). Except sterialization takes more time, industry, and resources and does nothing to help put down a rebellion anyway. Also, the sterialization happens if the Tau win, so it occurs after the war is over. The Tau Codex leaves ambiguous the question of just how much of their success is due to various forms of indoctrination, caste-based conditioning, and subtle mind control. This has only been exacerbated by the recent Farsight Enclaves supplement, which makes the Ethereals come off as mustache-twirling, Saturday-morning-cartoon villains. It speaks volumes about the 40k setting that in spite of all this they're ''still'' the friendliest race in the galaxy.

=="Naive Weeaboo Space Communists"==
[[Image:Tau Weeaboo.png|thumb|right|Cue hotblooded music by [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r6xYnFDoV0 JAM Project].]]
The Tau's naiveté might seem at odds with the GRIMDARK-ness of the setting (and to a degree, a lot of it is), but the thing is, Games Workshop specifically plays this straight FOR the [[grimdark]] and ''knows'' that the seeming futility of the Tau's optimism only further accentuates the general hellishness of the rest of the galaxy - and dear [[Emperor|god]] do they play this up for maximum effect. In the 41st millennium, the Tau come across as ''more'' than a little naive to the other races; the Imperium sees any contact with aliens as heretical and will shoot them with [[bolter]] rounds as soon as they look at them; the [[Ork]]s just want to kick the shit out of things; and the [[Eldar]] see the Tau as young and powerful because of their technology but also as a race in its infancy, just staggering out of its borders for the first time and wandering into a pond full of [[Saharduin|sh]][[Dark Eldar|arks]].

Putting it simply, there's an ongoing joke that the Tau are some of the most successful trolling performed in the history of mankind just by ''existing''; a case of the company installing them just to mix things up whilst at the same time keeping them surprisingly on-level.

The combination of the above fluff, however, paired with their highly advanced technology, generally "Asian" feel (their Fire Caste's combat doctrine is often reminiscent of Sun Tzu's "''Art of War''" - but derived from two distinct Tau hunting methods), use of [[Mecha|battlesuits]] (just [[Imperial Knight|like]] [[Dreadnought|the]] [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Imperium]]), [[Hammerhead Gunship|heavy firepower]] which rivals that of the Imperial Guard, and one of the [[Fish of Fury|most broken tactics in tabletop 40K until it was finally fixed an edition later]] has conspired to make them very much hated (and by that we mean a source of butthurt) by a reasonable-sized population of the [[/tg/|40K fan populace]], and /tg/ has rightly dubbed the Tau [[Weeaboo]] (as much due to their Asian-ness as anything else) as a result (even when people can use the same logic to point to the Imperium's xenophobia, the fanatical worship of the God-Emperor, extensive use of Mecha and suicide attacks, use of suicide attacks as punishment for dishonour, and fondness for over-the-top dialogue in general and conclude that the Imperium of Man is the space equivalent of Holy Imperial Japan). As a dark twist on this inherent Asian-ness, a thread concerning lack of grimdark fan fluff on Tau led to the creation of [[Sept V'iet]], the Viet Cong Tau.
[[Image:Tau fire warriors.jpg|490px|thumb|left|The [[Greater Good]]: translatable as [[Deal with it|"if you want to make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs."]]]]

And again in a case of much cultural confusion, the Tau are often considered [[Communism|communists]] (despite being a rigorous, hierarchical, near-eugenicist class society that would drive Marx into [[RAGE]]) due to their central philosophy of casting aside the self in favour of the Greater Good. If anything the Tau more resemble the class system of Plato's ''Republic'' crossed with the caste system of India and [[Star_Trek#The_Federation|Star Trek's Federation]] (because they're the only ones in the entire galaxy who bother to try diplomacy with xenos rather than [[Exterminatus|exterminate]] them). However, the portrayal of the Tau as the equivalent of the Federation might still be wrong, since the Tau, amongst their castes, adhere to a highly strict doctrine of eugenics; [[Love Can Bloom|any form of love, sex or breeding between different castes or species]] is the Tau equivalent of [[HERESY]]. As well, the Tau treat their [[Tau#Tau_Member_Races|non-Tau comrades]] as second-class citizens with no say in the Tau government, and demand them to abandon their old culture and conform to a Tau Empire, basically becoming like everyone else. Ergo, the Tau, despite not being the exterminate-all-other-species kind of racist, are still an ethnocentric, aristocratic empire hiding beneath the same type of veneer as the Federation, not unlike Britain during their 'tenure' as the rulers of India. To be fair though, if [[GW]] does decide to up the [[Grimdark#Grimderp|grimderp]] it would be more than safe to assume they would go the way of Stalin and start flaunting fancy propaganda posters everywhere—not that the Imperium doesn't already fill that part and the drawfaggots haven't already done great work in this field. What is for sure though is that, whatever part of the one-dimensional spectrum of political agenda they are on, the Tau government is mainly oligarchical, with the vast majority of political power concentrated in the Ethereal caste. This is further driven home by the fact there is a Tau splinter faction led by one of their two best generals alive, Commander [[Farsight]] of the Farsight Enclaves, whose government is a non-caste (presumedly socialist/capitalist hybrid), meritocratic semi-democracy. The problem is, until people stop dragging him out of his self-imposed exile to fight Tyranids, Orks, and other Tau, he's a dictator the way Optimus Prime is sometimes depicted. Farsight's government is one most certainly [[RAGE|NOT recognized by the Tau Empire]], who have finally gotten around to dispatching a fleet to silence them. <s>This, of course, is [[Advancing_the_Storyline|imminent plot stuff that will never happen]] because it's always the 41st millennium.</s> nope, GeeDubs ''finally'' decided to move the plot forward, thankfully. We still have yet to see the outcome of this fleet dispatch, though.

However, the new codex has HEAVILY downplayed their naiveté, bringing back the original codex mention that the Ethereals have officially declared some species "lost causes" and that the [[Greater Good]] demands they be killed to the last.
*[[Orks]] were the first of the big players of 40k to get this treatment. They pretty much were the only serious competition Tau had before they discovered the Imperium, and it only took them a few weeks of study to realize the fact that Orks are beyond reason or sanity.
*[[Tyranids]] unsurprisingly ended up on "shoot on sight" list pretty much after the first contact.
*[[Eldar]] briefly were on the list too, owning this to the first contact being made by the Commorites, and not just any, but [[Urien Rakarth]] himself. It took some nuked Exodite world and Craftworld intervention for tau to realize that not all space-elves are insane rapists and scratch them off the list.
*[[Space Marines]] seem to be entering the list as of the second Damocles war. The reason is not because it's impossible to reason with them, but because after some intense Water caste psychoanalysis and Nagi "mind-[[rape|riping]]" they pretty much declared that astartes aren't ''people'' but merely a ''weapon'' and as such have no place in Tau'Va.

To sum it up, the Tau Empire is still an expansionist empire prone to using military force, but far better than almost every other polity in the setting, as it permits others to exist with rather lenient standards, and isn't dedicated to the purposeful extinction of all other life in the galaxy.

==Military Doctrine==
[[Image:TauTyr2.jpg|right|500px|thumb|Close-quarters painting [[Drawfag|strikes again.]]]]
The Tau disdain [[Choppy|melee]] [[Rip and tear|combat]] in favour of [[Shooty|ranged combat]], which renders them instantaneously [[Matt Ward|less manly]] in the eyes of most of /tg/'s playerbase. The reasons behind this are complicated. Generally, Tau see hand to hand combat in warfare as an anachronism, which makes sense, considering their basic guns can rip apart tank side armour, and compared to almost all other major races Tau have less muscle strength and reaction speed, which makes them ineffective in melee even if they are trained. Even the last reason alone is enough to avoid close combat, seeing as [[Necrons]] use similar logic, despite their [[Necron Warrior|Warriors]] and [[Necron Immortal|Immortals]] being much stronger and tougher, and actually highly trained in close combat, but equally as slow. That said, Tau do practice martial arts, but only for ritual purposes - Fire Warrior trials and rites involve knives and swords, while Ethereals have a tradition of fighting non-lethal duels to settle disputes, using sharp bladed weapons no less, so they are often quite good with their fencing style, as [[Aun'Shi]] has shown to some unfortunate Orks.

Logistically, Tau military doctrine has been hit hard with the same [[grimdark|stupidity]] nerf bat as every other fieldable army, but is the only faction for which this violates their own fluff; every other faction has some reason for their material to be as limited as they would be in a fantasy setting, but the Tau have widespread education, unlike Men and Orks; reasonable access to production facilities relative to their population, unlike Necrons and Eldar; and are capable of coherent research and development, unlike Tyranids and Daemons. For fluff reasons which have never been explained (the crunch reason is obvious), they have the same motif as every other army of equipment often being more valuable than the person wielding it, leading to most personnel being fielded with inferior equipment. The most obvious example of this is that they always, under whatever circumstance, field infantry in simple combat armour rather than some sort of battlesuit - its only advantage is having less bulk, as the Tau have a reason not to build larger transports to cope with the shitloads of battlesuits they could deploy instead. This argument is analogous to saying that real-world militaries should only use armored vehicles and not have infantry. The Tau likely practice economy of force, which has consequences both on and off the battlefield. Sending excessive amounts of force at a target is wasteful, as the excess firepower would be more useful elsewhere. If one only has a XV8 Battlesuits and no infantry, but a swarm of grots in a nearby pass needs to be taken out, they have no choice but to commit a very valuable unit to a task far beneath its worth. This is also an economic matter, as lower power units are cheaper. One could easily field a number of fire warriors for far less than the cost of a single battlesuit, and considering many foes will fall beneath "mere" infantry, any cost-aware faction would prefer the infantry's use over an expensive battlesuit. In other words, they are the army who most resemble modern forces in terms of strategy, and mixed armies of infantry, armor and support elements are a good combination. And who the fuck can with a straight face call a pulse rifle and carapace grade armour "inferior equipment"?

The Tau's superior [[Dakka|firepower]] is similar to that of the [[Imperial Guard]], but their strategy is different in that they tend to rely less on mass warfare and more on sophisticated technical support (drones, stealth technology, railguns), with an emphasis on tactical precision, mobility, and the initiative of individual squads of units, much like how modern warfare is waged (apparently if the Imperial Guard learned from Tau tacticians and fought with modern tactics instead of zergrushing everything then they would have been the most powerful army in the galaxy, but no, that ain't GRIMDARK and AWESOME enough [unless you're [[Lord Solar Macharius|Macharius]]]). Their military doctrine is not based on winning by attrition and/or throwing out quality tactics in favour of absorbing and dishing out heavy shocks in bloody epic clusterfucks like the Imperials, Orks and early World War II-era Soviet Russia. (Unless you count the later war "deep warfare", which is actually the combat doctrine the Tau ripped off. 40k really seems to like the Russians...) Rather, they use infiltration and their sophisticated battlesuits to [[Anal Circumference|bypass enemy strong points and launch deep into their rear]], cutting supply lines and logistics, destroying headquarters and support units, leaving enemies cut off and functionally helpless. There are numerous examples of Tau literally starving and/or thirsting entire armies to death by cutting out their supply lines, while simultaneously harassing them with night raids, ambushes and air strikes to the point the survivors are leaderless, demoralized, out of ammo and fuel, and can barely stand due to exhaustion. The [[Imperial_Armour_Volume_Three:_The_Taros_Campaign#Volume_Three_-_The_Taros_Campaign|Taros]] campaign is a prime example of these tactics (and of the Imperium's strategic stupidity).

Of course, these kinds of tactics only work fine against more convenient armies like the Imperial Guard or Orks. When it comes to Space Marines and Eldar, who sport mostly aerial/warp/webway supply lines, operate as elite armies without obvious weak spots to exploit, have similar or superior tactical mobility and badass officers that can survive most assassination attempts, Tau lose huge parts of their usual advantages (but get the numerical superiority in return). Against utterly unconventional foes, like Tyranids, Daemons or Necrons... well, all times they faced such foes, Tau either devised some entirely new strategies, or lost horribly.
[[File:TauTyr.jpg|thumb|left|300px|90% of Tau [[dakka]] comes in the form of [[Plasma|pretty blue lights.]]]]
The Tau, again, boast some of the most powerful ranged weaponry on the tabletop game, and can crank out more concentrated firepower than any other faction with the lone exception of the Imperial Guard and maybe the orks if you only count number of bullets in the air, and even then, the Tau's weapons hit quite a bit harder. They have pathetic hand-to-hand combat skills, however, and so the Tau bolster this by using several inducted races (the [[Kroot]], Vespid, and even some [[Gue'vesa|humans cut off from the Imperium during the Damocles Crusade]]) to act as buffers against assault troops to allow Tau Fire Warrior teams and their heavy, long-ranged firepower to tear enemies apart. The most pivotal, and perhaps most infamous, part of the Tau army are their [[Battlesuit|Battlesuits]], which can mount multiple heavy weapon systems and provide excellent mobility to their pilots, all on a fairly durable unit. They also have an extremely powerful navy, though not quite as formidable as the Imperium's, if largely because of number differences. Tau air units are among the best in the game, with aircraft superior or equal to Imperial Guard equivalents, including a stealth fighter, multipurpose heavy fighter, a superheavy fighter with guns that can one-shot a Titan, and their own [[Manta|Titan-equivalent]] (which is a small starship). Unlike the Imperium, they usually deploy swarms upon swarms of flyers, with only Orks and Necrons able to rival them in numbers when things come to dogfights—kind of the way the Imperial fleets' atmospheric support craft were supposed to work if fleet officers weren't a bunch of assholes who do everything they can to provide as little air support as possible.

On defense, the Tau are a bit unusual: they leave only token garrisons at their colonies to protect them. These garrisons are intended for scouting rather than combat, avoiding engagement in order to observe and report on invaders using Pathfinders, scanning towers, and drones. Because the Tau have fairly powerful spacefleets and usually keep their forces within reasoned distance of potential hotspots, any potential threat can be quickly dealt with by organizing a hunter cadre to be sent to deal with the situation. For those of you who don't get it, it's Frederick the Great's "he who tries to protect everything protects nothing" strategy. Of course, this strategy means Tau must have some worlds actually being heavily defended - and in fact they do. Sept worlds tend to be guarded by some nasty space stations and garrisoned by an unreasonable amounts of hunter cadres and auxiliary troops, which allows them to act as major defensive nodes from which response fleets are dispatched and to which evacuation fleets rally (think feudal Japan style castles from which commanders would send trained garrisons out to protect the lands around it from encroaching armies), and in case some really scary shit like an Imperial crusade or a Tyranid hive-fleet comes into the sept, it is on the sept world where the decisive battle is fought (See the First Damocles Crusade for an example of this tactic in action). This has, however, backfired on occasion, since it does mean that the Tau garrisons are very vulnerable in the initial stages of an attack.

A rare advantage the Tau have is their willingness to change military strategy. As examples, look at how they changed tactics in reaction to the [[Damocles Crusade]] by the Imperium of Man, and even built an entirely new space fleet to match humans in straight-on space fights, or their unusual but effective choice of switching to older weapons when dealing with [[Hive Fleet Behemoth|Hive Fleet Gorgon]].

==Fleet==
In the old fluff, Tau used to have a reverse-engineered imperial warp drives, tuned to only skim the surface of the warp and bounce back to materium after a short while. New fluff on the other hand retconned that, by giving them what is called "slingshot drive" for their FTL, and from what little fluff we have on it, it looks like the actual warp drive (in the modern physics meaning, i.e. warped time-space bubble). The practical applications, however, are the same in both new and old fluff - Tau FTL is much slower than the Imperium's, but is predictable, reliable, and not affected by warp storms (a big deal, given Tau spent half of their history inside one). As a result, Tau are capable of building proper interstellar logistics lines, ones the Administratum can only dream of, but their strategic mobility is <s>lacking functionally superior to</s>...different compared to pretty much every other faction (save Tyranids and Necrons, who also use non-Warp related FTL). Additionally, Slingshot drives are rather big, heavy and power-hungry, even compared to the Warp drive (which takes up a 1/3rd of a smaller imperial ships). As a result, escort-class Tau spacecraft are built without FTL drives and are hooked to bigger ships for the purpose of interstellar travel, which basically make them equivalents of the Imperium's system monitor ships, with the same benefits (cheap, compact and too fast, powerful or durable for their size) without their major downside (being incapable of FTL flight). The Tau also have to concentrate their forces on an interplanetary scale; they can't throw a bunch of ships into a warzone from halfway across the galaxy as orks and humans can.
Tau empire have two fleets:
*Kor'Vatra, or "merchant fleet", is made of older modular ships that double as merchant and colony vessels (hence the name). One of their main shticks is huge arcs of fire for most gun batteries, with side batteries easily covering front arc, and nose batteries covering all but the stern - as a result, while Kor'vatra Ships may not have as much firepower as Imperial or Ork ones, they can focus more of it on one target. On the flip side, merchant ships while decently fast at sub-light, are not very agile, and must rely on escort wings and auxiliary fleets against more maneuverable foes. Even after the founding of Kor'Or'Vesh, Kor'Vatra still see a lot of military use, especially against the Imperium, precisely because it's regarded as non-military fleet, so Tau diplomats could tell their imperial colleagues "What battle cruisers on your orbit are you talking about? It's just our merchant vessels, moving goods to and from our trade missions".
*Kor'Or'Vesh, or "combat fleet" is a newer fleet, made for battling Imperium's fleet in straight up battle, after Kor'Vatra get run over during Damocles crusade. Made out of more compact, maneuverable and better armored ships, it may lack Kor'Vatra's wide arks of fire, but is superior in every other regard, and as Taros and second Damocles campaigns showed it is more then capable of fighting off humans even if outnumbered.
Both fleets use largely the same technologies - railguns as (by tau standard) short-ranged high damage gun batteries, ion cannons as long range beams (lance equivalent), and above all, their brokenly-powerful ordinance second only to Eldar ones (and available in far greater numbers) - Mantas, Barracudas and EMP drone-torpedoes reign supreme at extreme ranges, gaining Tau navy the same reputation their ground armies have. Because their ordinance is so powerful, most Tau ships tend towards carrier and torpedo boat archetype, and suffer horribly if enemy comes within macro-cannon or god-forbid boarding range (that is IF they manage to come that close).

==Non-combat Fluff==
[[File:Tau city.jpg|450px|thumb|right|Contrary to what [[Imperium of Man|some]] believe, what this picture shows might just be the future for the entire galaxy if the Tau [[Great Crusade|get their way.]]]]
The Tau were a new race/culture found by the Imperium of Man during their "slash and burn" exploration of their galactic neighborhood. The Tau were still pastoral, had just discovered flint tools and charcoal, and the Imperium had them scheduled for "[[Grimdark|routine cleansing]]" (which is Imperiumese for ruthless genocide) to make sure they never got off-world and developed into an entity capable of threatening humanity. Needless to say, that plan was promptly [[derp|fucked up]]. By an unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your feelings towards a species' right to not be mercilessly exterminated for no reason whatsoever) coincidence which almost certainly involved the dickery of [[Tzeentch]] or [[Cegorach]] or [[The Deceiver|something]], a warp storm occluded the Tau homeworld, so nobody could get in or out. Since the Tau were virtually invisible in the warp, the warp storm didn't have much of an effect on them as they were immune to the influences of Chaos. [[FAIL|The sector was labeled "lost to Chaos,"]] and cleansing was [[What|deferred indefinitely]]. Then [[Age of Apostasy|this shit]] happened, and almost all records about Tau were lost in the ensuring [[Rape|clusterfuck]] of civil war. Only the Adeptus Mechanicus still had records of this first contact when the storm died down 6,000 years later. The Damocles Crusade relocated the Tau, who were completely untouched by the warp storm and now using interstellar colony ships and pulse rifles. The extermination order still stood—it was just going to be much more difficult than the Imperium expected, seeing as the Tau, instead of [[C.S. Goto|throwing spears and rocks at their tanks]] and Space Marines, were now throwing [[ion cannon|ion charges]], [[plasma|plasma blasts]], and [[railgun|electromagnetically-accelerated hypervelocity projectiles]] at their tanks and Space Marines.

Tau history is pretty typical up through the iron-age: a knack for engineering, warfare between "urban" farmers and "barbarian" nomads, and unrestrained growth causing a series of plagues, leading to a dark age. Here's where things go sideways, though the Tau see it as the start of their endless Golden Age: the arrival of the Ethereals. Legend tells of a five-year siege at the castle of Fio'taun, with both sides starving and succumbing to disease, when two foreign Tau entered the battlefield. One went to the castle, the other to the barbarian tribes. Each of these Tau had a quiet grace and irresistible authority. In just a few hours, the castle was persuaded to open their gates, and the barbarians laid down their weapons, and both parties met to parley a truce. These strange Tau called themselves "Ethereals," and stressed the importance of peace and understanding between all Tau. They described a "Greater Good" that each Tau must strive towards. Soon after, soon enough to seem simultaneous, more of these strange new Tau emerged across the continent with their message of peace and co-operation for all Tau. Their quiet authority was always respected, and their message of harmony was universally embraced. Wait a minute, [[God-Emperor of Mankind|I've seen this]] [[Great Crusade|historical pattern before]]....

Perhaps uniquely for the setting, Tau-human interactions bear the whiff of realpolitik. On the one hand, the Imperium wants to exterminate them ''eventually'', but the upper management generally realizes that the Tau are going to be a giant drain of resources and manpower to get rid of, given the stiff resistance they put up in [[Damocles Crusade|previous campaigns]] and their [[Riptide|uniformly]] [[railgun|advanced]] [[battlesuit|technology]]. Furthermore, they serve as a useful buffer state against various threats on the Eastern Fringe, from Orks and Chaos raiders to Tyranid hive fleets to alien forces the Imperium hasn't had (recorded) contact with. Their existence deflects danger from Imperial space, and in a place and time when the Imperium is [[Time of Ending|coming under attack from all sides]], that's more important than dogma.

This strategy is not unique to the Tau only though, as the Imperium allows countless other (much more dangerous) xeno empires to prosper in the Eastern Fringe to serve as an ablative shield against much nastier shit. Amongst those is (for example) the Charadon ork empire, which is older than the Imperium and spawns a Waaagh! or two per millennium (even with the routine warboss assasination raids that the Ultramarines make). Even after the emergence of the genius warboss Snagrod and his Waagh on Rynn no one cared to issue a crusade against them. So yeah, the Tau empire is not even close to being spotted by the High Lords, not to mention recognized as a threat dangerous enough to actually do something about.

Conversely, the Tau have realized just how massive an undertaking expanding through the entire universe would really be, and are taking it slow. They mostly absorb Imperial buffer worlds stripped of manpower and armament in the face of massive redeployments to face other threats, offering the Empire's protection in return for annexation and outright conquering the places that don't take the deal. The Tau have claimed that they are engaging in this sort of aggressive behavior because ''someone's'' going to [[Tyranids|gobble]] those settlements up sooner or later, and if ''they'' don't do it, then whoever does won't be [[Exterminatus|nearly as nice about it]]. While baldly self-serving, that logic is...well, mostly correct, really.

There's no lost love between the Imperium and the Tau, but open full-scale war is probably unlikely in the near-future.

And then the Second Damocles Crusade happened.... even the imperium isn't that stupid, so this almost certainly involves that tricky dick Tzeench trying to stop the greater good from ruining all his plans. ...Or nurgle...or, well any of the ruinous powers really.

Looking at the new galactic map, where the Tau are now sandwiched between their own eye of terror and a Necron dynasty, they are soon to be fucked.

=== Castes ===
[[File:Commander HawkEye.jpg|thumb|290px|left|<s>Join the Greater Good, lose your virginity to a hot alien babe!</s> The codex space communism does not support this action ]]

Tau society after the arrival of Ethereals was organized into castes; everyone with a place, and a place for everyone. Interbreeding between castes has been outlawed by the [[Ethereal]]s presumably to preserve the biological differences between castes, and as part of this effort they have taken over the practice of sex entirely. Tau society has been manipulated so that Tau do not form romantic bonds of a long-lasting nature and do not even consider sex to be anything other than a state-mandated act meant only, like everything else, to serve society and the Greater Good. In essence, Tau are conditioned to never have sex until and unless their superiors say they are worth breeding. Their superiors pick their breeding partners (the Tau get NO input into this) and the couple basically spends a few days off from work screwing around before going their separate ways to never see each other again. If a Tau did somehow get over their social conditioning and thought of sex as something more than a mandated duty, they'd be punished for illegal activities/perversion. An Imperial genetor's report in the fourth edition Tau codex observes the presence of synthetic proteins in Tau internal organs and suggests them as evidence that their evolution has been accelerated, though he might have been confused by synthetic proteins that the Tau were given. [[/tg/]] seems to be under the strong impression that they are mammals, as you can see in the picture further down the page, despite the complete implausibility of this theory.

==== {{anchor|Fire|Fire Caste}} Shas (Fire) ====
The '''Fire Caste''' consists of the various [[Fire Warrior|warriors]] of the Tau Empire. The miniatures of a Tau army in a [[Warhammer 40,000]] game are almost exclusively Fire Caste. Other castes think Shas are overly-aggressive hotheads due to their tendency to solve all problems by applying more plasma (when Tau encountered other sentient species, Fire Caste representatives immediately voted to hunt down and exterminate them, just like they hunted down dangerous local life forms on the other world they colonized), although from the perspective of humans or eldar, who know better how "[[Khorne Berserker|aggressive]] [[Blood Angels|hotheads]]" actually look like, fire warriors are seen more like a cold-blooded killers, even when they are enraged by the death of their Ethereal, which just shows how calm and disciplined other castes are. They are taller than Earth Caste Tau, and physically stronger than the Air and Water Castes, though still shorter and weaker than a typical Human. They pretty much compensate for this by giving their basic Fire Warrior a [[pulse rifle]], which is sort of like an automatic sniper-[[plasma]] gun, and employ heavily armed and sophisticated battlesuits for their elite infantry. Oh yeah, and [[Railgun]]s. Company -sized Tau forces are called "Hunter Cadres".

==== {{anchor|Earth|Earth Caste}} Fio (Earth) ====
The '''Earth Caste''' are the laborers and engineers; they are the "civilians" of Tau society. Their appearance can vary widely, though other Tau would describe them as "plain." They all have a stoic outlook, with little ambition other than to excel in their career of choice and work for the Greater Good. Unlike the Imperial worker classes, whose quality of life generally ''starts'' at working 14-hour days seven days a week while living off of dried, recycled dung chips and goes [[Such is life on Volg|''downhill from there'']], the Earth caste is mostly concerned with technological planning and engineering. They have robots to do the grunt work. The Farsight Enclaves field some Earth Caste pilots for their battlesuits, demonstrating their more flexible caste systems and/or their desperation for manpower. Doing so makes them ''even worse'' in close-combat than Tau already are, but they make up for it with technical training and tweaks to the suits' software and mechanics, re-rolling missed shots and equipment failures.

==== {{anchor|Air|Air Caste}} Kor (Air) ====
The '''Air Caste''' are the intermediaries between Tau. In more primitive times they served as messengers and couriers, and sometimes scouts/explorers, gliding on membranous anatomical surfaces through T'au's atmosphere. When the Tau started exploring offworld, it was the Air Caste that took charge of the vessels traveling between the stars. Now the Air Caste are the Tau stellar navy/airforce/mailmen, piloting the Empire's various carriers, warships, and emissary cruisers. Air caste Tau tend to be tall and slender like runners or dancers, and this is frequently exaggerated by the years the Tau navy spends in low-gravity. They are much less likely to be eaten by [[daemon]]s due to a faulty Geller Field than their Imperial equivalents, but only because their ships are much slower, using a "slingshot drive" to temporarily enter the Warp and bounce back into real space. Despite their slender stature and lack of muscle mass, Air caste pilots are extremely resistant to G-force, making them excellent void and atmospheric fighter pilots (simultaneously, as small Tau voidcraft also double as atmospheric craft).

==== {{anchor|Water|Water Caste}} Por (Water) ====
The '''Water Caste''' are the emissaries to non-Tau. They are diplomats, merchants, civil servants. The most open-minded Tau can be found among the Water caste, with some even showing individual ambition (but still for the greater good of the Tau Empire). When a new culture is encountered, the Water caste are sent in first to negotiate. If talks break down, the Water caste are withdrawn from the area and it's time for the Fire Caste to then start negotiating with pulse weapon fire. Also, unlike their Imperial equivalents in bureaucracy, the [[Administratum]], they are brisk, efficient, and very good at their jobs. No dumping valuable ammo on an uninhabited dust world because no one signed the paperwork not to. It's a less known fact that Pors also run the Tau intelligence and espionage network, and Por'Os and Por'Els from this branch are pretty much Tau Inquisitors except more competent, much saner, and not nearly as good at kicking asses personally. As of the second Damocles Crusade the Imperium has designated the Water caste as a primary threat above any other Tau caste, as their subterfuge, diplomacy and propaganda has cost the Imperium more worlds and manpower than the Fire and Air caste's military prowess combined, and they even managed to totally outplay the Inquisition on its own field, which royally pissed them off.

==== {{anchor|Ethereal|Ethereal Caste}} Aun (Ethereal) ====
The '''Ethereal Caste''' are basically the philosopher-kings described by Plato in "The Republic". They are selfless and always focused on what is best for the Greater Good ("Tau'va") for all Tau and every Tau without exception. The Ethereals are inspirational to all Tau caste members, and merely being near one will inspire a Tau soldier, engineer, pilot, or diplomat to work harder. In the case of the Fire Caste, some Ethereals accompany hunter cadres in battle during important deployments so as to better lead/inspire the troops, which works because all Tau in the combat zone will fight to their bitter deaths. They also seem to have semi-magical powers (don't ask how they work, none of the Tau know themselves) that allow Tau around them to do special things, like running while shooting. The [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] theorizes that the respect the Ethereal Caste gets from all other Tau is caused by a pheromone. ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTAU......

Also, ''[[Xenology]]'' relates a story from a major, insectoid race called the [[Q'Orl]] which alleges that the [[Eldar]] stole one of their queens. Given that these queens have a magic, yellow, diamond-shaped sack that produces mind-control pheromones…well, let's just say the characters in the story figure it out quickly enough. There is a theory that the Ethereals themselves are also affected by their own pheromones, which could explain why they're so selfless and uncorrupted despite their absolute power. This can also be supported by the (old as fuck and likely retconned) novelization of [[Warhammer_40,000:_Fire_Warrior|Fire Warrior]], where the Ethereal character has a pretty level head and chipper demeanor despite having been [[Anal_Circumference|repeatedly captured and tortured by both the Inquisition and Chaos, watching his diplomatic retinue chopped up by a Chaos Lord, and mind-raped by said Chaos Lord all in the span of roughly two days.]] Either he's a stoic old motherfucker, or he's just too busy tripping his blue balls on his own pheromones to give a shit.

===Tau Names===
Tau have ridiculously long, detailed and actually meaningful names. Their names contain their caste, rank, birth sept, and one or more nicknames earned by them through the course of their lives. Fluff does say that they ''do'' have birth names, but those are only used before tau earn at least one appropriate nickname, as a name given to them by comrades is considered more valuable than one just chosen by random at their birth. The nickname part and it's importance surprisingly is actually taken from the Roman culture, which is weird, given most Tau culture tend to be based on China and Japan (except for their social and government structures which are copied almost verbatim from Plato's Republic). Also, do note the lack of last names, which is expected, since Tau society pretty much have no institute of a family, with children being raised in a centralized facilities apart from their parents. As tau grow, move through ranks and achieve respect of his comrades his name changes appropriately, switching the rank part, adding new nicknames and sometimes dropping the old and outdated ones. For example, when Farsight was still a lowly fire warrior, his name was '''Shas'La Vior'La Shoh''' (Fire Caste Private of the Hot-Blooded sept Inner Light), and at the "present days" '''Shas'O Vior'La Shovah Kais Mont'yr''' (Fire Caste Commander of the Hot-Blooded sept Farsight Skillful Blooded). How the fuck Tau bureaucracy--{{BLAM}} Space commies don't have bureaucracy. is able to keep track of their population with their names constantly changing is a mystery, but it seems they have no problem with that (probably they just assign number to each).

For the sake of convenience Tau often use shortened versions of names, almost always dropping the sept part and secondary nicknames, and if speaking within one caste the caste part too, so in the case of Farsight other fire warriors could refer to him as O'Shovah, while for example an Ethereal would call him Shas'O'Shovah. Humans and other non-Tau often get this system wrong and shorten the names in a ways that make little sense: for example, Imperium's Taros invasion force thought the Taros' chief Ethereal's name was Aun'El, which was only his caste and rank, and as the book was mostly written from the Imperium's standpoint, we still don't know what was his actual name.

One final stroke of Tau naming, is that as they abandon their true (birth) names it makes them even more resistant to sorcery and daemonic powers that often require target's true name to amplify their effect or even make the spell work at all.

===Psychic/Chaos defense===
Tau are an entire race of psychic blunts, they cannot produce psykers and have limited innate resisance to some forms of psychic powers and daemonic bullshit. People often mistake this resistance to outright invulnerability, but in truth it's more akin to camouflage - Tau souls are so dim they are indistinguishable from the spirits of non-sapients at best, and at most times they even blend in the psychic background of inanimate objects. This may have something to do with how unemotional tau are, as some of the more passionate subjects in the fluff had been slightly affected by warp shenanigans like faint whispers and slight feelings of "wrongness" in places where humans creep out and try to run away immediately, while more calm and collected tau hadn't noticed anything strange. If for example a telepath tries to mind-rape a tau or a daemon tries to posses a tau he'd find it hard to find a soul to target, but if he manages to find it there would be even less resistance than with regular humans. Sadly while this trait is often shown in the fluff, it does not affect tau crunch in any way.

This innate defense is further strengthened by the Greater Good philosophy deeply indoctrinated into each Tau from childhood and (allegedly) reinforced by a subtle mind control. Tau'Va being the antithesis of all the creeds of Chaos makes tau all but immune to it's temptations, and only a single Tau has ever actually fallen to Chaos, the Water Caste member Water Spider who was possessed by a Daemon of Tzeentch. That being said, the Tau have only just been exposed to the more material horrors of the galaxy; should they become jaded and start losing faith in the Greater Good (as inferred with giving up on indoctrinating certain species), well, that would be an entirely different situation. Their allies, including the Kroot, have been known to go all-in with Chaos worship, although Tau seldom take culture from their allied races.

==Alliances==
{{MattWard}}
[[File:Illus4.jpg|280px|right|thumb|Unfortunately for some [[Slaanesh|deviants]] [[Extra Heresy|and heretical elements on]] [[/tg/]]. [[Not as Planned|This is what an actual canon Tau Female looks like.]] No boobs, no curves, no ass, no redeeming qualities other than having a face of your grandmother and the nose of a mutilated vag. Know the alien. Hate the alien. Purge the alien. The Emperor Protects!]]
In 6th edition, Tau are notable for being one of two factions (the other being Imperial Guard) who can ally with anyone except for 'Nids. Yes, this includes both Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Daemons, although, according to the Farsight Enclaves supplement, <s>Farsight is one of the few Tau (maybe the only one ''period'') who actually understands the existence of Chaos, so the average Tau would consider them to be just another kind of alien.</s> Farsight rebelled because the Ethereals understand the existence of Chaos on some level, but keep it suppressed from the general populace so they're not entirely screwed. It still isn't going to end well though.

This leads to a few...''interesting'' alliances, to say the least.

First off, Tau ''can'' ally with [[Ork]]s, even though fluff-wise they are viewed as enemies of the Greater Good to be purged wherever encountered. Smaller Ork warbands (mostly [[Blood Axes]]) frequently act as mercenaries, of course, so the Tau might use them in that capacity. Plus, there might be fluff changes coming up (most notably, it was rumored that the [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee]] would return in the new Orks codex; they, of course, would get along quite well with the Tau).

They are also battle brothers with both the Space Marines and Eldar, which has caused a large amount of headscratching on /tg/. The Eldar make a modicum of sense; after all, the Eldar most likely had a hand in their synthetic evolution and the creation of the Ethereals, and the Eldar are well known for being expert manipulators. A Tau-Space Marine alliance, though, would be odd, to say the least, since Tau and Space Marines are always going at it in the [[fluff]]. Of course, a minor [[Space Marine Chapter|chapter]] could always find an alliance with the Tau, or even join the Greater Good, but that seems far-fetched at best. Old fluff from back in the 3rd edition codex tells a story of a Tau commander letting an Apothecary remove the aul glands from dead Marines, establishing that the Tau are honourable warriors in the minds of this particular chapter. Isn't too hard to guess that someone at GW felt the battle brothers thing was a bit of a head-desk move, so they tried to fix it.

The weirdest part, though, is that Tau ''aren't'' Battle Brothers with the Imperial Guard, despite (or maybe because of) the existence of [[Gue'vesa]] (Imperial Guard defectors).

7th edition corrected all of this for the Tau, making them only battle brothers with themselves and certain allies of convenience, like Necrons and the Eldar, while the rest are desperate allies or, in the case of daemons and 'Nids, allies of the apocalypse. This effectively "fixes" the issue from the point of view of a butthurt puritan while still allowing for those who bought Tau models to include them as allies in their games.

8th edition totally destroyed any chance of Tau having allies in matched play games. Taudar is dead, thank fuck.

==Tau Member Races==
[[File:Dynamic entry by majesticchicken.jpg|right|thumb|550px|Look up fuckers! You're invited to the latest imperial party and we're not taking "no" for an answer!]]
The Tau are the only faction that willingly accept other races into their ranks. Typically, the races are extended a hand from the Water Caste first, and if they still pose a problem or otherwise refuse to be reasoned with, the Fire Warriors are sent in. It should be noted that tau usually are not in haste of annexing the world, and if the aliens don't want to join right now but aren't immediately hostile and open to trade, Water Caste would slowly but surely convert them into a Greater Good to the point that one day they themselves would ask to join the Empire. The species, when annexed or conquered, are usually allowed to keep their planet, but must answer to the authority of the local Ethereal and possibly the local Shas'o. Most of them are fluff and don't show up on the tabletop, but it would get a little ridiculous if you could purport to play a 'single' 40k race that included, like, twelve different races.

* Demiurg - [[Squats]] reborn. They are a race of space-faring miners specializing in ionic weaponry who serve the Tau with their engineering and mining abilities. They also serve as an example of something the Imperium will never do: save dead codex races (Well, okay, they're sort of saved...). They make an appearance in Battlefleet Gothic: Armada though, so that's nice.
* Galgs - Frog/Toad People who are regularly hired as mercenaries. No other information available. Probably [[Lizardmen#Slann|Slann]] In Space.
* [[Gue'vesa]] - Humans who have not only defected to the Tau, but chosen to take up arms and fight alongside them to serve the Greater Good. Rules for them are found in [[Forge World|Forge World's]] Imperial Armour Volume 3. <s>(If the current trend goes on we may see Sisters join up with the Tau, which might be an improvement for the Sisters.)</s>{{BLAM}}{{BLAM|HERESY!}}
* Hrenian - Alien mercenaries employed for their skills as light infantry. No other information available. Probably [[Lizardmen#Skinks|Skinks]] In Space.
* Ji'atrix - A spacefaring race. No other information available. (Dammit, GW [[Writefag|writefags]].)
* [[Kroot]] - Predatory gene-assimilating avian humanoids. They are the first alien race to be actively recruited by the Tau as mercenaries, and are so regularly hired that they have officially progressed to being considered Auxiliaries of the Tau forces.
* [[Vespid|Mal'kor]] - Insectoid aliens, also known as Vespids, who are native to a gas giant planet within the Tau Empire. Serve as Auxiliaries.
* Morralian - Also known as "Deathsworn". No other information available.
* [[Nicassar]] - A voidfaring race of [[psyker]]s and the only psychically-gifted species in the Tau Empire. The Tau have carefully hidden them away from the Imperium due to their (actually justifiable) psyker-phobia. Were the second alien species to join the Greater Good.
* Ranghon - No information available.
* [[Tarellian]] - These guys are basically [[Lizardmen#Saurus|Saurus]] IIIIN SPAAAAACE!!!!!! Not really part of the Empire, but rather mercenaries who will gladly fight humans and Tyranids on the cheap since the Imperium virus-bombed their home world and the Tyranids nommed their biggest colony.
* Poctroon - The first sapient species to be found by the Tau, [[wikipedia:Siege of Fort Pitt|they were "accidentally" driven extinct by Tau smallpox]], and their planet just by coincidence was a great place to set a Sept World.
* Nagi - Brain worms that, due to their horrific appearance and inability to communicate, were attacked by the Fire Caste. They managed to sort it out, though, and now they work with the Ethereals as advisors (because having brain worms about as "advisors" isn't a bad idea or anything). They had shown in a few books so far, and were involved in a "mind-rip" (guess outright calling it "rape" was too much) of a space marine POW while being so self-righteous and smug about their mental superiority they could give Eldar a run for their money. Apparently they can also at least perceive the Warp (which they call "extra-dimensional space"), and probably manipulate it as well, and know enough about it to outright refuse to go anywhere near demonically-tainted Agrellan when Tau invaded it.
* Ji'atrices, Morralians, or Ranghons are probably other Warhammer Fantasy Races In Space, such as [[Lizardmen#Kroxigor|Kroxigors]] or Trolls, given the overall tendency of the Tau to incorporate Fantasy races missing from 40k.

The usually genocidal actions of the other races, most notably the [[Imperium]], also serve as a motivating factor for less-powerful races to join the Tau. While the Tau do seem a minor threat to the Imperium now, if the current policy continues, there will be more and more races joining up with the them if for no other reason than avoiding [[Exterminatus|extermination]]. Of course, the Tau are just coming to realize how vast and powerful the Imperium really is, and while a lot of their member races really ''are'' the victims of crazy, evil, fascist extermination protocols, there's always the chance that someone responsible for a "Hell World" or "Nightmare World" might join up, and the damage might be done before they realize their mistake...

==In a Nutshell==
;'''The Stated Reason Why People Hate Tau'''
Weeaboo space confuciunists (Asian Commies)—not grimdark enough.
;'''The ''Real'' Reason Why People Hate Tau'''
Until the edition update, this would, most assuredly, be [[Fish of Fury]]. Fuck, even most Tau players felt this was bullshit. Post-edition update, it was that certain [[Matt Ward|undesirables]] felt that they were trying to take the mantle of the 40K universe's "rightful" Imperial protagonists. And because they are not [[Choppa|choppy]] enough. And then 6th Edition codex came, and Tau became one of the shootiest armies in the shootiest edition ever, not to mention their ability to bitchslap cheesmongers, having straight counters against any of the Wardex bullshit. When the 7th edition came out they became overpowered AF and they took the title as the chedder cheese of Warhammer.
;'''A Real Reason Why People Like Tau'''
The one race that isn't being a wall of dicks. If the Tau are trolling done by Games Workshop, then the target of said trolling was any fatbeard that needs a constant supply of grimdark to stay alive. Of course, the mind-influencing pheromones they use to conquer new worlds and their psycho-indoctrination mass re-education facilities will just have to be ignored if you don't want destroy your wishful thinking for a half-way decent faction to exist in 40k. But people have always been good at ignoring shit.
;'''Another Real Reason Why People Like Tau'''
Unlike many other Races in 40k the Tau are capable of fitting into many other Sci-fi Universes without much Problems. Such as Star trek where they would be at home along side other Peaceful yet also Tyrannical Factions like the Federation. Compared to the Necrons or Eldar which would be both Roflstomps and completely different from all other groups in that Universe. (Unless it [[Doctor Who|Doctor Who]]).
;'''The Real Reason Why People Play Tau'''
Arguably have the most powerful guns in the game. Often twin-linked. Often on cool-looking robot battlesuits. [[meme|Also markerlights]]. Also [[Riptide|RAPETIDE]]. Tau players may also have a tendency towards sadism.
;'''A Solid Reason People Don't Play Tau'''
They're fucking expensive. Seriously. On a points-per-pound level, they cost more than any other (plastic) army. This is doubly true if you like battlesuits, but of course you do because you're playing Tau.
;'''Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants?'''
An often overlooked issue is that Tau have almost no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general (despite the fact that in 6E they can work with them...I just...I don't...WAAAARD!!!), just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape, stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. [[GW]] may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the [[JUST AS PLANNED]] competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Given that recent murmurs have suggested that something absolutely massive is in the works at GW, ''anything'' could be possible, though past experience has led us to believe that it will simply be a Tau wearing a silly [[hat]]. However, seeing as GW is as likely to advance the plot that far as I am to shove both my legs up my ass up to the knee, it doesn't much matter.

==TL;DR==
<s>The good guys</S>
High-tech alien race who are the ''least'' [[grimdark]] of factions. Can't melee for shit but can blow you back to the stone age with ranged weaponry if you have the misfortune of being downrange. You will either love them or hate them because of all this, and many neckbeards do feel the [[butthurt]]. Or, as the saying goes: "You can't spell TAUNT without TAU."

== Warhammer Fantasy ==
Unlike most other factions in 40k, Tau have no clear antecedent from [[Warhammer Fantasy]]. Some think the anime influences and rapid industrialization/militarization point towards Nippon; others feel the caste system might be related to the Kingdom of Ind. However, neither faction has ever been explored in great detail (or any detail at all), so it's impossible to say whether Tau are similar to those factions; instead, we must compare to the real-world equivalents of the Old World nations. Slightly more controversially, there are elements of Cathay (which is the Anglicized word for China back in the British Empire heyday, so yes) in the Tau. Cathay has been described as being technologically advanced (at least on par with the Empire), including terra-cotta automaton warriors (which the Chinese definitely used to make to pay homage to the First Chinese Emperor's over inflated ego, more than a millennia ago), although such comparison is stated by some to have [[Skub|already been implemented in the characterization of the Eldar and thus, is considered as ''seriously'' stretching up a notch.]]

More recently, some have connected the Tau and their subject races to other factions in Fantasy. The rapid evolution of the Kroot and their overall savagery is (somewhat) similar to the Gors of the Beastmen (although the Beastmen are in the 40k universe themselves). The Empire also shares the xenos-friendly viewpoint of the Tau, although they're not expansionistic, and decidedly less concerned with a unified government structure so long as everyone pays their taxes, for better or for worse. Others compare them to dwarves: dwarves don't use Chaos magic, are short, technologically advanced, kinda casty and blue (understood in many countries as "hopelessly drunk") basicly all the time. Tau don't use Chaos warp magic, are short, technologically advanced, very casty and blue all the time (in regards to skin colour). Both also get seriously grudgy and angry when you piss them off.

==Trivia==
[[File:Tau Ripoff.jpeg|thumb|right|300px|FOR THE [[Blood Ravens|GREATER THEFT]]!]]
* Some have said that Tau resemble the protagonist KYNE from the Amiga video game Brataccas, which was released in 1986. Tau were first added to Warhammer 40k in late 2001. Some would dismiss this as coincidence, but Games Workshop has a long history of ripping off designs from other games; [[Beastmen]] are [[Broo]] from [[Glorantha]], very large chunks of 40k are a little too similar to [[Judge Dredd]], and all of the Greater Daemon model designs are stolen from early [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. These properties are understandable as Games Workshop was still selling games of those IPs when Warhammer was first created, but Brataccas is an obscure game from a forgotten system that was quite forgettable even at release, even if Amiga games tended to get fantastic cover art. This being said another of GW's early products was also puzzles of of this style of '70's/'80's Sci-Fi art. The T'au cast system does resemble the Protoss caste from [[starcraft]], which presates the release of the Tau by 3 years... You have the Templar (Fire/Air Castes) Judicators (Ethereals + Water Castes) and Khalai (Earth Caste). In addition to a rogue sub-caste in the Dark Templar (Farsight Enclaves).
* Tau are technically canon to the Marvel Comics universe, as the series Venom: Space Knight repeatedly used Tau vehicles for aliens in the scenery. In fact, they have the balls to even keep the Tau Sept symbol! Also, you can see what appears to be a Eldar tank, as well as a Necron. The irony of the ripoff masters Games Workshop getting ripped off is juicy, even moreso when its realized that lawsuit-happy Games Workshop (who literally tried to copyright "pauldrons" while they plagiarized Eldar from Tolkien and had some contention between [[Malekith|two very similar Dark Elf characters of theirs]]) couldn't do shit about it because Marvel is owned by Disney, and nobody beats The Mouse™.

==Notable Tau==
===[[Canon]]===
*[[Aun'Shi]]
*[[El'Myamoto (Sub-commander Darkstrider)]]
*[[Shadowsun|O'Shaserra (Commander Shadowsun)]]
*[[Farsight|O'Shovah (Commander Farsight) and The Eight]]
*[[Commander Puretide]]
*[[Shas'o Kais]]
*[[Commander Or'es'Ka|Shas'o Or'es'Ka]]

===[[/tg/ 40,000]]===
*[[Blue]]
*[[Faptau]]
*[[O'ren I'shi'ii]]
*[[Shlicktau]]
*[[Xeno]]

==See Also==
[[File:Marvel Tau.jpg|thumb|right|250px|FOR THE GREATER GROOT!]]
* [[Nicassar]]
* [[Sept V'iet]]
* [[Tau Quest]]
* [[Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior]]
* [[Tau Dark Heresy]]
* [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Tau(8E)|Tactics/Tau]]
* [[Tau Cadre Creation Tables]]
* [[Codex_-_Tau_Auxiliary]]
* [[Tau Diplomacy]]
* [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|<strike>Love Can Bloom 3:Golden Shadowsun</strike> NON-CANON FANFICTION GARBAGE]]

==External Link==
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrHhS5IkRR0 A Typical Tau-Human conversation.]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbuPaCgdO50 Should one of your Tau actually kill anything tougher than a guardsman in melee, you are allowed to end the game in victory as long as you play this clip.]

==Gallery==
<center><gallery>
Image:Tau1.jpg|Stealth suits are :3
Image:Firewarrior.gif|Fire Warriors are :3 too
Image:Tau Chibi Fire Warrior.jpg|Chibi, but not weeby.
File:TauGuela.jpg|Gue'la.
Image:TauOrigin.jpg|Ohhh GW.
Image:Tau.gif|In 40k, everyones' guns are huge.
Image:Tau Fire Warrior.jpg|A Tau Fire Warrior, the basic infantry unit.
Image:Tau Firepower Demotivator.jpg|The sad truth of 6th edition.
Image:combine.jpg|In /tg/, tau are the bad guys.
Image:Itsyourempiretoo.png|Propaganda. [[Nazi|Sound]] [[Communism|familiar?]]
Image:Never shall the tau!.JPG|Surrender... never shall the Tau.
Image:Tauassault.jpg|Tau are vicious melee fighters, no less able than [[Space Marines]]!
Image:1234622525817.jpg|In hindsight, attempting negotiations with Orks was probably a bad idea.
Image:Tau Problem, Astartes.jpg|What's that? We're not grimdark enough for you, Neckbeard?
Image:Tau Sympathizer.jpg|The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer's entry on Tau players.
Image:Discotau.jpg|In spite of being filthy heretical xeno scum, the Tau can really break it down.
Image:Manta.jpg|Fun fact: if you have enough money to buy this, you have too much money.
Image:Tau cosplay2.jpg|Typical Tau player, engaging in typical Tau behavior. (Pretty badass cosplay, even got the hoof right)
Image:Tau Battlesuit vs Smurf.jpg|This Char Custom Battlesuit-clad Tau demonstrates his mastery of [[Weeaboo Fightan Magic]]. Also DYNAMIC ENTRY!
Image:E6abddad6c5999a1dbe6085d8614f051.jpg|Tau in close quarters combat barring some very lucky dice rolls.
</gallery></center>
{{Promotions}}
<center><gallery>
Image:TauKroot.jpg
Image:MARKERLIGHTS.png|MARKERLIGHTS!
Image:tau_firecleavage.jpg|Sweet [[Weeaboo|weeaboo]] [[Heresy|heresy]].
Image:Commissar Shadowsuns Goods by morganagod.jpg|DAT ASS.
Image:DAT_SHAS.jpg| A Fire Warrior appreciating DAT ASS.
Image:Tau ass.gif|A Greater Good we can all believe in.
Image:NOT FUCKING CANON.png| [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|THIS IS NOT FUCKING CANON!]]
Image:JoinTau.jpg|Some recruitment methodologies work better than others.
Image:Tau Chick.jpg|Few rarely seen Tau chicks. Maybe because Sisters are hotter.
Image:youtastefunny.jpg|Yeah, we all know the truth about their "greater good".
Image:Subcommander torchstar by sexual yeti-d9qal0l.png|Subcommander Torchstar, Farsight's personal fangirl.
Image:Tau_caste_nudes.jpg|Earth, Fire, Water, Air...Ethereal?!? SWEET MOTHER OF KHORNE!!! MY EYES!!!
Image:Laughing tau whores.jpg|S-shut up you filthy sluts! Among my people it is considered quite a handsome dick!
Image:Power Shopping.jpg|It's a well-known fact that the Tau Empire has some of the best shopping in the entire galaxy.
Image:Taugirlpile.jpg|Here we see Tau propaganda meant to entice men with their terrible, blasphemous, and supple soft skin, smooth curves, perky brea...er...ah...heretical alien bodies.
Image:TauHuman.jpg|Indeed, many humans have already embraced the Greater Good. (The individual with the primitive flashlight has been sent to re-education. Happiness is mandatory, Citizen.)
Image:greatertits.jpg|An attractive human female defector who for some reason has been equipped with a highly modified commander's battlesuit, perhaps as a devious ploy to compel desertion by the less loyal.
</gallery></center>

{{Tau}}
{{WH40k-Factions}}
{{40k-Governments}}

[[Category: Xenos]]

Indomitus Crusade

2017-12-11T17:27:27Z

2600:1006:B10C:1CE2:B49C:FF60:61E6:E26E: /* Results of the conflict */

{{Topquote|To the Space Marine Chapters bloodied and besieged in the dark Imperium, we bring reinforcement. To the Chapters lost in valiant duty or driven to destruction, we offer rebirth. To the enemies of my father's empire, we bring death. With these words I, Roboute Guilliman, Lord Commander of the Imperium, son of the Emperor of Mankind declare the Indomitus Crusade. Traitors, mutants, daemons. Heed to the coming of my armies and the ruin we promise to your miserable kind. This galaxy is ours!|[[Roboute Guilliman]], Lord Commander of the Imperium, son of the Emperor of Mankind.}}

The Indomitus Crusade is the Imperium's latest major military campaign, in response to Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade, its successful destruction of Cadia and the fracturing of the galaxy in two pieces. After the combined effords of Archmagos Cawl, Saint Celestine and the Ynnari to bring the Primarch Roboute Guilliman back from stasis, he reaches Terra and takes full control of the Imperium to try and get shit done. To do this, he declares a massive crusade to push back the forces of Chaos, unveiling his brand new and very marketable Primris Marines, to spearhead his attack against Chaos, even if noone really trusts these new guys. The Indomitus Crusade lasted around a century and managed to stabilize the Imperium, but the 13th Black Crusade is technically still going on. Also, this event is the first major step into the 42 Millenium (even though technically could not be the case because calendars are fucked in this grimdark future), Ciaphas Cain's novels notwithstanding.

This event is specially remarkable because this is the biggest advance of the 40K storyline in decades, and making people really afraid of this being another Age of Sigmar. For now, those fears have been pushed aside, the galaxy is still there (although split by the Cicatrix Maledictum). It also brought forth the 8th Ed Codex, which focuses a lot on the battle of the Imperium vs Chaos (so nothing has changed that much, I suppose).

Please help completing this page, I'm not that experienced in making wikipages. Also, I'd like to add things to the article, like the books and campaigns featuring the Indomitus Crusade, plus all the fluff that could be linked to it. Thanks in advance.

==Phase 1: Gathering forces and the Second Battle of Terra==
Soon after Guilliman arrived to Terra and took the title of Lord Commander of the Imperium (basically becoming the ''de facto'' ruler of the Imperium of Mankind), he started to gather up all the forces he could to counter the forces of Chaos that were pouring from the Warp in massive amounts. Taking all Astartes, Mechanicum, Navy, Guard Regiments, the Sisters of Silence, some Custodes elements (finally entering the galactic fray after millenia of doing fuck all), and the new and now on sale Primaris Marines to spearhead the counterattack. While he was busy gathering his forces, however, Terra was attacked by the Legions of [[Khorne]]. The Blood God was fed up with the other idiots mucking about around the Cicatris Maledictum believing they'd won, so he went to finish the job on his own and sent in eight of his Legions... who were quickly and swiftly sent running back to the Warp with extreme prejudice and overwhelming firepower.

This small incursion, however, caused massive panic and unrest on Terra proper. The Terran anti-Warp defenses failing to prevent the opening of a rift from where Chaos attacks could pour from was a major thorn, and some argued that Guilliman should stay to defend Terra. But the Primarch knew that to prevent the situation from going completely bad, he had to bring the fight to the enemy. His forces set out from the centre of the Imperium, course set for the hundreds of planets either under siege or already conquered by the Ruinous Powers. During all of this, the Astronomicon was not working properly, constantly flickering and making Warp jumps a pretty risky move. And considering Guilliman's Crusade used almost half of the Navy Fleet in Segmentum Solar, they had to do very short jumps, slowing the beginning of the Crusade down considerably.

==Phase 2: Guilliman frees a bunch of planets and brings Primarines to the Chapters==
Guilliman soon arrived into the thick of things. He travelled around dozens of planets, liberating those that could be saved and exterminating those that could not. Slowly but surely, Imperial forces managed to push back the chaotic tide, although it was only enough to stabilize some of the war fronts. The arrival to Catachan was a specially interesting point in the Crusade: the planet's local fauna was so deadly it scared away even the daemons, which probably brought a decent amount of morale uplifting laughter to the Imperial forces involved. As the tides of the Warp calmed, astrophatic communications started to improve all around (even if the Imperium Nihilus half was still pretty much isolated from the light of the Astronomican). The more planets the Primarch freed, the more reinforcements he added to his campaign and the more momentum it built up.

It is also during this phase that the already extant Astartes Chapters started getting their Primaris reinforcements, with all manner of colourful reactions. After much grumbling, the general consensus ended up being "accept them now, complain when the war is over".

==Phase 3: Nurgle attacks Ultramar and Guilliman ends the Crusade==
After a century of war and the freeing of hundreds of planets (including Baal from the Khornate daemons AND Hive Fleet Leviathan, poor Blood Angels can't catch a break), the front was largely stabilized, Chaos contained into the Cicatrix Maledictum and tentative contact had been reestablished with Imperium Nihilus. Guilliman's forces were however exhausted and Belisarius Cawl needed to refill the Primarines' ranks. Many of the crusading forces wanted to consolidate their gains rather than continuing the conquests and stretching their forces thinner and thinner throughout the galaxy.

The deciding point was the invasion of the Ultramar realm by the forces of Nurgle, taking advantage of the drawing of forces for the Crusade leaving planets relatively undefended. Thus, Guilliman called it a day and dissolved the Indomitus Crusade, allowing everyone to go home and deal with the invasion. With that, the Indomitus Crusade reached its end on a globally positive note that the 13th Black Crusade had been contained and that the situation was no longer deteriorating.

==Results of the conflict==
The Indomitus Crusade managed to push the forces of Chaos long enough for the [[13th Black Crusade]] to start dissolving by itself ''(because Chaos loves fighting Chaos more than the loyalists)'', thus preventing more damage from being done. This, however, doesn't mean that the Imperium didn't suffer a massive blow: The '''Cicatrix Maledictum''' and the loss of hundreds of planets means this was the biggest blow the Imperium has suffered since the days of the Horus Heresy or the War of the Beast. Half of the Imperium still gets barely any light from the Astronomican, isolating the Imperium Nihilus from the Emperor's light and making warp travel an even more hazardous experience. The splitting of the Imperium into two halves more and more different ''(one that profits from Guilliman's return and reforms while the other has to keep itself afloat by any means necessary)'' is bound to become a serious problem in the future. Not to mention most Chaos forces are still running amok throughout the galaxy and now have a ''gigantic'' base of operation to launch their attacks from instead of the much smaller Eye of Terror.

The Primaris Marines debate has only gotten worse after the end of the Crusade, most people seeing Cawl's creations as either necessary abominations or an outright heresy, depending on whom you ask. Which, if Guilliman speaks soon and intelligently, can be dismissed by him pointing out the Primaris are made from the most pure gene-seed in a device create by the Emperor himself and also uses techniques used in thr creation of the Custodes. So, to call it heresy is like saying the Primarchs and Astartes in general are heretical as the Primaris gene-seed is both more pure than that of the Primarchs and directly created by the Emperor personally. Guilliman has to keep the Plague Wars in Ultramar in check, while ruling the whole Imperium, which is taking a toll on the Primarch. The Mechanicum's higher echelons are also highly annoyed that Cawl is calling so many shots, and some of them have even accused him of techno-heresy. Which is funny because he was a key part in creating the Space Marines and their armor and the Custodes so anything he does with it can’t really be considered heresy as the Emperor gave him leave to manipulate Astartes genetics to do his job in the first place before the Great Crusade.

Ah, and the Tyranids ate some planets, the Tau lost a whole expansion sphere, the Necrons expanded some of their empires, the Orks did what Orks do (hint: it involves WAAAGH!, choppa and dakka) but they're more organized now and the Eldar are trying to figure out what to think of the Ynnari. So overall, nothing important happened on the xeno's front.

{{40k-Timeline}}